MicroStrategy Reviews

We are a partner with MicroStrategy. We have over 300 casino installs of our casino operating system. Right now, we have them in about 10% of the properties which are with us. We pretty much do a lot of custom reporting for them and/or train them how to do customer reporting and visualizations.

It is performing well.

In my particular area, it has actually enhanced it greatly. It has enabled us to get data to the customers, then have them turn around and create these reports in minutes rather than hours. 

We have, to varying degrees, rolled out Self-Service and some of it is more IT driven on the properties. Other times it is more custom reporting done by us. They have it as a feature there. They can use it to the best of their abilities, but a lot of times they will bring us in to do all the custom stuff.

In 2018, we will be using the capabilities of Dossiers more. We are not yet looking at investing in mobile analytics, because we are trying to do something in-house.

The drag and drop and point and click features of everything that will instantaneously render data and/or visualizations right off the bat.

We like having the single platform of it. However, we also like the ability to go out there and hit disparate data sources because a lot of the properties that we deal with have a lot of different type of disparate data sources coming in rather than just our one casino management software.

They have so much stuff in there that I don't know what else they can put in there, unless they can get somebody to be able to talk in there and tell it to build a report. 

From the standpoint of a partner and what I do as a job, there is nothing that I can see. Maybe from the customer's standpoint, because they are getting into something new.

Stability is great. We have not had any issues.

Scalability is fantastic. It can go from a small operation up to a gigantic operation. 

We have used technical support a couple of times. It was more or less at a level that had to do with web Java errors and stuff like that. Other than that, we pretty much use the knowledge base. We feel that Microstrategy's community is a good forum to use.

I have been involved in some parts of the setup, and it is pretty much straightforward. It is not horribly hard to set up in comparison to other things that I have seen.

Do it now.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: They have a knowledge base and offer training and/or have events where you can network with people from the company who do stuff. With MicroStrategy, actually meeting the people that you're dealing with face-to-face.

Currently, we are using MicroStrategy to provide Self-Service to clients. We have different departments in our company, like finance, accounting, and so on. We provided different projects for them and they are loving the product. We have approximately 200 users, and they have different roles from user to analyst to power users.

It improved a lot because coming from using Excel files, then using Oracle OBIEE, there is more flexibility now. The product is more scalable. We can support multiple platforms and different users. It is really good.

In 2018, we will be looking at Dossier and it collaboration aspect, which will be good for us. 

The future plan is to also introduce mobile, but right now we are in the infancy stage. We are trying to introduce the ad hoc reporting, and once we get in-depth in it and we make it sticky enough, then we will move to mobile.

• A single version of the truth.
• Having the analytics capabilities on a single platform.
• The usability for users to be able to drag and drop, then create their own reports.

• There is room for improvement on the graphs. 
• They need to improve the web. 
• I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side.

I have been using MicroStrategy for a long time, so I know how stable it is. It depends on how you structure it and how you architecture it. Once you are done with the basics, it is pretty stable

I have had a lot of projects where we had a lot of users, like thousands of users, and the data was in one report which could bring in six million records. MicroStrategy is doing a good job on scalability.

It has gotten better. Before you had to go through Level 2, then Level 3 of support to get your questions answered. Now, even Level 1 could answer your intermediate questions, though there is still room for improvement.

I did not do the initial setup at this company, but at my previous company where I did installation, upgrades, and configurations.

The initial setup is straightforward for me, but it could vary from person to person. It is pretty straightforward, but you have to know the key words and so on, like project source. There is definitely a learning curve, but once you get to know it, everything is straightforward.

Give the product a try.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Flexibility
• Performance
• Scalability. 

We use it for reporting. The performance is okay.

We are eventually looking to automate everything in our process.

What we are trying to do is eliminate the need for them to actually do anything Self-Service. We are trying to establish interface agreements so we no longer have to deliver Excel files, and things will just be there when they need it. 

For example: They tell us what we need. We put it in the batch. It gets put to them right when they need it, right where they need it, then they can just process it. Therefore, we can automate everything. 

In 2018, we are going to be using the pretty charts and graphs. What I want to do is move us more towards using machine learning artificial intelligent type capabilities in order to process all our data. It is a 100 terabyte database. You can't just aggregate everything up to a day or a month and say you understand everything. We are going to have to have some automated features. Therefore, we can actually parse the data and do some doppelganger analysis, then we can get some of our things solved. 

