MicroStrategy Reviews

The primary use case is that we want to get away from printed reports. So, not having to print PDFs and send them out; and the whole administration that goes with that. Rather, to make it all digital and interactive.

It is performing well, but sometimes we have complex requirements and the performance decreases, and then we have to find another way to make it perform again. That is what you encounter when use the project, but that's inevitable because if we would have used another product, we would've had the same thing.

With the new version that's coming out, I think they have simplified a lot of things. Also, when it comes to the administration part, and sharing, and the collaboration features, they are really great. You can send out comments with a filter to someone in your organization, and if the person clicks on it, he actually sees what you are seeing. So that's really great.

I think it streamlines business.

We also use Microstrategy's Writeback capabilities with financial systems.

We have the Multimedia widget but it's used for reports that we haven't yet converted to the mobile solution. So it's just to have them available aesthetically for reports but, again, on the iPad, so we don't have to print them.

You can now do data blending at the document level and data blending allows you to show results from different data sets in one grid, so to speak. I actually want to bring it a level lower. I want to be able to create that union of data sets under the document level.

I want to be able to create a data set that can receive data from multiple cubes, have it in one data set, and then bring it to the document, because then I can reuse it for other documents. Now, I have to do it in a document and then it's less reusable, because if I want to share that functionality, I have to copy the document, strip a lot of things, and then work on that basic element that I've built in that document. That's for complex documents, but I really would want that to be added to the solution.

It's pretty stable, and if something is wrong then we are also able to find out why, so that's also good. There's extensive logging capabilities, so we quite often able to manage on this front.

No issues with scalability.

It was necessary that they would assist when there were problems. They are knowledgeable.

Yes, we had Cognos TM1, we have Excel. These programs are still in use but they will be less in use in the future. We couldn't get rid of them yet but at some point in time we think we'll manage to.

When we started it was still version 9, and we deployed our mobile solution through MobileIron, and then we still had to do repping of the app. So there was more complexity, but that's due to the mobile device management solution and it would be the same with any other kind of solution. That's just complexity because of security.

We did evaluate other solutions. That's the whole RFP. There are so many things involved before I can answer that question. There will be political answers as well.

We are not yet distributing personalized alerts using native mobile push for iOS or Android. We want to do that for sure, but it's currently a "nice to have" and it takes some additional implementations on the server. You have to set up some certificates and then make the communication secure. That's some work that we still have to do.

As for choosing a vendor, we had our requirements. They were: 

• the app would be able to perform in offline mode as well because our audience, they're traveling a lot and then what if there's no Wifi? They can't get to their data; that was a strong requirement
• the speed
• the iOS look and feel.

From what I've seen today, here at MicroStrategy World 2018, from the presentation team, I found it very impressive. I also think that it's good that MicroStrategy keeps up with the pace and they also look at what the competitors are doing, and I think that they should really be continuing to do that because we need the "wow."

To someone who is looking at this type of solution my advice would be to start using it now. I think it will save a lot of time if you compare it with other solutions because I want to be able to create a data set that can receive data from multiple cubes, have it in one data set, and then bring it to the document, because then I can reuse it for other documents. Now, I have to do it in a document and then it's less reusable, because if I want to share that functionality, I have to copy the document, strip a lot of things, and then work on that basic element that I've built in that document., and they've improved so many things on the front end. If you compare it with other tools, which may or may not have an analytical engine, which MicroStrategy does have, with all of the other functions, there's so much. They've built in so many functions. It's such a vast solution. For me, it's the obvious choice. Maybe not for everyone.

If you have a big company and you want to do all kinds of analytics, it's an open platform. That's also important. You can create your own data connectors. There's everything you can do with APIs. It's not closed like, perhaps, an SAP system might be. 

We mostly do reporting for the business units. It is performing very well.

The data governance leads people to trust the data that they have, and they know where to get it.

In 2018, we are planning to use the semantic layer. We are also planning to look at investing in mobile analytics.

