Item: ThoughtSpot
Rating: 8
Author: Josh Schmitz

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use ThoughtSpot for the traditional company-wide KPI reports. Dashboards are developed and then shared with the appropriate group of people so they can track productivity and efficiency. With ThoughtSpot, end users also have the ability to do their own "search" to build their own graphics, but the primary use as of now remains in the pre-built dashboards.

Pros and Cons

Once ThoughtSpot is initially set up, it is pretty easy for end users to build their own graphics
The site navigation/layout is pretty intuitive so even a novice user should be able to figure out how to navigate the site and build a graphic
Each graphic has a nice "help" tooltip that explains exactly what is needed before that specific graphic is usable. Ex: if you want to use a Map graphic, they disable it and give you a hover saying something like "you need at least one geographical data point to use a Map"

The various graphics that are created to build a dashboard are not related, so if you click on a Bar in Graphic A, it will not highlight the related items in the other Graphics on the dashboard.
The graphics you place on a dashboard are restricted to three default sizes and you are unable to manually resize the graphic to exactly what you want/need.
You do not have many options when it comes to customizing each element of a graphic. You have a few standard options to "customize" but they are all pretty basic and do not give you the control that other tools allow

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop

ThoughtSpot is just as good at creating the initial graphic for the end user, it might even be better because the user really does not need much technical knowledge in order to create a basic graphic. Currently, ThoughtSpot cannot yet compete with the other tools when it comes to designing a fully interactive dashboard or with customization of graphics.

Data Integration

Our instance of ThoughtSpot is able to connect to our Filemaker database which is an extremely uncommon connection. ThoughtSpot can probably connect to just about anything through the use of Python scripting that should be part of the initial setup. Our account rep was in charge of scripting the various database connections as part of the proof of concept before we purchased the tool.

Collaboration and Sharing

It is pretty easy and straightforward to create a report and then shares it with a specific group or with a user. A user can save their own "search" (built graphic) and then share it with others in the company with just a few clicks of the mouse. Data sharing settings should apply, meaning if a user is in the "South" group and they share a report with the "North" group, the north group should get the north data and not the south.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power BI, OpenText Actuate Information Hub

Likelihood to Recommend

Good:
ThoughtSpot is very user-friendly and will make it easy for an end user to quickly search and build a graphic on their own. This will take away the wait time of having a middleman that actually creates these random graphics requests since the end user could do it themselves.

Bad:
ThoughtSpot does not have the true dashboard feel yet so if you want the nice interactive dashboard functionality where a user can click one item and filter the other graphics, this is not going to work for you.

ThoughtSpot is very user friendly and efficient but it is still "green" as a BI tool.

Overall Satisfaction with ThoughtSpot