Board Reviews

Positive

I use the solution mainly for budgeting purposes. Budgeting and planning are its main use cases. The product itself is designed for budgeting and planning processes.

I think the product is good in terms of ease of use. The interface looks really nice and very easy to use. Every command appears in the icon. It looks like you don't have to understand everything about the command. You do not necessarily have to know more, or I would say that there is less time for our study about the products.

Functionality-wise, it is quite easy to use and requires less time to understand or learn about the product. I am a software vendor, so I do not use the tool myself. I use it for my clients. My clients mostly use it for budgeting and timing purposes. I would say that's really less maintenance at all because they can do everything by themselves. It is good in terms of ease of use.

Some of my company's customers are interested to see the predictive analytics part of the tool. Some customers would like to leverage or prioritize predictive analytics as the main feature, but some of them don't care about it since they just want to have something like a historical report.

In terms of scalability, I would say that there are some limitations in the solution. It cannot handle data that is too big. It has an impact on the response time and performance of the system.

I have been using Board for six to seven years. I am a server provider in the entire market and offer implementation and support services to customers. My company operates as a reseller of the tool.

The product is very stable. The tool is 80 to 85 percent stable.

I would say that the Board is focused on the design and interface. Most of the features already appear in the icon on the interface screen, which makes it quite limited in terms of security. If your data size is quite big, it might get a bit slow, which is a problem.

My company works with medium-sized clients.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The product is quite easy to install, but you can install it on Windows only.

One person can manage the product's installation phase.

The solution can be deployed in around two hours.

The product helps save time. The tool helps save 50 percent of our company's time.

The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions.

I know about Microsoft Power BI and Tableau but have never used both of them for their full functions.

When it comes to Board's analytics part, I need to think about other products in order to make a comparison. Speaking about the analytics part, I would say that Sisense is a lot better than Board.Board is fine, but it still needs to have some AI features in it. Right now, Board doesn't have any AI features, so it just can't deal with simple predictions.

The tool can integrate with other products, or maybe you can customize some API to connect to the source. I would say that, in general, the connections could be fine. From five, three of the connections should be fine.

The product itself looks good and easy to use. The end user can also customize many things in the product.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

I use the solution to review financial statements, sales forecasts, and budgets. I use the test management and reporting tools. Board takes data from Business Central. We can analyze it. We can also drill down by products. For example, if we prepare a sales forecast, we can drill down and analyze when to expect growth and fall.

Board is quite a good solution. All the reports are prepared automatically. The data is uploaded from Business Central automatically. Sales analysis is a valuable feature. We can do a detailed analysis of the crops and their varieties. We can also do a sales forecast. The solution also has budget-related features. We can analyze the actual expenditure versus our budget.

The financial statements have had the most significant impact on our decision-making process. We can analyze it and write comments. It's good that Board has the functions that enable us to drill down. If we have a total amount, we can drill down to the transactions and how they influenced our results.

Sometimes, the data disappears from the product. We have had a few such cases. When I added my comments to the data, it disappeared. A technical specialist tried to restore it. It was not convenient. The solution must provide more flexibility. It must enable analysis in different dimensions. We can analyze by varieties now. Previously, we could analyze by customers, but now, it is not possible. I think it depends on our customization.

I rate the tool’ stability a six out of ten. Sometimes, the product is incorrect. We had some consistent technical issues. We fine-tuned and fixed them.

I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten. The scalability is quite good. We can consolidate the data in the tool for a few legal entities. Three people are using the product in our organization. We use the tool once a week.

Sometimes, support takes a lot of time. The issues are not fixed in a day. It can take three or four days, so we have to wait. The technical support must be improved.

Neutral

The solution is cloud-based.

We use Board for just the integration with Business Central. We do not use the drag-and-drop interface. We do not use it for predictive analytics. We are not growing now. We have stable full-time employees. Our turnover is stable. People evaluating the product must know what they must have for their analytic needs. A specialist can create the report. 

The most important thing is to know what we want, which forms, which reports, and what they should look like. We must have a good accounting system. Everything should be done properly to get the correct report. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

The solution is used for financial purposes and HR.

The flexibility and the user-experience are the most valuable features of the solution.

The engine of the Board should be made powerful like the engine of IBM planning which is more powerful in terms of performance.

The consolidated finance area also needs improvement. 

I have been using the solution for seven years.

It is a stable solution. I rate it eight out of ten.

The solution is not very scalable and needs improvement. We had some performance issues with the big organisation with a lot of data. So Board could not support and could not address the amount of data of the big organizations. The ETL platform needs improvement and transformation.

