QlikView Reviews

• Integration capabilities
• Speed
• Amount of data that can be accessed within in a few clicks

Working in the IT environment gets challenging especially when you have multiple sources of data that you need to combine. QlikView makes this really easy and simple to do, because QlikView has its own ETL modeler built into it. Having an all-in-one tool is quite an advantage.

QlikView has made it possible to look at large data volumes without having the drawback of strain on the database and waiting long periods for data discovery. QlikView has also helped people switch over from reporting to do more analysis and data discovery. QlikView has also helped serve as an alternative to Excel reports.

This is really an awesome product, but there is room for improvement regarding the visual aspect (this has been sorted out in their new product – Qlik Sense). Some features are a bit tedious to achieve results, especially for new users and people who have not had training or experience in using the product.

I have used it for four years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

I rate the level of customer service and technical support 9/10.

Initial setup was straightforward. I would recommend getting someone from Qlik to advise or do the initial setup to eliminate any issues.

Get Qlik to do the initial setup.

I also looked at Tableau, Sisense, and SAP BusinessObjects. Tableau is a good tool, but has a few drawbacks when your data source is not in the correct format. BusinessObjects is a bit old school (reporting) and SAP HANA is costly to implement. BusinessObjects is also costly and requires a lot of work in the data and business layer.

Determine what you require and get the tool that suits your need the best. Compare products and if you decide to go with Qlik, I personally prefer Qlik Sense. Again, this depends on your business need.

Strong visual capabilities, drill down function and data browsing. No need for any other tools, ETL/ scripting and visualisation built right into one tool.

• Ability to monitor progression towards certain deadlines and preset thresholds.
• Ability to browse through the data by selections to quickly answer questions.
• Easily export to excel or print for external use.

While Qlik and their products are very intuitive and a pleasure to use as a developer of the dashboards and poweruser, many of my colleagues and stakeholders of information are used to static (paper) reports. This often leads to producing tables and graphs that are 'pinned down' (set analysis) to reduce the flexibility of the representations and the dashboards as a whole. (Qlik presents this as a core strength of their products.) 

Often this makes the formulas for these expressions and dimensions very complex. Of course you could argue that the users would have to 'mature' to use this new, more flexible, way of information. But it would be a great improvement for the Qlik products if it were able to easily 'lock' graphs without extensive coding.

Over 5 years

Due to in memory technology, when datasets get really huge, rendering of graphs can take some time or even return out of memory.

I use QlikView to combine data from different sources in the absence of an EDW and build our analytical dashboards.

It allowed us to improve our analytical abilities, and KPI and data presentation, in addition to creating easily accessible what-if scenarios for decision making.

The security features in QlikView are not yet mature: very complex to define permissions in a dashboard (based on data/sheets).

We have been using QlikView for the past five years.

QlikView relies heavily on memory. It requires good servers and continuous upgrades and maintenance for sustaining good performance.

Technical support is good.

Most solutions like SAS, Tableau and others require a fully-fledged data warehouse (EDW), and IT support and intervention at all times for creating dashboards. QlikView is flexible and allows users to create their own reports in a relatively short time.

The initial setup was supported by the company and was not very complex.

Licensing in QlikView is a bit expensive.

I would recommend the QlikView tool for its flexibility and good data visualization and presentation.

The data model and the visualization are the most valuable features of the product. The data model helps my organization to recognize and identify the problem of our clients’ data. The visualization helps us to deploy an easy-to-understand solution to the client and they are able to explore the data by themselves.

We actually help the client to deploy and design the solution. It helps us to understand their problems better and provide a more intuitive solution. Plus, after the deployment, the client is able to explore and maintain the application without any further charges on the software itself.

The visualization charts. I believe they are working on that because Qlik Sense has released a few versions in which the charts are a lot better than QlikView.

And the interface. QlikView is mainly defined as a guided analytics tool, which requires experienced users to help with the development. In the future, it should move forward on self-service (the core value of Qlik Sense), which is the trend on the business intelligence development. So I think they will have some big changes coming.

I have been using for about one year.

I haven’t come across any fatal issues with deployment, stability or scalability so far. However, as the data volume increased, the skills of optimizing the tool need to be more advanced.

Technical support are quite helpful. We are a Qlik partner and they are willing to help out with issues. Sometimes, they ask for feedback when a new version is released.

It’s straightforward and very detailed documentation is available; just follow the instruction prompts when you install the software.

I also tried Tableau. I believe they are targeting a different market, if you compare Tableau with QlikView. The better comparison will be Tableau to Qlik Sense, which is beyond the scope of this review. The reason we selected QlikView is its relatively comprehensive functionality.

