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IBM Watson Explorer vs Salesforce Einstein Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson Explorer
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (12th)
Salesforce Einstein Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Watson Explorer is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.1% mindshare, down 1.7% since last year.
Data Mining
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality
The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…
Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Business insights improve with reliable integration but face occasional system downtimes
It is difficult to integrate the modules. The customization is also a little bit complex currently, but it is getting easier as they continue improving the market. There are certain glitches, especially when the modules are upgraded or when there is a source code update, causing the entire tool to go offline. There is downtime which still affects the particular product. I would provide a reliability rating of 70%, with 30% still having scope for improvement.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."
"Ease of use is pretty good as is the standardization of not actually having to have my own natural learning algorithms, just to use the Watson APIs."
"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."
"For me, as a user, the most valuable feature is the ability to ingest and then retrieve information from a range of separate sources; the ability to dissect questions in context and actually answer them."
"The ability to easily pull together lots of different pieces of information and drill down in a smarter way than has been possible with other analytics tools is key. Watson is all based on a set of AI and deep learning, machine-learning capabilities, and it is looking behind the scenes at some relationships that you likely would not have spotted on your own. It's pulling things together, categorizing some things, that are not something that you might have seen on your own."
"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and to see the hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"Einstein Analytics provides insights into what we are doing and how we are doing it. It tells us what benchmarks we need to hit consistently to achieve our goals. In sales, there is sometimes a disconnect between actions and objectives. We aren't necessarily going to close a deal because we call X number of people. There are some underlying skills that add nuance to these metrics."
"There is definitely a lot of ROI in it."
"Salesforce Einstein Analytics is a simplified CRM. It's integration is good."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Einstein Analytics are the flexibility around the deployment, overall capabilities, user-friendliness, and interactiveness with the tools that came built with it."
"The fact that the solution is visually appealing because of its lightning interfaces can be considered one of its most valuable features"
"he most valuable feature of the solution is its ease of use."
"It is a comprehensive solution. It has everything in it. I can easily find what I need."
"It's scalable."
 

Cons

"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary"
"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough. Setting Explorer requires experts, but also the underlying platform is not that stable. So it really needs a good expert to keep it running."
"I would say, give some kind of a community edition, a free edition. A lot of companies do, even Amazon gives you some kind of trial and error opportunities. If they could provide something like that, it would be good."
"The solution is expensive."
"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"
"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great. But I would just like to see more... innovation done with the Watson platform."
"All of the timesheets and appraisal management I have not been happy with. There should be some improvements. For example, as a management team, our managers do not have access to see a summary report, such as who is on leave today or how many hours each person logged in. You have to get into individual users and see. You cannot see a summary report, the reporting is missing. There should improve the reports."
"They have a lot of opportunity to improve BI tools. With Einstein Analytics, we have a very minimal scope."
"The product is natively integrated into the Salesforce ecosystem. You also need a CRM license. It should be more flexible with other platforms."
"If a user leaves your organization, you shouldn't lose the visibility of all of the records."
"Salesforce is working very rigorously on improvements with each release."
"If I could improve Tableau CRM I would make it as powerful as Tableau. Tableau CRM is more integrated and it's on the web, but it has less functionality. It is lacking functionality at this time."
"The price of Salesforce Einstein Analytics is quite a bit expensive for the region of Mexico. I think the price of the product could be better."
"I would advise others not to customize because they rolled out the newer versions, which are every six months. There had to be some significant testing and verification that happened. It is important to have a strong third-party provider that is very experienced. We used Deloitte, but we evaluated Accenture, KPMG, and IBM, but we decided on Deloitte and that was a good decision for us. Having a partner who has a center of excellence or experts that could give you a lot of the tips that they've learned could jumpstart your deployment and stick to the standards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Salesforce has a subscription-based licensing structure, where it's between $20 to $75 per month, per user."
"I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Although it was deemed slightly expensive and failed the cost analysis we conducted in our company, we proceeded with the purchase because we desired to have a leading CRM system in the industry."
"Price-wise, Salesforce Einstein Analytics is an expensive tool."
"Salesforce Einstein Analytics can be considered somewhat expensive, depending on the company's needs. If they want the complete package with all the features, it's pricier. It all comes down to what the company requires from the platform."
"The biggest challenge we had was the cost and the licensing. We ended up getting an enterprise licensing agreement(ELA). That took a lot of negotiations and a lot of pressure. We were able to receive a good price for the community licensing they bundled Salesforce Einstein Analytics. They bundled a lot of capabilities with us with the ELA."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
University
11%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
The tool is valuable. It's one of the greatest programs I'm currently working with, and I believe it will continue to be crucial in the next four to five years. It's the future of our operations. I...
What needs improvement with Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
It is difficult to integrate the modules. The customization is also a little bit complex currently, but it is getting easier as they continue improving the market. There are certain glitches, espec...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
It is more of an integrated platform where marketing, customer service, and the ticketing system are integrated into each other as a SaaS-based solution, which is what we use. For Marketing Cloud, ...
 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
Einstein Analytics, Salesforce Wave Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
ADS Securities, Alstom Grid, American Express, Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola, CoderDojo, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, Financial Conduct Authority
Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, Weka, IBM and others in Data Mining. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.