In comparison to the support team of other solutions, the support team of the Board is good.

I have used IBM Planning Analytics previously. IBM engine is more powerful, but the user experience is better in Board. And the stability or the flexibility is good in both.

The initial setup is quite simple. I rate it eight out of ten. The deployment of a solution depends on the context, if it's a complex application deployment then it takes longer. If you are talking about full deployment of an application maybe it takes longer from three weeks to six months. But the deployment of the Board is easier than IBM. It's the classic steps of any IT project that is used for the deployment.

The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten.

It's a very interesting solution, and you have to have some knowledge on the Board before using it because it's not an easy tool to learn. For users that do not have experience with the BI or Power BI or some similar tools can find Board a bit complicated.

It's a good tool. It's a powerful tool, easy to use and deploy, but it needs some improvement.

I rate it seven out of ten.

We use it for retail budgeting and assortment planning. Our company is mainly focusing on fashion retail. And we are also now focusing on vendor forecasting to provide predictive analyses.

We are a Board partner in India. One of our clients is Bestseller, a fashion retailer. We are doing projects for them on retail budgeting and planning. We recently completed their assortment planning project and we have had good feedback.

The integration with SAP has helped with process optimization. Before, users were using Excel for planning. First they had to go to SAP, extract the data, and plan everything in Excel. Then, for reporting, they were using another tool where they would have to select the reports and send them to senior managers. But now, SAP is integrated with Board, so they get the data in Board, they do the planning in Board, and all the reports are in Board. There is no need to send reports via email to senior managers. And once the reports are approved, everything goes through automatically. It has made things easy for them. It has cut many steps from their activities.

Using Board has reduced costs for our clients because they would have to get an SAP license for each of their users. There is only one license for the Board SAP integration. So users can just use the Board license and cut down on licenses for SAP. And because they were using an additional reporting tool, that has also been cut down. They have even been able to cut down on Office, because there is no more Excel. Everything is in Board.

The most valuable features are the reporting and the charts. The reporting functionality is handy for aggregation, when it comes to planning. That ability is fascinating and our users are very happy with it. The charts and the reporting allow our users to see all the data and to see how things are going this year or in the COVID situation. They're seeing everything. Instead of having to check data line by line, they're seeing it in a graph and they're seeing it in charts. The reports are very useful here when it comes to aggregation. They want to see things at the regional or store level, or on the complete city level.

The forecasting is happening and the reports are sent to senior levels, like the CEO and managers. It's one solution, so that users don't have to go to other software to see any of their data. All the data is in one system, making it a one-stop system and solution for end-to-end planning. There is no need for a multiple software solution. The data, reports, and planning are there in Board, so there is no need to go to SAP or any other third-party ERP system. That's because Board is integrated with all the ERP solutions. Users are able to keep on using Board, making the planning seamless, with no need to go here and there.

We're using version 10.6 and small things are improved in 10.7 and even more in Board 11. Board 11 is much better. 

There is room for improvement when it comes to how users see the data. Most clients are comfortable with MS Office and Excel. Something like 70 percent of Board, when it comes to data entry, is like Excel, where they can use Tab or formulas, etc. But if they want to freeze data—imagine the data contains 20 columns or 30 columns—they need to scroll. The freezing option is there, but it is not in the control of users. It is in the control of our technical team. We need to configure it and freeze it, but the end-user can't freeze the data view to a particular column. That option is there in Excel, where they can freeze things and scroll and see what the values are. So most users are asking for the option to be able to freeze things. 

Also, some of our users are still using an MS Office add-in for Excel for certain calculations, and when they export from Board, some of the values, some of the totals and column names, are not coming through into Excel.

In addition, when it comes to speed and memory, we recommend our users use an 8 GB RAM machine. When loading certain large quantities of data, it is taking 4 to 5 GB of memory. We're still analyzing this but we have raised a ticket to find out why it's taking up so much memory.

Finally, it should be very friendly. The UI should be more attractive.

I have been working with Board for the past year. It has been very good learning Board as a powerful BI tool. Our team has made good progress. We recently finished the Board certification, so all of our team got the Practitioner certificate. We are looking toward the consultant certificate, which we are scheduled for in the next month.

As I mentioned elsewhere, sometimes users are finding that the memory use is high.

Stability-wise, there are no issues. 

We do get some error messages in the client, messages that we have raised tickets about with their support team. They are just a warning, they are not corrupting, but they give end-users the wrong impression. We have started correcting those. Apart from that, there are no stability or performance issues.