It is always nice to have one solution in a single platform. I think that was part of the reason for selecting MicroStrategy. You can do pretty much everything, instead of having to get a little bit here or a little bit there.

I don't think we have actually taken advantage of anything that differentiates it from any other product. All the reports are very simple and straightforward. We probably could have worked with any application, but we chose MicroStrategy. 

I hate the user interface. I hate having to sit down and put in every little thing. It is almost like we are always having a start from scratch in order to build something new or to build something similar to what was there before. It seems klutzy. 

We would like access to more storage and access to more metadata to build the right programs that can construct all the stuff for us instead of us having to type it in all the time. 

We have the mobile server. We have not used it. That is because the people on our team have not been trained on it yet, but that is something that we want to do. We would like to have everybody with a phone, but again, this gets into what KPIs are you going to put on this phone that are going to be immediately accessible and actually usable because we have got thousands of them. If we put two or three on there, we do not have one RF engineer that is just going to use two or three. 

We are unable to boil everything down to a number, like Nike did with their shoes, your exercise, your workout routines, etc. We don't have that capability. We are really going to have to lead the realm of pretty charts and graphs and build an AI. 

It has performed fine. There have been instances where we wish it could have perform better. My suspicion is a lack of expertise on our end. We probably need some consulting help. We have not had time to go out and try to acquire it, but performance is fine for right now.

We have seen that it scaled in other places, and it works, so it is possible. 

I have not used support, but I know a couple of my team members have. They did come through for us. I am not sure if it was tech support or if it was sales support. I can't remember when they did that, because there was a person that was helping us almost full-time to get the product implemented and get some of our first reports to them. 

No. We were producing Excel spreadsheets and putting them out in order for people to consume, then we produced those. Now, they are just in reports that we can access over a website instead of pulling it down from our file server. 

I think that trying to get into all the analytics and all of the visualizations is what turned everybody on: the colors, the pretty charts, etc. I do not think they really know how to use it yet, but we will get there eventually. 

I was not involved in the initial setup.

At corporate, up in the C-Suite office, they had chosen MicroStrategy. We wanted to fall in line with them. That ended up being the primary reason why we chose MicroStrategy rather than just going to jQuery and making a web page with some jQuery objects in it. 

MicroStrategy is probably overkill for what you are going to use it for. Just like when we were in school at tech studying electrical engineering. We studied all calculus, then finally, you get up into the upper echelons of electrical engineering at a bachelor's level and it is all algebra. 

You did not use your calculus. That is what this product is. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Functional capabilities
• Tech support.

• Ad-hoc capability is critical to our customers
• They depend on the ability to take a standard set of data and organize it in a manner that is meaningful to their particular field of interest.
• Our product delivers POS transaction analysis in grids, dashboards, and documents.
• We group analytics under multiple areas, including Operations, Loss Prevention, Merchandising and Inventory, Loyalty and Fuel. 
• Our customers’ users can modify a ‘canned report’ to deliver the information their organization finds key. 
• Distribution is key as well. Typically there is one person within the organization or department ‘writing’ the reports. The reports are distributed to a larger group of consumers. Automated, scheduled distribution of information has become key to running their day-to-day operations.

Our customers and their users have used our product to:

• Find theft
• Reduce product waste
• Increase profits
• Make better staffing plans
• Improve store and staff performance measures.

The examples are numerous, so I’ve attached a couple of articles and included a link to our website. http://www.pinncorp.com/soluti...

There are a number of different applications bundled together and delivered under an umbrella product. It needs to be easier to determine which application controls which features and functionality.

I need to point out is that our company is a MicroStrategy OEM partner. We use the MicroStrategy products to build a BI solution for our own retail clients. 

With our EPM solution, we offer different user tiers to our customers, allowing them to acquire minimal functionality for Store Managers.

Each tier includes a particular set of MSTR applications. The Store Manager tier was created so that a single report could be run, but the output for each Store Manager would be limited to that store’s data.

This worked great on grid reports, but when our customer wanted to run dashboards and post them on a server instead of emailing them, it didn’t work. 

After casting about, we learned that we had to add a Report Services license for each Store Manager in order to support the posting of docs and dashboards to a server folder and distribute emails with links. That was a financial hit and it was not what we understood our clients would be able to do with the licensing they were getting.

This particular example actually got resolved when MSTR repackaged their solutions. This included many services in the server umbrella.

We have used this product for eleven years.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

There is an added complexity in an OEM setup because we ultimately have to be able to deliver a ‘reusable’ solution to our customers. The user setup seems flexible, but it can be complex. 

