Flexible BI tool with applicability and utility for a variety of organizations
November 02, 2021
Flexible BI tool with applicability and utility for a variety of organizations
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Sigma Computing
Sigma is our BI tool for internal reporting/dashboarding and data-driven decision-making. We use it primarily for sales, marketing, inventory, and operational needs, but finance and other departments also use it. It enables us to answer ad hoc business questions, build dashboards for repeated, frequent use, and other analytics and monitoring.
- The similarity to spreadsheet tools (G Sheets, Excel) enables end-users to quickly get up to speed without much training.
- The end user interface is clean and clear.
- Sigma support is great - they're friendly, always available for a quick chat or a screen share, and knowledgeable about the product and able to provide solutions and workarounds to any issues or reporting needs.
- The flexibility of using SQL, analytics-created datasets, CSVs, or any combination of those is ideal for a smaller organization like us - it enables us to be more responsive to evolving user and business needs, especially as we grow.
- Because it's spreadsheet-based, the UI can be tricky or unintuitive to use at times (especially for those used to other BI tools).
- Options and functionality for things like charts or dashboard filters can be clunky or non-existent but Sigma is great about taking feature requests and is continually rolling out new features and improvements.
- Positive impact on time saved with the ability to serve as a tool for either pushing or pulling data - it's easy to create reports that automate manual work in a variety of ways.
Do you think Sigma Computing delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Sigma Computing's feature set?
Yes
Did Sigma Computing live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Sigma Computing go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Sigma Computing again?
Yes
Sigma has definitely improved access to data for non-technical users but that requires investment by data and analytics teams to provide quality data sets - whether in the form of well-maintained tables and/or well-written SQL. User adoption hasn't been the most successful aspect of our Sigma usage, but that may be more of an organizational issue than a Sigma one as any tool takes time and effort to learn and Sigma is no different.
Ad-hoc analysis is something Sigma is well-suited for, given the ability to use SQL (or combine it with other data sources). This flexibility enables rapid building, testing, and iterating, whether on the final report itself or the process used to create it. Especially at a growing company, there are many caveats and assumptions made within our data and Sigma handles that well, allowing for faster reporting and decision making.
Sigma is more flexible than Looker but has a smaller, less robust feature set. However, Looker requires much more investment on the back end, requiring experience with building databases and thinking through how end users will access it, while Sigma can plug into any data stack and provide results relatively quickly.