• Intuitive data insights and standard reporting.
• It runs in-memory so you can increase the speed by increasing RAM, depending on your budget.
• It has its own ETL tool, QlikView Connector.

It gives intuitive data insights to improve and optimize our global supply chain (help drive and build strategy to improve on-time delivery, reduce quality and damage returns, etc.), with a few simple clicks to drill down to the details (down to the SKU level and call centre conversation details with customers). The dashboard gives management a holistic picture on our important KPIs.

• Enhance predictive analytics and big data; this is the future trend.
• Simpler, cleaner charts and visualization (easier user acceptance)
• Formatting and repositioning the menu/charts takes a bit long. It does not have drag-and-drop capability like Tableau does.

I have been using QlikView for 2.5 years.

There’s no version control, which means you can't roll back to earlier versions once overwritten/published.

I rate technical support 6/10.

I also evaluated MS BI and tableau. Compared with MS BI, I find Tableau and QlikView have stronger visualization; intuitive data insights; less development lead time - MS BI requires creating OLAP cubes, which takes more time; clearer and simpler charts; and intuitive data mapping/insights.

Initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented it in-house. QlikView is running in memory, so it depends on your organization to achieve the balance between cost of server RAM and performance. Besides, the data quality and accuracy is very important, no matter what powerful visualization tools are used.

Tableau seems to have easier user acceptance than QlikView because of the simpler charts and big data integration, increasing the possibility of helping an organization transform from reactive analysis to predictive analysis.

Server versions are not cheap and pretty similar for both Tableau and QlikView in terms of price. I don't see a big difference; it really depends on your organization's need.

If you have more developers/technical people and want to do more standard reporting without Hadoop, go for QlikView; if you have more business users with some SQL knowledge and would like to do predictive analytics, and integration with big data platform Hadoop, go for Tableau.

The most valuable feature is its flexibility to develop dynamic analysis, gathering information from different sources, such as spreadsheet, database and internet.

With QlikView, my organization is able to track information related to service desk tickets and SLAs. This information helps us find the bottlenecks and fix them.

Reports module should be improved to make it user-friendly and easy to develop reports.

I have used it for eight years.

I did not encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability.

I rate technical support 8/10.

We used to have IBM Cognos, but we decided to go for QlikView because of the flexibility and the short time to develop and delivery analysis.

Initial setup had medium complexity due to different data sources and integrations.

We developed it in-house. The advice I would give is to get the business user (internal client) as close as possible and in parallel for any doubts and questions about the tool. Visit QlikView forums We have a lot of useful information on it.

Proper planning is the key for choosing the right license for the right user. Know your internal clients and their ability to do/create analysis.

It's s one of the best solutions for short-time deliveries.

The most valuable features of the product are its in-memory and ETL capabilities, especially the set analysis function.

We developed in a couple of days an application based on a timesheet application, in order to have a real-time vision of what we do in IT service. Before, there wasn't any system except some Excel manual spreadsheets.

We developed a QlikView prototype based on sales data to give easy and visual access to the data. It took minutes to be loaded, compared to the existing system of traditional cubes that required hours to be loaded... to give what? Reports without any interactivity.

QlikView should improve its front-end design and import the Qlik Sense design within.

I have been using it for two years.

We used the Nprinting extension. A great toot to create PDF reports, etc... However, the tool is not stable; installation was difficult before being able to use it.

I rate the level of customer service and technical support 8/10, efficient.

I previously used IBM Cognos, Tableau, MS, SAP BO... Personally, QlikView is the best when you talk about fast delivery and visualisation.

Initial setup was straightforward: half a day and your QlikView server is up and running.

I implemented it in-house, but I had QlikView experience.

QlikView is like a race boat, compared to other vendors who are king of Queen Elizabeth. ROI is never easy to measure but at the very least, you will definitely deliver something with added value to your customers within weeks.

Consider the ETL capabilites of the tool, not only the visualisation. And, of course, the performance!

• Easy to use in small/middle organization
• Cheap tool when compared to MicroStrategy
• It does require a separate ETL tool

It helps to provide answers quickly for critical business questions. It has reduced our time spent on data entry and manipulation and can identify areas for cost cutting.

We've used it for three years.

It's good.

It's a straightforward set-up. You can start working with QlikView immediately after installation.

I have implemented it for different clients.

I also use MicroStrategy.

If you are having small business set-up then you have to go for QlikView else MicroStrategy is more stable for big organisations.