Spotfire Cloud Review
September 27, 2016
Spotfire Cloud Review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Cloud
Overall Satisfaction with Spotfire
We use Spotfire to analyze and present data related to production operations, as well as to forecast future business. The primary driver is resource optimization--we use Spotfire to track work in progress and resource allocation (specifically people/time), to ensure that staff are optimally deployed. We also use Spotfire to calculate and present performance metrics for individuals, products, and programs. Finally we use Spotfire to plan future resource needs by analyzing past performance. Spotfire is used by one department at the company, we have 2-3 authors who publish to the cloud for viewing by the larger team (50). Spotfire solves two key problems that Excel can't--it's easy to connect to data sources for live refresh, and it's easy to put things on the web so that many people can explore them at once.
- Connects to every data source imaginable and does it quickly and efficiently, and is repeatable.
- Presents an excellent blend of out-of-the-box visualizations and complete customization. I suspect most companies (including mine) are barely scratching the surface of what's possible with scripting, property controls, etc.
- The coding for custom expressions is easy to learn for anyone comfortable writing formulas in Excel.
- Help (F1) content seems somewhat outdated at times, and the company has yet to create an effective and useful space for the community to interact (the old pre-TIBCO forums were awesome!).
- I wish there was a little more UI support and handholding for establishing & managing relationships between data tables, and for blending data sources in visualization.
- It would be nice if it were possible to edit a data table after it was created (e.g. go back change what options were selected on import).
- The colors still aren't amazing (but they get better with each release). Still a little too much focus on primary colors for default schemes.
- Visualization export still needs work. As much as I wish everyone would go to the webplayer, sometimes you need something for a static report. The canned exports are not pretty.
- More clarity between staff, managers, and executives about who is working on what and how they are doing.
- More informed decision making by managers.
Very similar programs, but Spotfire appears to offer much deeper customization options and more data manipulation options