Saves our underwriters' time with data virtualization, but could provide more learning resourcesAs a company, we first did a proof-of-concept for about four months to make sure the product was a perfect fit for us or not, and beyond that I have only used Denodo for another year or so, so I know that we haven't used the product to its fullest yet. Indeed, a lot of Denodo has changed since we had our first presentation on it with the Denodo sales team who gave us a rundown of all the features. Nevertheless, there are multiple ideas I could suggest in terms of improvement. First of all, the visualization and reporting could be better. Of course, the data virtualization is good, but the data visualization could be improved with regards to the real-time dashboarding of the graphs, pie charts, etc. For the real-time data, the dashboard should preferably be updated automatically every hour. Let's say, as a CEO or CFO, I just want to know how much premium the company will get at any hour of the day. This data should be readily available on the dashboard. This is largely why we stick with Power BI's dashboarding features (besides the simple fact that Power BI works well hand-in-hand with Azure), and why we still haven't used Denodo's data visualization features as much as the data virtualization features. Another area we have been struggling with is the integration of Denodo with both Salesforce and MuleSoft, which we use to track the customers in our sales system, such as when sending insurance quotes. When we first tried to integrate Salesforce, we found that there was some type of version incompatibility. We had a hard time talking with Salesforce about this, but eventually we upgraded our version and the integration was resolved. Yet, this was a challenge that I feel we didn't need to go through, as we were not able to quickly map out the issue. And with MuleSoft, we have not been able to integrate it properly at all. I have also seen our users complain about the availability of data sources, where they are sometimes not able to connect to all the sources they need. This kind of complaint, however, is difficult to diagnose, and I don't know for sure whether it is due to how we have Denodo set up in the company, or whether it's an actual issue with Denodo itself. These complaints were mainly made during the first few months of our usage, so it is possible that the problems stemmed from a lack of knowledge on how to use Denodo correctly, especially since the individual feedback would generally be something vague like, "Okay, I'm not able to do this". To help resolve these complaints, I would suggest that Denodo work on better documentation and perhaps some kind of virtual training. For example, there's an insurance software company called Guidewire, and when we first brought Guidewire into the company they sent us a lot of training videos even before the actual integration took place. For Denodo, it would be beneficial to make sure that the team that will be using it has some kind of training on how to use the product at least a month beforehand, and there could even be some kind of feedback or Q&A sessions to go along with the training. If Denodo were able to provide this kind of training, it would be very helpful to users in insurance and banking companies because the staff are typically older and not always technically-minded. They say, "You are pushing us too hard", so they need encouragement when it comes to adoption of a new software product.
