MicroStrategy Reviews

Our primary use case is to deliver all data insights to our company. We do not serve our platform engineering computing teams, but we are working on that. We're actually trying to do that. We serve the entire business: the finance, merchandising, and marketing team. All those teams are meant to use our tool, so we produce a lot of reports for them. We connect it directly to our data warehouse, that is their direct connection to all the data they need to run their business. 

It is performing great. We have built some really cool tools. We would like our users to use it more. For some non-technical people who do not have experience with a tool like this, they were a little intimidated. Therefore, they use Excel a lot. Thus, our big mission over the last year, and we have been successful with it, was to get them off of Excel and to make them use MicroStrategy. The more we get them to overcome their initial intimidation, or whatever it is, the more they take to it more quickly.

We use it as a front-end application. We connect directly to MicroStrategy web.

There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions that I showed them how to do. Without getting into any details, I showed our marketing team how to go after more high value products that they could then push out, which resulted in more revenue. I showed another team how to identify other products that would otherwise be swept under the rug, and because they found these, they made an extra push and we got an extra X amount in revenue from a specific sale because of it. Therefore, it has had a direct impact on bottomline improvements. 

The other win is a lot of productivity. I have shown our users how to stop using Excel. They would create these vast Excel files, and I showed them how to do the same thing with MicroStrategy, which saves a significant amount of time for them everyday. 

These have been the two big impacts from MicroStrategy. 

From the perspective of serving the users, the most valuable feature that we have been able to give them is the Self-Service reporting tool. For example, the cubes in the report builder and showing them how to do that has gone a long way over the past year to getting them to develop their own insights for specific problems that they have. 

We already got some demos of the next release, so we are really excited about the Dossier. It is going to be really big. 

The other one that we are excited about is the collaboration aspect, where you can ping somebody on a dashboard and it sends them an email. Those are two things that we want, and those are two things that we are expecting. 

Our users tend to say the interface is a pain, which I can go either way. I find that once you use it for about a month, you are fine. But for some reason, some users are maybe not tech savvy or they are not familiar with applications like this. They have a steep learning curve, for whatever reason. Everything else is great. It has integrated very well into our data warehouse. I find it easy to build dashboards and create stuff. So, I am happy with it. It is just the end user has that pretty common steady complaint, but we are overcoming it. 

Stability is good. It is really stable. We rarely have issues with MicroStrategy going down. 

Scaling is something that we also are going to have to do a lot of in 2018, because our user base is going to increase. We are connecting to other people that are producing more. Up until now we have had a stable base of users, so scaling has not even been a thing. 

We have grown along with it pretty well, so I have not had any issues. 

We will occasionally reach out to tech support. One of our Dev guys actually used to work for MicroStrategy, so he is our guru. He will occasionally reach out to MicroStrategy for error bug fixing, etc. However, it is very few and far in-between.

I was not involved in the initial setup. 

We are going to be looking for the next platform release. That is what we are hoping for, and so I will be involved in that. 

Explore the Self-Service tool functions to rely on cubes. I will also recommend to teach your users to become comfortable with the tool. Since we started doing this in 2017, rather than having our data team build everything, such as all the reports, we have started pushing it more towards the users. The response has been phenomenal. Create Self-Service tools and "force" your users to use them. 

We do not use it to embed analytics into the applications. Most of the people use the web access. We are working on actually building out more enhancements to our whole data warehouse. Right now, our data warehouse is sort of static; negative load and that is it. It is not as real-time as we would like. We are working on building that out first to create more real-time, at which point we will work on some potential integrations with other applications, but I don't think we are there yet. 

We have not used any of the APIs, but that is what we have just started to explore. A lot of the stuff that we have done, unfortunately, has been a lot of manual stuff. At least on our end, we have ETL intensive processes. We have data sense, which we write ourselves then have to send them. We have to create some job framework and all this really time consuming stuff. So, one thing we actually did start talking about recently is how to get more API-focused work done. That is going to be our goal for this year. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: responsiveness. That is probably one of the big ones. We are a relatively small company. Our parent company is huge, but we operate autonomously from them, so we are small compared to them. Being able to reach out and still have access to people that will help us, even though we are small, is really a big thing for us.

It is very easy for non-IT personnel to create (grid) reports. And once the report is created, the user can switch rows, columns, and add filters. This avoids the creation of a lot of reports that have just a different look.

The drill-down functionality is also very good.

It did not really change the way the organization works. But it has improved our budgeting process. It also gives us a better overview of our warehouse management.