My experience may be OEM-centric. It was, for the most part, addressed when MicroStrategy repackaged their applications under fewer solution umbrellas.

I don’t typically advise others regarding the pricing. We tend to serve lower user count customers so they are not getting any volume discount consideration.

That was a long time ago. I believe they were using Cognos and Crystal Reports.

• Take advantage of their training which they often offer to prospects. It will allow you to use the solution to your advantage much more quickly and efficiently.
• Get a clear picture of the type of development skill that is required to get a quick start.

• Business users can create their reports once architected
• Available on all devices
• Customization options available at coding and visual levels

Enterprise-wise solutioning helps us to troubleshoot more effectively.

Creating a dashboard is a very tedious and manual process.

I have used it for six years.

I have not encountered any stability issues; it is very stable.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 6/10.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was straightforward.

It is somewhat expensive.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated SAP BusinessObjects and IBM Cognos.

Depending on the data volume, choosing the most suitable database will be key. Setting up the MicroStrategysystem for optimum performance will drive how helpful the output will be.

Scalability and the ability to process large amount of data are the product’s most valuable features. The ability for a user to create a report without knowing anything about joins, SQLs, tables, etc. is to me the best feature of MicroStrategy.

The product enables our business to create thousands of reports without knowing anything about the backend. MicroStrategy has been an enterprise reporting tool at our organization for a very long time. From the very beginning, the ability of the tool to provide a drag and drop interface to end users to create reports using the enterprise data warehouse effortlessly helps them in taking strategic decisions in their day-to-day operation.

The initial schema development takes some time. Without a robust schema, the tool will not function properly. The schema is the main engine which creates SQL effortlessly, but designing and maintaining the schema will take some time. The relationship between different attributes has to be maintained properly, as one incorrect relationship has the potential of affecting 100s of reports using that attribute. The schema can’t be maintained by end users and IT intervention is required.

There are two main development tools – Developer and Web. The two platforms are not in sync. Some options are not present in developer and some are present in web. The ones that are present in both are not located under same menus.

Dashboard development takes a long time.

The self-service BI part of the tool, Visual Insights, which is designed to provide the business the ability to create interactive dashboard using visualization, is not very great. Though Visual Insights has improved a lot in version 10.x, it still has a long way to go and is no way near competitors such as Tableau.

I have used it for eight years.

With every version, they will introduce some new tools/feature and it’ll take them a few versions or hotfixes to stabilize that new feature. There are different modes of running dashboards – presentation, Flash, interactive – and not all features work in all of the different modes.

The tool is scalable. Adding users or reports doesn’t have to be a headache, as long the hardware is robust enough to handle the additional reporting load.

There is a community site where developers can ask questions and get answers from other developers and experts, as well as MicroStrategy tech support. The community also has a pretty decent knowledge base in the form of tech notes, which provide information about known defects, issues and workarounds.

We have a support contract and regularly work with tech support on issue resolution, etc. I would give them 5/10, simply because, at times, the reps aren’t experienced enough and need a little hand-holding, which you wouldn’t expect considering they are the vendor and should know more or should be on par with the person asking the questions. Issue resolution also take a lot of time.

We’ve always worked with MicroStrategy.

Initial set up is a bit complex, as I’ve mentioned. Everything is based on the relationship defined in the schema. If someone messes that up, the reports will start giving incorrect output.

Also, to ensure scalability, the hardware needs to be robust, but I guess that is true for any tool.

It is an expensive tool. Licenses are user based or CPU based. Depending on the size of the organization, you might want to go with CPU based rather than user based, as that might be cheaper.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It’s a good product for organizations planning to deploy an enterprise-wide reporting solution that will be built on top of a RDBMS. It is very robust and can handle large amounts of data fairly well. If the goal is to have a tool that can provide self-service BI and let end users create attractive dashboards without having to worry about object sharing, reusability, schema design, and IT involvement, then there are better & cheaper tools in the market.

I think that MicroStrategy has a lot of well-designed features, and that if users know how to use them or are willing to learn, it maybe a very valuable tools for them. I can recall that most users love to use the MicroStrategy Visual Insight tool that allows users to see in-real time graphs that users design on-site, using the attributes and metrics that they are familiar with.

Another good example, is the intelligence cube and incremental refresh reports that allow developers to update or create a report with a great quantity of information and store it on memory. This only takes a few seconds to show users the full results instead of always querying the data warehouse for the same results over and over. In addition, developers can schedule an incremental refresh of data on days, weeks, months, or whatever filter they desire, without the user feeling such work being done.