The data governance is the most important thing.

I have not seen the data-wrangling capabilities in 10.10. If that is not good, then that. Then, it needs better visualizations.

The stability is great.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is awesome. I have a specific contact who answers me correctly when I ask questions.

I was not involved with the initial setup, but will be involved with an upcoming upgrade.

If MicroStrategy can do what Tableau does, then we would like to have one platform.

Consider the maturity of MicroStrategy's data model. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Going forward, it will be integration with other platforms, like Salesforce and Hadoop. 

Primarily, as a developer, I am administering user privileges and creating reports for analysts and clients. 

The product is performing great.

It has greatly benefited our organization. We have a lot of products based on it. We license products from MicroStrategy to clients, therefore it is pretty important.

We started with Self-Service and now we are actually restricting Self-Service. What we do is give access to prompted reports for clients and we control ACLs on those objects. It feels like Self-Service because they are picking what they are using in the report, but they are not actually getting to the semantic layer.

The option to use various administrative tools, like Command Manager, System Manager, and Integrity Manager.

I prefer having the analytic capabilities all in one place, such as a single platform.

Something I would be interested in is more visualizations, because right now we use SDK to create some. If there were more out-of-the-box options, we would be happy with that.

Stability is great, especially with package deployments. It is very consistent and stable.

We have not had any issues with it. Usually, a client selects only a couple of users, so we are not up to the thousands.

I have not personally used technical support, but people on my team have.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I have implemented upgrades.

Upgrades seem like they are straightforward now. A couple years ago, they were a bit more complicated. There were unknown changes and they would do version releases, then sometimes things would break and they would have hotfixes. However, when we were less mature, it was harder because we did not have the right Integrity Manager tests and automated tests that we really rely on, so it was very manual back then.

We will not be investing in mobile analytics. We work in healthcare, and the data is sensitive. We do not want people on the move with healthcare data.

Do not give clients access to Self-Service or the entirety of everything, such as the semantic layering and creating reportings. It is a headache if you do it. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The ability to have multiple roles within the organization use it and being able to restrict it. For instance, there is consumer level access that business users can use, but then IT can use its tools and keep it separate but all within the same technology.

The primary thing that we are planning on using it for in the near future is analyzing healthcare trends and providing more visibility into what is going on within our healthcare spend. 

Getting more data to people more quickly. Providing more flexibility for how they use the data, so speed up the time and flexibility in how they are getting to use the data.

We primarily use it to support more internal departments. Those are our customers. We have different areas which we support from a healthcare data standpoint. The plan is to enable them to use the data, so we would use some configuration and setup, but then the customers would go in and look at the reports that we have set up or be able to do ad hoc stuff based on those data sets which we have built. 

I really like the visualizations. I like how you can put large data sets in there, then the user can quickly go through the data and drill down at various levels to understand things. 

It is definitely customizable. We have been able to put in key metrics and performance indicators, thus it is customizable. 

There are features which we are not using as far as some mapping and geography things which we could be using more broadly. That is in the current capabilities. 

I also went to a class on some statistic stuff, R, and all that integration that I think we would like to use. As far as additional things that are not currently a part of the capabilities, I am not sure, because I do not know all the capabilities yet. 

Throughout the set up of some large data sets that we use, we have had to learn more about how to use MicroStrategy in the right way. At the beginning, there were things that we set up a certain way, and it might not have been the best way from a speed perspective. We have had to go back and adjust things accordingly, but so far the changes that we have made have gotten us to a place where we are comfortable with the speed and usability. 

My team has a little bit, I have not personally. I know they have used support for some administrative stuff, but I do know our team is very hands-on. They will go research stuff on their own, too. They use a combination of the two, but I have not heard of any specific issues per se. I would say one thing that I probably get from a lot of customers is that based on our industry, they do not necessarily understand our industry as much as we do. Therefore, when we come to them with a problem, they might know more of a generalized solution, but not one targeted to our industry. 