It's scalable because anything can be built with Board when you build it from scratch.

We have a very small team. We have around 15 licenses. Around five to six people are developing complete solutions for our customers. On the customer side, we have 150 licenses in the Board production environment.

Board's technical support is very good.

Our clients started with Board. They didn't replace any solution, other than Excel.

The initial setup is very simple, whether it's the installation of Board, license management, user installation, Windows installations, or if you want a cloud installation. Even the cloud administration console and the web server installation and the MS Office add-on installation are very simple. There are no problems involved with installation of Board.

For one server it did not take more than two to three hours and it was only me involved in the setup.

For deployment I use the Board Transporter tool. We have three environments: development, QA, and production. We're following Agile methodology. We first deploy it in our IT environment, then QA, then production. Transporter makes things very simple. However, I'm not sure that the Transporter tool will work on Windows clients. For Windows clients the Transporter 10.6 version was very problematic. Then we installed a web server. When our client was installed we then logged in to the client and there was the Transporter package and we started using that.

Go with the latest version. Even my customers should have done so. If you're a new customer going with Board, go with the latest cloud version, always. The latest version is always best and it will solve most of the issues.

If our customers are happy, we are happy. If Board is making things simpler for our users, we'll be getting more licenses and we can suggest that users use more features of Board. It is making life and their work simpler. That is very good and that is the main objective for us.

Our end user is a chemical industry company, and they did a lot of reports in Excel. We use Board to create reports automatically, instead of with Excel.

Before we used Board for our customer, they would share the same Excel sheets each in different departments. It was highly inefficient. They needed to wait until other people finished their parts. And it was not easy to catch the newest information in the Excel sheets. After we provided Board to the customer, they were able to put all their planning information in Board and get the newest information from it.

In addition, it has helped to integrate planning processes across our customer's organizations. For example, people from accounting, HR, and production are able to check other departments' information. While it hasn't improved the accuracy of the planning information, as the ERP system is quite accurate, the fact that we can let people from different departments check the information quickly helps them see accurate data.

It also provides us with faster access to information than we had before.

By using Board we can do a lot of free analysis. We can change the layout of a table and even the end-user can change the layout of a table. And in Board 11.2 you can save the layout. That's very useful for the customer, it's a very good function. We use this functionality to achieve free analysis.

Another feature is the Procedure environment. It's not a new function, but it's a big function within Board. By using Procedures we can modify the data in a lot of ways. We don't just collect data from the ERP system and show the data to the customer. We can also modify the data. We can do a lot of data entry and also do a lot of deep analysis, by evaluating the data. One of my colleagues has even used the dataflow, the Procedure environment, to build a booking system for making reservations.

What could be better is the manual. When I first used Board, I checked the Board manual all the time. It's a website, boardmanual.com, and there is a lot of information on this website about how to use Board and the meaning of each construct. Nowadays, most people use a web client, but on the Board manual website, a lot of the information is only about the Windows client. If they could update that, it would be helpful.

I have been using Board for half a year.

In the beginning, Board 11.2 was not stable, but after the patch was released, it became stable. Now it's really stable.

The scalability is great. Our customer is a global company, so in the near future we may need to expand the solution to the branches.

I get support from Board's headquarters every week. I get the answers from them. We go through the troubleshooting together and sometimes they are able to answer quickly, in that meeting. But if they cannot give me the answer directly, they will ask colleagues, and I will get the answer in two weeks. It's acceptable.

There are a lot of reasons that our customer switched to Board. Their previous solution, in terms of functionality, was really limited. It just scanned the data from the ERP system and showed the data in a table. In Board, we can create a lot of reports and do free analysis by changing the layout of the table. We can also send a graph or table to other people or download them. Board has more functions that the customer uses, compared to what they had before.

It's really easy to set up. It's just check, check, check, connect the folder, and finish. If you have already downloaded the software from the website, it only takes about five or 10 minutes to set up Board.

Of course, we also set up the access authority of each person. Different people have different access which determines whether they are limited in checking information in the solution.

While we're not involved in the maintenance side of things, it would probably take two or three people to maintain the solution.

In our company there are 10 people who use Board. In the future, we expect our customer will have 1,000 people in Board. Users would be the leaders of each department, such as the production team, the accounting department, and the sales department.

One of the reasons we chose Board is because the performance to cost ratio is high. And we did not only use Board to replace Excel, we also replaced a Japanese BI tool called Dr. Sum.