Update: MicroStrategy Mobile application is considered to be one of the best, for almost 4 or 5 years. I have used multiple times and I have to say, it is a great tool. Easy to configure and easy to adapt the reports to Mobile users, specially if they have an Iphone, since in the 9.4 version it was well prepared for Iphone users. Aside from that, Documents can be made to take pixel % in account, so you can make a report in the Developer, that suits both mobile and web users in a unique report.

Using the intelligence cube, I’ve managed to increase the performance of the main load of my documents, giving users the full data access in less than five seconds, instead of spending 30 seconds or a minute waiting for the results.

Update: Using the mobile application, it gave insurer agents more flexibility and a great success in their daily roles, since they could insert new information directly from MicroStrategy Mobile (using Transaction Services) and the colleagues at the company could respond within minutes or hours, saving the problem that is the trip.

I think that there are some bugs regarding the design, and some features are a little hidden from the developer. Developers need to do a lot of research and consult a lot of manuals just to find that the solution for their problem was in a check-box within the configurations of the tool or project.

Update: Never tried the MicroStrategy 10, only installed it, so the improvement may already been answered in a lot of features.

Update: I’ve used this solution for about 1 - 1,5 years, but not constantly.

The installation was well explained in the manuals, and the deployment of hotfixes and patches are as easy as a normal computer program installation.

Update: MicroStrategy version 10 (and beta) is similar to version 9.4 in installation and configuration.

The only issue that I can think of, is that from time to time my web server stops and I have to restart the web server. I do not know why this happens, but we’ve created a process that every minute there are checks the status of the web server, and restarts it if necessary. It may be a problem with the tool or a problem with the infrastructure at the client's company.

Update: Turns out, the client infrastructure may be blocking the Web Server from running all the time. Comparing the installation done in a Virtual Machine and another one in another client, they haven't got any type of web server related problems and the first one has, which makes me think its a infrastructure configuration that from time to time, blocks the service.

No issues encountered.

I've never used it, but I only have good things to say about the users of the MicroStrategy Community. They always give good ideas, a lot of workarounds and 90% of the time, they respond within the day with a lot of links to technical notes and others posts among others.

Update: Initial setup was really straightforward, in my opinion.

I've done the installation, configuration and designed the entire project (Logical Architecture, Reporting/Dashboarding, Mobile application, among others)

Easy to develop new reports, easy to change metadata layer

We automatize daily management reporting, ad hoc reporting, and schedule reporting with fix structure

Web interface has to be more quick-response and user friendly. There is a desktop application that is still used. Creation of a report with complicated structure (documents) is not easy.

5 years

No

No

Yes, sometimes web-application works unstable with big amount of data (it's not actually the big problem for the most cases but if you need few hundreds of thousands records - there could be an issue)

We have good support from consultant company and we don't works directly with a vendor.

Same answer as above question.

Microsoft Excel (power pivots). Microsoft is the easiest and the more user friendly especially for beginners in the simple edition (pivot table). We don't use Microsoft BI products like report and analysis services - I can't estimate how they are easy to use and powerful.

Independently from the tool, initial setup is always complex. Usually complexity depends on the scope of the project. Few reports and 1-2 datamarts this one thing, plug-in data warehouse to the reporting - another.

Initial implementation was with consultancy, further - in-house. Consultant was good, at least they was more skilled as we were in the particular area.

The most expensive position is license cost. It is very expensive so this one of the reason why we can't expand the solution more widely in the company.

Microstrategy was the first our mature BI solution in the company. IBM Cognos BI was the next but it didn't get a lot of fans. IBM Cognos BI from our opinion is weaker in many places and not so handy.

Nice easy to use product, I can advise to use it for others.
General advice (not depends on the particular product), implementation of BI tools MUST be a general company strategy. Implementation has to cover significant part of the reporting and everyone who need a reporting has to use it. - in this case you will get benefit from reporting unification and control over new reports growing.
There is in the company has to be developed reporting creation rules (who are allowed doing what and there it's can be located - public or private)
BI team has to be fully responsible for reporting environment including testing and describing reports in the public area. BI team in the company has to be created with dedicated analysts who are responsible for making analysis of the reporting requirement from other people and make internal in-house support for the users
BI team MUST have rights not to make reports (at any level of complexity) but make changes and develop metadata layer as well in the BI, - that is very important, otherwise you will have "armless BI".