It has two versions: web and desktop. Some changes can be done with the web tools and some can be done with the desktop tool. Reconciling the two tools to make all functionality available in all tools would be a great improvement.

The graphs available for the new dashboard of version 10 are weak. You can include all the 3D graphs that you find, but you have to find them and include them or develop them yourself. By default, you should have at least the same possibilities for the graph so that you can add in a document. For the moment, I still use the document because I did not find a line graph that can use multiple metrics and multiple categories.

I have personally used it for three years now. The company I am working for has used it for four years.

We have not had stability issues, but we are a small group and we do not use the mobile functionalities.

We have not had scalability issues, but we are a small group.

I find technical support very responsive. If they do not know the answer, they search for it until they find a solution that solves your problem. The community site has also a lot of information.

I am an external consultant and I know the Microsoft BI suite. I also worked a bit with QlikView. The company that uses MicroStrategy had no other tools before it.

I was not there at the initial setup. I found it easy to add some new attributes, facts, and metrics.

I am not in charge of licensing. They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free. This was a big improvement. We are using a name license. The advantage is that these licenses can be used on all environments.

I was not there for the initial choice. But I know they had a PoC on SAP BusinessObjects and Microsoft BI.

If you use MicroStrategy on top of a data warehouse, put all the code translation in a snowflake schema. The reason is that often the last pass of the process translates the code into labels and it is easier if these labels are in separate tables.

Install the enterprise manager tools and projects at the beginning. You can create a lot of objects and you need to know which one is used. This tool is not perfect, but it will give you an overview of the utilization of MicroStrategy.

As an IT person, you have to create the model: define the attributes and the metrics. Once you have done that, if a user wants to create a grid report he must drag attributes and metrics and drop them in the grid area.

This user has to know the business a bit because he must combine attributes and metrics that make sense.

Another way of working is to create a big grid report with multiple attributes and metrics. A user can easily remove the attributes and metrics that he does not need and remove them from the grid. He then can save the report is his "my report" folder if he use it often.

For example, as retail company, we created a "big" grid report with sales and stock by articles, shop, sales persons, year and month. The sales period is part of the filter. If a user want the sales per shop and years, he just has to remove from the grid the attributes and metrics that he does not need. Same thing if he wants sales per users. For us, it simplifies our life because one report replaced eight existing reports in our system.

Now, the the reports are made by someone from the business that asks sometimes (but not often) for IT support.

If you only want simple grid reports, almost anyone can make them. If you want advanced reports (dashboard, pixel perfect documents) the user must follow a training.

• Mobility
• Ease of use
• Multi-sourcing ability

Many of my users have iPhones and iPads, and being able to deliver mobile dashboards to them is a great asset for them. The coming years will prove that traditional desktop reporting and even working will be a thing of the past. All industries are moving towards mobile reporting and away from physical reporting (paper). Being able to deploy mobile reports on our user’s iPhones puts the necessary data they need at their fingertips. And actually, in 2017, I plan on pushing some Apple Watch reports.

I have created some transaction services reports that allow the field to comment on issues that the c-level might have questions on. This in turn creates a very open and productive environment.

https://www.itcentralstation.c...It would be great if MicroStrategy could incorporate into the Reporting Services dashboards the adaptive response that a Visual Insight dashboard has; being able to auto-adjust to the peripheral. When you create a Visual Insight dashboard, it would auto-adjust according to what the user is using to see the report; be that iPad, iPhone, or laptop.

The drawback to a Visual Insight dashboard is that it doesn’t come with as many reporting options as a Reporting Services dashboard. The drawback to a Reporting Services dashboard is, if you have users that span multiple ways they see the data – laptop, tablet, or phone – you have to create a specific dashboard for each.

I have used it for 12 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

The level of technical support depends; if it’s an easy question, then they will quickly answer the question. I find the majority of my help via the knowledge base.

Up until a year ago, I used ProDiver. We switched because our company merged with another and they were using MicroStrategy.

We are a Windows environment, so set up was very easy.

Before choosing this product, We didn’t evaluate other options.

MicroStrategy depends heavily on your data, so don’t purchase it if your company doesn’t plan to make investments to warehouse its data.

MicroStrategy is used to receive all the reports from their customers who are logging into their website, such as customers purchasing products online.

The most valuable features of MicroStrategy are user-friendliness and integration with the different data warehouse systems.

MicroStrategy should improve migration automation. Additionally, I would like there to be better partnership support.

I have used MicroStrategy for approximately six months.

The stability of MicroStrategy is good.

MicroStrategy could improve its scalability. When comparing the scalability options to other solutions they are not very good. The licensing is one of the reasons it is not as scalable as it could be.