And if you use SAP and other BI tools, you may need to do a lot of add-on development. That takes a lot of money. But with Board, we don't do a lot of add-ons to collect the data. We just use Board Connectors to get the data from the ERP system. That also saves money.

Finally, a company can improve its productivity and save time with Board.

With Board you can do a lot of data entry, and by using the Procedure environment you can make complex reports. But with Tableau you can only show the data that was collected. It doesn't have as much functionality.

With Board I have learned how to deal with the master data and how to think about workflow, dataflow. and the structure of the cube.

Our primary use case for the solution is developed. We have worked on two insurance projects, one general insurance and one life insurance, and we are currently working on some manpower planning use cases with this solution.

The time functions feature is valuable. On the front end, the dynamic selections on the screen and details by function are also valuable for inside the data view.

There have been some glitches in the past two years. For example, we can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model once we are working on a project. Hence the stability of the product can be improved.

We have been using the solution for approximately two years.

The solution is not very stable. Sometimes we work on Board and automatically get logged off for all the clients and developers working on it. One type of error titled service unavailable consistently appears in the red error box. The error box appears frequently, but we don't know why it is happening. Sometimes in our data flow, many cubes vanish, and after some time, it shows an error that our database is corrupted. After some time, if we open the exact procedure, those cubes are there. Sometimes the client is running a procedure, but that process doesn't run, but when we check as developers, that time it is running.

The solution is scalable. We currently have seven people using it in our organization, and we intend to expand its usage.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. They helped us solve an issue that we had at the time.

We previously used Anaplan.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented the solution in-house.

The licensing fee is charged on either a monthly or yearly basis.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten and recommend it to users considering it. The solution is good, but the stability can be improved, and more sparsity videos can be included in Board education academic tools to aid learning and better understand how to work out calculations.

It can be used for business intelligence, predictive planning, financial consolidation, integrated planning, budgeting and forecasting, strategy execution, and management. It can be deployed on the cloud or on-prem.

It is very easy to use. It has got what they call a toolkit, which is a no-code development environment. You can develop a whole solution with it because it is a complete platform. There is a lot of online material that can be used as a reference. You can help yourself while developing a solution. 

There are some prebuilt applications in the platform environment. You can very easily customize and integrate these applications. It also has flexible scaling of machine resources, which is really great. 

It can have more functionality for narrative reporting. They should also improve their training courses, which are currently very lightweight. When you get into more complex things, it is quite difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do, and you have to look at a lot of videos before you actually understand, which is a bit frustrating. Their training can be more comprehensive.

I have been using this solution for one year.

It is stable.

Its scalability is good. Because of the agreement that they've got with Microsoft Azure, they monitor the performance and scale automatically. If more processing power is required, they just add it. You don't have to worry about that, and you also don't have to pay extra. 

In terms of usage, we started with four or five people. We currently have about 30 users, and we will use it for more areas of the business.

Their support was good. They got back to us and helped us immediately. I can't complain.

We have used Power BI and Cognos.

We use it in the cloud, so we didn't have to install anything. It took two days to get our environment provisions up and running. 

It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money.

I would rate Board a nine out of ten. In general, it is a surprisingly good tool.

I have been using BOARD for the last four years to create financial reports, create budget scenarios, perform budget cycle, run consolidations, create dashboards and visualizations. BOARD provides in-depth insight to enable users in their decision-making process. Taking data and making it easily readable/ready-to-use.

• BOARD helps by providing access to all sources and data. 
• Changes can be made easily by the users themselves. 
• The reports are easy to play around with. 
• Management can customise the filters as per their requirement.

• Easy to install
• User-friendly
• Data presentation is great
• Many features and tools to choose from
• Information is easily accessible and clear.

• More visualization could be brought in
• More customization of data in regards to specific user requirements.

Three to five years.

We use this solution in several ways, including:

• We develop data modeling for customers.
• Internally, we use it to monitor and control company performance.
• We create demonstrations for potential new customers.
• We create dashboards that permit us to find and understand inefficiencies, which can then be improved.

Board helps us to better explain KPI performance, thanks to the creation of dashboards. These permit us to show the right information to discover trends and allows us to take action in advance.

It is useful for self-analysis regarding company data and helps to find areas where we can improve.

The most valuable feature is the ability to create processes inside it. We can have Business Intelligence integrated with a CPM that permits us to develop structured projects. Also, the capability to manipulate data allows us to create different processes, easier and faster.

The product can be improved by making it possible to know where cubes are used. Also, the auto definition of a better cube structure can facilitate the process of structuring the database. This would avoid some types of errors.