We are currently using a combination of Excel, SQL, and ad hoc queries.

I am new to this position. I have been there a year. I got a glimpse of some of the things we were using it for initially and realized that the tool is a lot more powerful than what we were using it for. I do not believe we were leveraging it to its full capabilities. Being able to get the right data to the right people in a timely manner is really important, and I saw a lot of opportunity to use that tool to solve some problems that I currently had. I do not know where it is going to end, but we are trying to leverage it as much as possible and build out the capabilities. 

Some stuff is easier than others. Throughout this big project that we are working on now, there have been challenges and hurdles. We have worked through those one at a time. It is user-friendly in some aspects, but in others, you definitely have to do some research to figure out the right way to fine-tune things. 

When I took the position we were already using MicroStrategy. We actually looked at Tableau 2 as an alternative, but we decided to stick with Micro Strategy because we thought it was a better solution for our business. 

Make sure you have the right people and the right training going into the development aspect of it. Really understand the tool, its capabilities, and features before you start doing large scale development. 

I like the capabilities MicroStrategy offers. I do not know if it would be the only solution, but it has a lot of capabilities that we are still learning to understand better. We are probably looking at investing in mobile analytics at some point in the future.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Attention to the customer's needs and having support here when we need it. 

We obtain all the data from different data sources and put them together. I report to different subject areas like finance, operations, product, etc.

The product is performing well.

Reports are very easy to create. It takes a very short amount of time to build a report, which is very useful. It is very easy to access them from my desktop and web (everywhere). When someone logs in, they can simply see all the reports. It is easy to schedule them.

We are running Self-Service to our business teams now. It is good.

We prefer a many point solution right now due to different areas of the business, because they are asking for different things. Some functionality is easier to be built in different products. Therefore, I have found MicroStrategy to be probably doing 80% of everything, but there is 20% left that is easier with other tools with different types of visualizations slicing and dicing the data.

In 2018, we plan on using Dossier.

The most valuable features are the Visual Insights and the visualizations.

We are using the mobile analytics of MicroStrategy. It is in production.

It's just very small technical things. Sometimes you can do something on attributes in documents RSDs, but then you can't do the same thing in Visual Insights or Dossier. Just being able to do everything across everything. Sometimes you can do something in reports, but you cannot do the same thing in documents. So, it is expected that you should be able to do everything everywhere. 

It is stable.

It is fine. Halfway there.

If you make it much bigger, some performance issues come up. On a smaller scale, it's performing well. For us, it is not that big, so it is good. However, we are not going to add more on it.

For technical support, it depends. Sometimes, they are very quick and very supportive. Sometimes, nothing comes back. Sometimes, I give them a 10 out of 10, and sometimes, I give them a two out of 10. The problems are mostly in L2 or L3.

I was not involved.

The initial setup was straightforward.

If you want an enterprise solution, definitely go with MicroStrategy. If you want something for a small business area, like your HR needs some reporting or your finance needs some reporting, go with a different tool.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Just price. First thing is price. For larger companies, maybe price is not a big issue, but for a company of our size, price is important. Being able to address all the issues or all the capabilities that we require, it is very important. The support, the training, and all these things that come with the product, that is also important. 

We use it in sales and product analytics. We are using it for reporting at a national level, so we use it for a lot of different reporting for a lot of different groups. It actually works really well.

It drives us away from Excel. For what it is for, it is good. You can't run a business on Excel.

Some things are easier, some things are harder. A lot of things are easier.

We have some self-service reports and some of those went really well. It depends on the level. When you get to the executive level, they do not want to go out and run a dashboard. They love dashboards, but they don't want to run them. They want someone to send it to them and that does not work well for MicroStrategy. If I am going to run it and send it to you, I did not need MicroStrategy to do it. 

We will probably shift away from mobile because we are doing away with iPads. We have tablets or convertible computers, so there is no need to use mobile on those.

