Birst Reviews

It can be integrated with Sales Force. Users can jump to the Birst dashboard from SFDC without a repeat login.

The user can view a product usage dashboard within the SFDC.

• User interface: The screen layout is not up to the market standards
• Customer support: Not helpful at all
• Site/user administration: There is no user administration function on the front end. Most activities require a manual command.

We have been using this solution for two years.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 3/10.

Before choosing this product, we were not using another solution.

The initial setup was extremely complex. The Birst consultants wasted a lot of time in configuring the system.

We have no specific comments regarding this issue.

I was not involved in the selection process.

I would suggest they use something else instead.

The option to build and deploy analytical models quickly, within days rather than months. We use a variety of cloud applications such as Google Analytics.

Birst offered us a solution that had built-in connectors which could be used to build a fact model. We can use this to perform the standard data modelling steps: extract, transform, load, and develop scheduled reporting within weeks.

Daily, weekly, and monthly automated reports delivered to senior management. Prior to this rollout, there was no visibility.

I would like to see improvements in the administrative modules. These are about to be addressed in Version 6.

We have used this solution for about two years.

There have been no stability issues.

There have been no scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent.

The Initial setup was delivered in four weeks with a clear use case for data sources aligned to two KPIs.

Pricing and licensing is negotiable.

We evaluated Tableau, Looker, Business Objects, and QlikView.

Ensure that you fully understand BI and enterprise data warehouse architecture.

This tool possesses valuable features such as its ability to perform ETL, extract data from various sources (flat files, relational DBs, application connectors) and dashboard scheduling.

Unfortunately for us, we are looking for better options other than Birst as it is not so user friendly.

Birst needs to improve various features, namely:

• Application connectors as existing ones aren’t quite reliable.
• Resolve issues of frequent timeouts.
• Provide a friendlier UI.
• The BQL (Birst Query Language), which is used for applying filters in dashboards, conditional formatting, custom calculations, etc., needs a more constructive syntax.
• The error messages displayed need more useful information about resolving issues.
• Build an external forum/community for online help. The in-built Birst community is relevant only for simple tasks.
• Provide concepts for Dev, QA and Production environments.

I have used this tool for about a year and half.

Owing to the above reasons, we could not make use of the Birst tool productively. Hence, we will not be able to make a fair comment.

Owing to the above reasons, we could not make use of the Birst tool productively. Hence, we will not be able to make a fair comment. In addition, this tool does not allow frequent updates.

Personally, I have not interacted with their support team but when my colleagues did they received an average response.

Initially, we have used Tableau, SSAS, BO. At first, we were quite impressed with Birst’s capabilities. Now we understand that it is still a maturing tool.

Recently we have evaluated Looker, Sisense & Qlikview. Tableau seems to be the best amongst the lot. Sisense would follow thereafter.

There is no doubt that Birst possesses great abilities. However, it becomes too time consuming to understand and implement this product. It is important to decide the main criteria for selecting this tool whether just as a dashboard function or to provide start to end solutions from ETL to visualization. This product requires users to come out of their comfort zone and explore it.

The fact that it is completely cloud based makes the maintenance easier since we don't have the onus of maintaining the server.

Since Birst is completely cloud based, we do not have access to its servers. It is very slow at times. We can do nothing about it and we can't even restart the servers.

We have used this solution for six months.

There were stability issues with Birst. A dashboard/report takes a lot of time to open if there is a lot of data. In a typical customer facing scenario, such things aren't acceptable. A customer does not want to wait for ten minutes for a single report to open.

The tech support was an OK experience. Birst depends primarily on their forum for their issues to be resolved.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

As far as other products are concerned, I used Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) before using Birst. I am back to using it.

Birst is only good for small scale organizations which have to deal with less data.