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Excellent Visualization tool
June 18, 2013

Excellent Visualization tool

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Desktop

Overall Satisfaction with Spotfire

  • Custom calculations to support KPI's that drive business. Spotfire enables us to do things like statistical significance z-testing and calculating share of voice by expressing one column as a percentage of another.
  • Links to existing database and hence eliminates the process of importing and exporting data frequently.
  • Easy to add and delete columns to support extra KPI's.
  • Different filters for different views on the same tab. This is sometimes an issue when, for example, I want to be able to see data for March and April on the same tab. It''s not possible to have different views of the data on the same tab. I have to build two tabs.
  • Formatting of charts with labels. If I want to put percentage labels on charts (for example, conversion or click rate percentages) it works fine on the X and Y axes, but there are no controls for attaching the labels to individual data points like individual bars in a bar chart.
  • Web preview of the reports: When I build a report using the desktop client, it doesn't always look exactly the same when viewed through the web viewer. For example, if a chart is compressed in the desktop client, it will be significantly more compressed when viewed through the web viewer and is sometimes impossible to read. I have to go back and forth between the desktop client and the web viewer to figure out how big a chart needs to be before it is easily readable on the web. This is sometimes frustrating.
  • Reduced turnaround time for reporting.
  • Improved quality of reports.
  • Accelerated decision making.

Using Spotfire

20 - Web Analytics
  • We use Spotfire on behalf of clients to analyze data to help make marketing decisions. We use to tool to analyze impressions, offers, click-through rates, conversion etc. as a decision-making aid. The main use case involves the following.
  • Delivering reporting through web browser.
  • Creating complex views with different filters on multiple tabs.
  • Delivering datasets for further manipulation.
Very convenient tool to create complex reports.

Evaluating Spotfire and Competitors

Spotfire Implementation

N/A
  • Don't know
I was not involved in the implementation.

Spotfire Training

  • Self-taught
Yes. I use the existing manual to learn

Spotfire Support

Not Sure
I have never used customer service. We work as a team, and our pooled knowledge along with the documentation is usually enough to solve any issues we run into.

Using Spotfire

Custom calculations are slightly difficult to follow until you understand the syntax and it becomes easier from there. Also the formatting of charts still has some kinks that need to be improved (as indicated earlier). The formatting and presentation tools are generally pretty good, with great color options etc. But when presenting to C-level executives, there is always a risk that they will focus on unimportant things like misaligned labels.

Spotfire Reliability

Integrating Spotfire

  • Netezza
I was not involved in the integration, but this integration means that we do not have to import data to Spotfire. Instead, we are directly connected to the Netezza data warehouse box. We run our queries in the SQL client (Netezza) and the tables are all updated. Next, we we open Spotfire, and all the data sets have been updated. This works very well.

Relationship with Spotfire