Birst Reviews

I found the ETL process very valuable to us.

It has provided new levels of analytic consolidation.

• The ETL needs a graphical processing/workflow interface
• Error logging is cumbersome to work through to find issues
• Visualizations require add-ons with other products to become state-of-the-art
• We were hoping that Birst would introduce an add-on with Tableau. To date, we have not heard any more about it.

I have used it for two years.

There were some stability issues. The processing engine occasionally fails with no apparent reason.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. For an additional cost, you can scale as needed. For our needs, it is scalable without additional cost at this time.

We found technical support to be very good and responsive. Tier one support has higher technical expertise than with most other products we use.

We did use another solution. But when we moved to the cloud ERP, we no longer wanted to use an on-premise BI.

This solution also had better connectivity options for the hybrid cloud environment that we found ourselves in at the time.

I came along later in the project. However, it seems that the initial setup was straightforward.

It should be noted however, that Birst Professional Services should not have let us stray too far from the more out-of-the-box methodologies that we employed for the initial implementation.

As a result, we had significant reworking to do in order to resolve some issues and to scale properly.

I was not involved in the evaluation. It seems that the business decided in advance and did little due diligence.

I would recommend using an expert third-party partner to assist in the implementation rather than using Birst Professional Services.

The valuable features are:

• The ease of reporting
• The ability to customize reporting format
• The ability to have different spaces for users to play with their own data and data sources without impacting other users
• The ability to utilize this solution for both internal and external users

It has given us the ability to join all our data sources into one place to streamline reporting and analytics. It is important for security and reporting integrity to keep internal and external users separate. This prevents mishaps with externally facing material.

I would like to see better training. The cost-benefit was not great. We received very basic training for a high cost. They could have gone into a deeper understanding of the tool. They kept the training very basic.

We have been using this solution for six months.

We have only encountered one small instance of downtime, which lasted for less than fifteen minutes.

The non-enterprise version requires you to hook up data sources to each space you create. It doesn't let you create one data warehouse in which you can build all types of reporting. This allows for more control and better security, but it can slow down the scaling process if you need internal help from IT.

The installation varies by use case. The setup was intuitive, although we did hire a third-party implementer. We recommend this, unless you have in-house expertise.

They were willing to negotiate price. They were very accommodating as my company was smaller and had a lower budget for this type of project.

We evaluated Domo, MicroStrategy, Sisense, Looker, and Salesforce Wave.

Make sure you have cleaned up your data before starting a project like this. Also, clearly define your use cases. Don't try to bite off too much at the start. Think in terms of quick wins.

Data visualization: The company I worked for had clients all across US. It was important for us to visually present the details to the senior management so that they were able to relate to the analytics very easily. Additionally, analysts were able to easily build visualizations and explain them when they were presented. Data in charts/maps speak more than data in a spreadsheet.

Also, in the customer-facing portal, it was easier for the customer to see visually than reading a report.

Data can be downloaded unto the Birst server, which means the analyst can run their own analysis without issues.

• Performance was not that great; in-memory processing would help.
• Real-time streaming.
• At the time that I looked at this product, it was in a incubation/stabilization mode. We ran into challenges with the performance. We were told that we will be able to build our star schema model and run our dashboards easily. But, when we had to do a lot of summarization, the performance was not that great.

I have used it for three months.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I encountered scalability issues.

Technical support is good.

I previously used in-house analytical solutions using Cognos and some of our native Java code base.

Initial setup was straightforward, because it was a cloud-based solution.

Negotiate.

Before choosing this product, I also evaluated Tableau.

If you are looking for a cloud-based, lightweight data mart and reporting, this tool is good.

Some valuable features in this product are:

• Auto modelling: Simply by uploading Excel, we can start reporting.
• Birst's auto feature creates ETL in the back-end by analyzing data.
• Cloud-based: This cloud-based tool is easy to maintain and can be managed with a single window.
• Single-window development: No need to maintain / install multiple tools for metadata, reports development and service management.

We use Birst for developing solutions and prototypes, that are helpful for our customers.

For complex reports with heavy calculations, performance can be improved. I would appreciate more customization options in measure calculations.

Earlier, we were challenged during one of the previous versions (maybe Birst version 5.18). We wanted to define a new measure and build a complex calculation using the custom and existing measures. Then, there were certain restrictions in using the custom measure.

We are currently using version 5.23 and an update is due for us. Birst (currently updated to version 5.24) is very dynamic and there is another update (version 5.25) which will be released by them soon. We never tried to explore in the recent version and unsure if customization is available already.

I have used this product for a period of 18 months.

Product upgrades are frequent. In this manner, Birst tries to introduce new features and fix issues from existing versions. However, during upgrades we had to redevelop certain report prompts (and in rare cases the report itself).

Data processing time increases as volume of the data increases. However, if you are in the typical data load cycle schedules for end-of-day loads during off-business-hours, the time is minimal.

Birst provides quick and helpful support on raised queries. Overall, the level of technical support is good.

Previously and still now, we use Oracle BI (OBIEE). I find Birst are pioneers in Cloud BI platforms.

The setup was straightforward. Birst being a cloud-based solution, it does not require installation on servers. Allocation of space happens fast and with easy steps.

Birst has subscription based pricing policy, with a commitment for certain minimum time period.

We evaluated other solutions namely Oracle BI Cloud Service, GoodData.

It is important to identify a use case and deliver business benefits. Then gradually, you can expand to users (or other use cases) in different functions and shorter sprints.

