Item: ThoughtSpot
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

ThoughtSpot was used primarily by the reporting and analytics team to generate dashboard reports used across the entire organisation. ThoughtSpot helps summarise various metrics and parameters essential to quantify business performance. Moreover, automation of reports using ThoughtSpot significantly reduces developer effort as well as time taken to generate and share reports.

Pros and Cons

Using ThoughtSpot is fairly straightforward. Interface is easy to use, can be learned quickly.
Support service provided is great. They are prompt and helpful.
Works brilliantly for finance-related reporting.

Initial setup of the tool can be quite a pain. Not as easy to set up as Looker or Oracle BI.
Search primarily works based on keywords - language processing could be better.
Not as productive for running analytics outside of finance/sales data.

Alternatives Considered

IBM Cognos, IBM Cognos Express and Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

Compared to most reporting and analytics tools of a similar nature, ThoughtSpot seems to work particularly well with financial and sales related data. In terms of ease of use, ThoughtSpot ranks above average. On the other hand, there are dozens of basic features (esp. reporting) from tools like Oracle that are surprisingly not available on ThoughtSpot.

Data Integration

One of the better features offered by ThoughtSpot is the ability to seamlessly import and curate data from almost any source without any compatibility issues. Compared to other tools, ThoughtSpot does a considerably better job at this. ThoughtSpot also allows for data import from multiple sources within the same report/dashboard - this feature was extensively used by my team.

Collaboration and Sharing

ThoughtSpot has a fairly simple access control system. Access to data can be controlled by filtering access by roles assigned to each user. Access control can be applied to both data as well as actions. Data sharing and reports sharing are also pretty straightforward - you can create distribution groups for scheduling automated reports.

Other Software Used

IBM Cognos, IBM Cognos Express, Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service

Likelihood to Recommend

If your business deals with a large amount of financial or sales related data, then ThoughtSpot is a great tool for business analytics. However, if the type of data your business or your reporting team deals with consists of an amalgam from across various fields, ThoughtSpot may not be the best tool for you. Also, would not recommend for startups because of the moderately high licensing fee.

Perfect for Financial/Sales Data Crunching

Overall Satisfaction with ThoughtSpot