What is our primary use case?
As a consultant, I used this for a wide variety of use cases. Mainly, the first thing people would look at would be sales and margin reporting, especially in retail (which is the area I work in now). I have also used Qlik Sense as an integration tool to gather data from multiple data sources to be exported and sent to AWS to be picked up by a web marketing tool.
How has it helped my organization?
It has improved the amount of time it takes to get information out to the business in a few ways. Firstly, by replacing reporting that was done manually in Excel by business users and giving them that time back. Next, by providing cleansed data to analysts so that they can create their own analysis.
What is most valuable?
The drag and drop UI has been the most useful to me. Working previously as a consultant, the self-service wizards for loading data weren't too important, as I knew how to load and manipulate data in the script. However, being able to see a list of the different chart types and fields certainly sped me up in terms of creating dashboards and visualizations.
What needs improvement?
The only thing I would say that comes up is that sometimes it can be a bit buggy. The product updates that come out are fairly regular, which is always nice, but getting bugs here and there that you have to work around can be a bit of a pain at times. This can be taken into account by waiting for a month or two to see if any patches come out (much like with how you would treat Microsoft releases) but if you want to get the latest updates as soon as possible then you need to prepare yourself.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is generally good. I haven't had the same sort of instability that I had with QlikView, but that may be a coincidence.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is pretty good, but it is very RAM and CPU intensive, so you need to keep on top of this.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer service/support is good through the partner, as this is the suggested way to receive feedback.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used QlikView before (and still have some reports on this). We changed when Qlik ran a good promotion to get people to switch. I had used the product before and knew the benefits that come with Qlik Sense (i.e. the easier self-service for business users), so I was happy to get the chance to switch.
How was the initial setup?
Setup is fairly straightforward. We had a single server to put this on, so we were able to just "next" through the setup wizard, other than supplying a few passwords for services.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented ourselves, as I had previous experience doing this. Our partner, who we have used for work, is generally helpful and had a good understanding of the product.
What was our ROI?
We haven't really measured this, but this will improve once business users are trained to work for themselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We didn't evaluate any other options as the promotion on getting Qlik Sense whilst being a QlikView customer was too good.
What other advice do I have?
I would say when you start with this tool, take the time to prepare the data first before creating reports and showing the business (especially if you are the only one doing this). This will help with getting ready for giving users the ability to create reports themselves, as opposed to them having to ask you all the time.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
It's one of the best BI tool I have used .. worth to try and explore against your need.