• Good drag and drop dashboard widgets
• Ability to create formulas and custom calculations
• Ability to create ETL jobs for simple data warehouse creation
• Automates the creation of the star schema
• Automatically creates facts and dimensions based on data types

We actually do not use it anymore as it did not meet our needs.

• The query generation is inefficient and cannot be tweaked. You have to live with whatever queries are generated by the system.
• The ETL process creates enormous temp files: Disk space can be an issue with big data sets.
• Troubleshooting is problematic: The system is a black box. Once a trouble spot is identified, there is very little ability to change the issue.

I have used the solution for close to two years.

We encountered a stability issue as this solution did not scale in our environment. It was not performing in our OEM environment with the size of our database.

The ETL, querying, and user interface did not accommodate our performance requirements.

Technical support was good. They just couldn't address the performance issues.

The initial setup was easy. It is just a virtual appliance.

We had a complex setup that involved OEM and integration which was painful.

We evaluated some other options.

Birst is a great tool for:

• Creating a simple data warehouse
• Uploading data for quick analysis, visualizations, and dashboards

It is not a great tool to integrate into an enterprise level application.

To a technical consultant like me, this is a great great tool for creating value added visualizations, exploring and validating the concerned data while building custom charts tailored to what the business needs.

Dashboards follow the Birst Value Based Design principles which enables users to start at the top to interrogate and review they KVI (Key Value Indicator), then drill down to explore the data and the drivers of the KVIs.

Apart from the existed Visualisation types, Birst enables the use of interactive dashlets using JavaScript and other scripting languages.

We are a golden partner of Birst. We use our Birst expertise to deliver Birst projects to customers.

In general, Birst as a cloud VI solution is a user-friendly tool that looks really nice and engages users straight away.

Users can now explore data that they couldn't do before, as well as use quick meaningful representations to understand the data and drive business growth. Traditional data exploration tasks that included complicated formulas can now be transformed into interactive dashboards.

I would like to see the following:

• Better reporting functionalities
• More charts
• Enriching chart formatting to include additional properties and styles
• More advanced charts (advanced waterfalls and heatmaps)
• A type of chart to be used for time analysis. For example, current vs. last year, last month, etc. Currently, this is possible by using Birst time series or custom expressions.

Since this is something that most companies use and need, it would be interesting to create a chart type dedicated to year by year comparisons. Maybe a four block chart where each one can be configured to show specific time comparisons.

Some examples: Current year vs. last year, current month vs. previous month, and YTD comparisons.

We have been using this solution for more than a year.

There have been no serious incidents.

There have been no serious incidents.

As the volume of data gets bigger and bigger, so does the extraction/processing of the data and the dashboard rendering. There are always workarounds. The extraction/processing can be improved by using incremental data refresh. Dashboards can be optimized by using filters.

Technical support has a quick response time and a high quality of service. I would rate them with a 7/10, as there is always room for improvement.

This entirely depends on the data and the company's data model.

Always start from the value based design that Birst depends on. It will help you first define the problem and then understand the data. After this, the process of enabling Birst will be much quicker and enjoyable.

The dashboard tool is the most valuable feature, as it gave a quick customizable overview of data I needed to access on a daily basis.

Everything we did in the marketing team needed to be based on data and Birst helped us to make calculated decisions based on the given data.

The ability to filter out massive amounts of data and load it properly on screen needs to be improved. I would need to hide the data while I put a report together because it would load too slowly.

I have used this solution for around one and a half years.

There were some stability issues less on Birst's end and more in regards to the different types of data that were fed into Birst. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the stability.

Personally, I did not encounter any scalability issues because I only had to deal with the given data for a six month period at a time (season) or maximum for a year's worth. However, I can imagine how slow the system would be, if we needed to look at it in terms of years and years of data.

I didn't have to deal with anyone from Birst directly, as we had someone in-house who was our Birst source of truth and he would help us technically as well.

Prior to me joining the company, I understand that they used another system. When I joined, they had recently switched to Birst, as we were in need of a more powerful way to deal with data, apart from PowerPivot tool.

I didn't experience the initial setup. I helped build the dashboard with zero knowledge or prior Birst background. It wasn't too complex as I could figure it out with little help but not as straightforward in terms of the UI. It wasn't as intuitive.

I wasn't part of the decision-making process but I know they evaluated other products as well. Eventually, it was down to features and pricing.

It's quite a powerful tool, i.e., if all the data you need can be integrated properly.

• Built-in application connectors for most common purposes: ERP/CRM AWS and REST API.
• Single suite module from ETL for reporting and dashboards
• Cloud based BI that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime from mobiles, iPods, tablets, and PCs.

I built dashboards for the sales and marketing department which helped them do forecasting.

Birst constantly rolls out new features so they are always improving. Birst has a very active forum online. People post lots of feedback in regards to existing features. At times, they need to improve.

In my case, I needed a REST API connection and an AWS connection. They released those features after a few months.

I would like to see better connection functionality. It is not very intuitive and the UI is kind of neglected.

We have used this solution for two years.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 9/10.

I used Microsoft BI suite. Our company is the sole reseller of Birst.

The cloud based version is pretty straightforward. The appliance version needs some configuration, but it's not difficult.

We explored other alternatives, but there are no other solutions like Birst that do cloud BI analytics.

It depends on what they purchase. If it is an appliance, then go with AWS.