Share your experience using SAP BusinessObjects EPM [EOL]

I am a customer in the sense that the company I work for uses Domo for business intelligence reporting.

In my line of work, we support decision makers in visibility for the products that we're selling, and so we use Domo for integrating not only the data warehouse but also other inputs such as Excel sheets that perhaps some people are trying to run hypothesis testing or pilot projects. We use Domo as the hub where we have inputs either from the data warehouse or from spreadsheets. Then we're able to build pipelines, and these pipelines power dashboards. These dashboards are used by decision makers for visibility on matters, customer retention, churn rate, as well as acquisition of customers.

The most valuable feature of Domo is the fact that you can connect multiple inputs and you don't have to have a data warehouse. When we started using Domo, we only had different data sources in the database. In Postgres, we had a couple of databases that we would pipe into Domo using Domo Workbench. You don't need to have a well-structured data warehouse to start using Domo. It allows you to have any source of input. You can input spreadsheets, Excel, CSV, as well as any other live sources of data.

In addition to this, you're able to build pipelines. Building pipelines is simply integrating and coming up with the data wrangling steps. You want to filter, select certain columns, and then create outputs that you're able to build cards on. This data infrastructure is not limiting in the sense that you're able to do all that you can think about. Recently, they're also enabling the use of R and Python capabilities in the Domo pipeline, which is something I really enjoy.

The positive impact I've seen from working with Domo has been being able to wrangle data. As long as you have the logical flow of what you want to do and you're an analyst, you're able to pick up skills quite fast because the Domo ETL, especially where you're building the pipeline, is quite logical and easy to interpret. The tiles are quite elaborately explained: this is a filter, this is a select, this is a join, and as long as you know what join does and how you want to do it, it's quite good and easy to learn.

Domo's self-service analytics tools have helped non-technical users in my organization greatly. Recently, we launched key datasets that are able to cut across several departments. We are able to share these with key stakeholders and they are able to do their own wrangling. These tables on customers, transactions, and other items enable them to understand what to do with this data given that it doesn't have PII information. It is granular enough for them to make any sort of analysis. They can figure out how many transactions a given customer has done, and that enables them as stakeholders to do their own analysis without relying on my department and putting in a request for us to do the analysis on their behalf.

I have not used Domo's collaborative features extensively.

Regarding Domo's AI-driven insights in uncovering trends and forecasting outcomes, the limiting factor is that you need to define all of your columns before you're able to do any AI or feature engineering. That's quite a lot of work, especially on our end, given that we have huge datasets and sometimes we don't have updated data dictionaries. My wish would be for Domo to learn on its own and figure out column types without necessarily having to build that data dictionary.

One of the areas where we've had frustrations with Domo is the aesthetics. The aesthetics are quite limited compared to other BI tools such as Tableau and Power BI. The aesthetic feel, especially when building dashboards or apps, needs improvement. While Domo Apps is almost a Domo dashboard with more features and a better feel, I would hope for an investment in the aesthetics area. Being able to swipe right or left, instead of just scrolling down would be beneficial, as most Domo dashboards only allow downward scrolling. Some of our stakeholders find the dashboards very long and wish they could scan through them more efficiently.

I have been working with Domo for over three years.

If I were to give a score on how stable and reliable Domo has been for me so far, I would give it an eight. There were issues at some point, maybe more than two years ago, where sometimes access issues or reloading issues would occur where the server was hanging. But in recent years, I haven't had such cases. It's quite stable and I don't have any reservations on its stability.

Domo is quite scalable. The fact that you're able to easily identify the pipelines or flows that have errors, and it notifies you when you're building a pipeline where you can run previews and tell where to fix issues, is helpful. As the data grows, you're able to identify failures and fix them. This enables you to think long-term, and so even as your data grows, you're able to work with it.

We had an issue earlier this year where an ETL was running and it had multiple triggers. Unfortunately at some point, having multiple triggers would break the run. Reaching out to Domo, they were quite helpful in helping us fix that. However, for that specific run, it had flagged the error as a different tile in the preview, which was quite problematic. Their willingness to work with us and fix solutions even as we build up is quite impressive and worth mentioning.

I find Domo's technical support team to be quite professional and prompt. When I sent the email and copied our customer representative, it helped hasten the resolution. They were quite professional and in around three to five working days, they had identified where they suspected there was an issue and I was able to fix it.

