Financial Manager at a hospitality company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
2024-02-28T14:55:38Z
Feb 28, 2024
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.
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.
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.
Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2021-05-07T15:40:35Z
May 7, 2021
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.
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.
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.
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.
BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.
BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning &...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* More visualization could be brought in * More customization of data in regards to specific user requirements.