The most valuable feature is the ability to build reports, then customize for different groups instead of having to build multiple reports. Therefore, the ability to build customization in the reports for different groups.

I am happy with the UI.

The analytic speed would probably be what I would look for in terms of improvement because we have super huge data, and if I do not build views on top of data, then reports render really slowly.

Higher management does not have time to run reports. They need somebody to give them the bottom line.

I prefer the capabilities of a single platform, but it does not always work. We are a huge company. Some areas do not use MicroStrategy, so you have to blend whatever systems they are using together to get the data points that you are looking for.

I have never had problems with the stability.

No issues.

I have not used technical support.

I was involved in the upgrading, not the initial setup. We did not have any issues with the upgrades.

We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.

We are happy, so far. It has worked well for us. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Ease of use
• Customer acceptance (my customers are internal), if I build it and they won't use it, then it is useless. 

Our primary use case is to use for the self-service analytics and data sense, mostly in terms of the analytical platform.

We cannot measure in terms of values or pounds. However, it definitely impacts people, who are excited to use it.

We are looking forward to distributing personalized alerts to our users using the native mobile push notification systems. We will also eventually configure our mobile apps to work offline.

• Visual Insight; now Dossiers
• Its robust, analytical predictor
• How we can enable program leaders, so they can be enabled to do their own jobs rather than depending on IT.
• We are using MicroStrategy's Writeback capabilities for retail.

Sometimes, it has become too complex to upgrade and adjust to the ecosystem in general.

Needs more visual essence and connectors for the ecosystems, which would be easy to use. Easy to use in corporate and to implement in the ecosystem, and not too complex in terms of implementing and enabling, then that is what we will do.

Stability is good.

Scalability is something which will need to be improved when it goes to a bigger audience. 

Technical support is knowledgeable. The right person gets back to us whenever we email them. I would rate them as an eight out of 10, most of the time.

No.

The initial setup is in-between straightforward and complex. It is not too complex.

We did it on our own, but sometimes we had some challenges, such as you do not know how it will react. This is one of the things which comes with usability. We would try to reach out to technical support for their help when this happened.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We look for their capabilities, what they have developed, and what they are up to in terms of innovation and creativity. Mostly, we consider that if you are creative, you can do anything.

Currently, we are using MicroStrategy to provide Self-Service to clients. We have different departments in our company, like finance, accounting, and so on. We provided different projects for them and they are loving the product. We have approximately 200 users, and they have different roles from user to analyst to power users.

It improved a lot because coming from using Excel files, then using Oracle OBIEE, there is more flexibility now. The product is more scalable. We can support multiple platforms and different users. It is really good.

In 2018, we will be looking at Dossier and it collaboration aspect, which will be good for us. 

The future plan is to also introduce mobile, but right now we are in the infancy stage. We are trying to introduce the ad hoc reporting, and once we get in-depth in it and we make it sticky enough, then we will move to mobile.

• A single version of the truth.
• Having the analytics capabilities on a single platform.
• The usability for users to be able to drag and drop, then create their own reports.

• There is room for improvement on the graphs. 
• They need to improve the web. 
• I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side.

I have been using MicroStrategy for a long time, so I know how stable it is. It depends on how you structure it and how you architecture it. Once you are done with the basics, it is pretty stable

I have had a lot of projects where we had a lot of users, like thousands of users, and the data was in one report which could bring in six million records. MicroStrategy is doing a good job on scalability.

It has gotten better. Before you had to go through Level 2, then Level 3 of support to get your questions answered. Now, even Level 1 could answer your intermediate questions, though there is still room for improvement.

I did not do the initial setup at this company, but at my previous company where I did installation, upgrades, and configurations.

The initial setup is straightforward for me, but it could vary from person to person. It is pretty straightforward, but you have to know the key words and so on, like project source. There is definitely a learning curve, but once you get to know it, everything is straightforward.

Give the product a try.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Flexibility
• Performance
• Scalability.