One of my clients has approximately 1,000 users using this solution.

The responsiveness of their support can improve. There needs to be more support for system integrators.

I rate the support from MicroStrategy a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of MicroStrategy is straightforward.

I rate the ease of setup of MicroStrategy a four out of five.

The price of MicroStrategy is reasonable.

I rate MicroStrategy a six out of ten.

It is basically used for higher reporting purposes, such as process digitization, retail, bookings, inquiries, etc. We only used it for a PoC.

We were using the latest version available at that time.

The interactive features that appear in the report were good. The external rendering option they give with multi servers was also good.

It was interactive. Building the dashboards was pretty straightforward. It didn't take me much time to learn.

It was also secure. We were using it on-prem and, integration-wise, it had options for various data sources. We could connect with different databases, which was an advantage of this solution.

The collaboration feature, which was separately licensed, was also good. The hyperIntelligence feature was also good. They give you custom cards where if you hover over any web content, those terms would appear in your report, and then it'll give you a quick summary of the KPIs around that word. I really liked this feature.

Data preparation-wise, it was not so straightforward with respect to getting different sources. Preparing or transforming the data inside and then bringing it onto the dashboard was a bit difficult, and the experience could have been better.

I used it for around three to four months. I was involved in a PoC, and then I had to step aside. I'm currently not involved with MicroStrategy.

It is most probably stable because I did not face any problems with it. I had very limited experience with it, and I did not face any issues.

It is scalable. It is on-prem, but they have cloud features as well. 

We had about 300 to 400 users.

Their tech support was pretty good. They responded pretty quickly to all issues. 

I was not involved in any of the admin processes. We have a team of 10 to 15 people for deployment and maintenance.

It is a licensed product, so we need to pay for it, but I'm not aware of the exact pricing and comparisons.

You need to explore and see if it fits your use case. You need to explore its data modeling features and then decide whether to go ahead or not. You should also compare it with other solutions, such as Power BI, and take a call based on your requirement. It integrates with different data sources, but I could not explore the data modeling features.

I could learn it quickly. I had read the comments that the learning curve is steep, but it was not so bad.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

We create dashboards and reports for top management.

It is very stable.

They should give proper industry-based tutorials so that one can learn it easily and implement it based on the requirements. They should give more MMP files so that we can import a whole project altogether and learn from that project. 

I have been using MicroStrategy for one year.

It is very stable.

I have been using it only for a year. I am not sure about its scalability. We have ten users who use it in our organization.

There is no proper support. Their support needs to be improved. Whenever we call them, they ask us to get professional services. I previously took professional services for $2,000. When I reached out to them for another issue, they again asked me to go for professional services. I cannot pay for professional services every now and then.

I didn't use any other product before. I was just using a dashboard that I made through PHP programming. 

It was very complicated. I was installing the MSTR library on Linux. It took me two months. It is very easy to install MSTR on Windows.

I installed it on my own.

They offer yearly as well as perpetual licenses.

I am not satisfied with this solution. I would rate MicroStrategy a seven out of ten.

We use it in sales and product analytics. We are using it for reporting at a national level, so we use it for a lot of different reporting for a lot of different groups. It actually works really well.

It drives us away from Excel. For what it is for, it is good. You can't run a business on Excel.

Some things are easier, some things are harder. A lot of things are easier.

We have some self-service reports and some of those went really well. It depends on the level. When you get to the executive level, they do not want to go out and run a dashboard. They love dashboards, but they don't want to run them. They want someone to send it to them and that does not work well for MicroStrategy. If I am going to run it and send it to you, I did not need MicroStrategy to do it. 

We will probably shift away from mobile because we are doing away with iPads. We have tablets or convertible computers, so there is no need to use mobile on those.

The most valuable feature is the ability to build reports, then customize for different groups instead of having to build multiple reports. Therefore, the ability to build customization in the reports for different groups.

I am happy with the UI.

The analytic speed would probably be what I would look for in terms of improvement because we have super huge data, and if I do not build views on top of data, then reports render really slowly.

Higher management does not have time to run reports. They need somebody to give them the bottom line.

I prefer the capabilities of a single platform, but it does not always work. We are a huge company. Some areas do not use MicroStrategy, so you have to blend whatever systems they are using together to get the data points that you are looking for.

I have never had problems with the stability.

No issues.

I have not used technical support.

I was involved in the upgrading, not the initial setup. We did not have any issues with the upgrades.

We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.

We are happy, so far. It has worked well for us. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Ease of use
• Customer acceptance (my customers are internal), if I build it and they won't use it, then it is useless.