I would rate the technical support from Domo a seven because there's room for improvement, for instance, on being able to flag exactly where the issue was. I can only dream for a faster resolution maybe using AI or being able to chat through this and not having to wait for a resolution that's coming three or five days later on email, as it delays our outputs.

Positive

I have not used a different solution for these use cases before Domo. When I joined this current company, they were just launching Domo. However, I've used Power BI before, and in comparison, I would say Domo is a good and easy-to-use tool, especially behind the scenes. This is particularly true in the preparing of the workflows and preparing of the pipeline. However, its front-facing interface needs some work and can be improved compared to Power BI.

Regarding Domo data visualization features, I don't find anything in particular to be the most valuable because I use bar graphs and line graphs. It's more dependent on what I'm trying to visualize. If it's a trend, then I'll use the line graphs. If it's just the distribution of people, then I'll use the bar graphs. All of them are quite good.

Regarding the pricing of Domo, I'm not too privy to the current contract we have. However, I do know that our pricing model changed since last year. We are on a consumption model, which means that you're given credits and those credits allow you to build a certain number of datasets, build a certain number of ETLs and run them a given number of times. This is limiting in the sense that once you exhaust these credits, you begin paying or start getting charged, which can be expensive. However, this has led to us cleaning up our datasets and data flows, and setting ETLs periodically with more thought.

I don't have extensive information on how mobile accessibility to Domo data insights has influenced our business outcomes as I've not used the mobile features. However, I know that there's a specific stakeholder who has access and they've been taking screenshots and sharing in their leadership forums. They're able to access Domo dashboards using their phone and quickly browse through to get the key insights they're keen about.

Based on everything described about Domo, I would rate this product a solid eight out of ten.

As a Domo developer for my client, I am working to build multiple ETL, dashboards, and app use which we are using.

For the dashboard, the main use case for Domo is the dashboard.

Collaborative features in Domo allow team members to work with different dashboards, as different people can work at the same time, and the changes they make are seamless. In other BI tools, team members cannot work on the same dashboard or in ETL simultaneously, but that is not an issue in Domo.

Everything is cloud-based in Domo, and it has some unique features compared to other BI tools, with good UI and UX, and it's advanced.

Domo's self-service analytics tools are very easy to understand for non-technical persons as the ETL has numerous drag-and-drop features, making everything easy to understand.

The most valuable data visualization feature I find in Domo is the App Studio.

App Studio is valuable because it allows all the customization we needed; we can decode it, with the view and grid which are all I need, drill-downs, and everything can be done the way I need it. In other BIs, it's not possible to customize everything as per our needs, but in Domo, we can do it with App Studio, which is an advantage.

AI-driven insights in Domo are fine, though I have not worked extensively with them, but they appear promising.

The disadvantage is the instance of some new testing environment features that is overloaded, but it still has some bugs that need to be fixed as soon as possible.

Some technical aspects such as Beast Mode calculation could be improved in Domo, as it would provide more clarity and help in giving insights to clients or customer business team requirements. They need to improve significantly in that area, particularly with weekly calculations and breaking the week.

I have been working with Domo for more than six years.

The setup of Domo is challenging as the cache and serialization part still causes errors; since it's fully cloud-based, they need to improve the connectivity part. It can be hard for a new user to learn how to handle these issues, but experienced persons can resolve everything and work effectively.

We have escalated questions to Domo's technical support as we find some bugs in our daily routines. The response time is longer than desired, but sometimes they provide the correct solution while other times they don't provide the needed scenarios.

The main benefits of using Domo are that the support is good, and comparing it with other BI tools, it has specific specialties.

I would rate the technical support of Domo as more than seven out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with other BI tools such as Power BI and Tableau.

Domo's pricing is high compared to other BI tools, and it is costly.

I do not find Domo cost-effective; it would be very hard if it is a single user. However, if it goes with the organization's utilization, it will be a moderate price. It varies based on the company location in the US, and Indian companies may find it hard, feeling it is very costly.

The key differences between Domo and other BI products are mainly in the UI and UX, along with the way users interact. It has more attractive presentation, display, and dialog presentation compared to other BI tools.

Organizations considering Domo should evaluate their needs as it depends upon their user base; some organizations may have a limited budget and operations, so they can go ahead with their existing scenario. We can't suggest that everyone should choose only Domo; it depends on their working mentality and the large environment they have.

I would recommend Domo to other organizations.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Domo an eight.