QlikView Reviews

Our primary use case of this solution is to provide reporting to our customers. The company works with online solutions for marketing so the customer gets insights about the response to email components and things like that. I'm a freelance database specialist and the company is a customer of QlikView. 

This is a tool with a lot of functionality to provide any kind of reporting to customers, it has a range of solutions. Although some customers would like to use different tools QlikView is what they're used to using. 

The most valuable feature for me is probably the ease with which you can analyze data by click-through. 

The user interface of QlikView is old. The provider built a new tool called Qlik Sense. So Qlik Sense is basically the offspring of QlikView. Somehow both are still supported and they've developed new versions for both of these tools but Qlik Sense is basically the restyled version of QlikView. There's a lot of discussion about some features which are difficult to use including the user interface, all look and feel aspects, but I think that will be in the new version. What they could provide is a migration path to Qlik Sense. It's very difficult to do that automatically because it always requires you to check and change some new port. I haven't researched it but I believe that's the case. 

I've been using this solution for around six years. 

The solution is stable but you need to tweak it once you set it up. The big issue with it is that it's a BI tool, so it's memory intensive and for some calculations also CPU intensive. It means that when it hits its maximum in terms of the resources available it starts to shut down. 

The solution is scalable but you really have to keep in mind that it's configurable in application so that if you reach the maximum, you know you need to act on that. Otherwise strange things will start to happen. We had that issue one time, we added more memory and since then we haven't had any issues. 

We have an intermediate company which we bought a license from and it provides us with support. Usually they're not very helpful. Either we find the answer more quickly ourselves, or if we can't find the answer, they usually also can't find the answer. So they have to forward it to the QlikView support. I think it's a waste of money. 

The deployment on premises is quite complicated. I did it myself but my predecessor neglected to make proper documentation about installation and the solution requires a lot of components on different servers that talk to each other and you need to set firewall settings and things like that. It's quite a big application. They could improve on that and they probably did that with Qlik Sense. There's a lot of manual stuff required which is not really necessary.

We have about 30 users in the company who are really customers. They access the reporting through a web console which sees it in the mail and some of them are external users who developed on the application. My role is more the maintenance of the application itself. I'm the one who installed it and updates the system. It's difficult to know whether our usage will  be increased. This is a difficult year for everyone. If a company has to cut its budget, one of the first things to go is usually marketing.

It's a very good product but I would recommend going for Qlik Sense because it has a better future, given that it's basically the new version of QlikView.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

On-premises

We appreciate the different methods how data can be provided to a developer, designer and end users. Develop new reports from production databases to final reports without additional tools and
the high-performance loading data from database without any performance issues on the database environment. The loading performance of QlikView data container.

With the solutions of QlikTech, we are able to provide management with requested reports with proven data within a short time.

We can scale the user properly for the report environment in different and multiple ways.

Preparing actual daily reports without requiring additional manpower was the biggest benefit for our company.

We would like to provide our customers with reports in PDF or other popular formats that are not included in the publisher; additional licenses are required for the print and PDF tool. From my point of view, a reduced functionality for this should be included with Enterprise Server Edition or Publisher.

But so far, every new version includes new benefits for us.

We have used QlikView since 2010. That includes one year of testing QlikView Personal Edition for development and comparing the functions with our previous BI solution. We started using QlikView in production at the end of 2011.

We implemented different versions of QlikView within a few years, starting with version 8, Small Business Edition to Enterprise. We also moved to new hardware environment, but never had any issues. All versions we had in production were always stable. At the same time, we never used the first release of a new version for the server environment; the QlikView application has always been tested. Developing and deploying new reports are always tested in test environment before we publish. Scalability of reports should be considered separately.

Issues with the software itself are really rare; we just needed help implementing license keys after installation because direct internet access on the server was not available one time during setup. We always get help within a short / acceptable time. Normally, we just use the big user community for further help or information.

Before 2012, we used SAS and Crystal Reports for reporting and BI. When we started looking for other solution, we evaluated the new version of Crystal Reports, but there was no comparable alternative to QlikView.

A comprehensive concept for the initial setup is very important; there are various ways to implement the server infrastructure. If the concept was done properly, implementation might be complex but not difficult. We never had to contact QlikTech for additional support.

The documentation itself, user forum and several tech days was always helpful to start.

We implemented the whole environment without any additional support. Before we start working with the product, we organized in-house training from a vendor partner for developers and report designers based on our requirements.

My advice for implementation is to create a team made up of developers and IT department staff to set up the concept for test and production environments.

Training for IT and developers is available from the vendor, or if you organize in-house training from the vendor partner. Provisioning of data should be the responsibility of the IT department. You can also plan to have the vendor or vendor partner implement the product.

The vendor offers multiple possibilities for getting started with QlikView. It also depends upon how many reports you need for initial go-live. Starting with the Small Business Edition or Enterprise depends on the company size and the number of users who will work with QlikView.

The only important advice is to take enough time for the concept of the future environment.

That will make it easy to implement all needed add-ons with future changes.

Follow the vendor’s suggestions for scale responsibilities (IT, developer, designer and end user).

The Qlik user forum will be always helpful to find a solution.

I developed an application for a hospital to improve the potential of analysis of that company. I used Windows Server 2008, 8Gb RAM, two processors.

The hospital improved the quality of the data analysis and increased its profits, because, for the first time, they were able to analyze consistent data.

• Speed of development
• Ease of learning
• Low ROI
• Fast deliveries
• Scalability
• Multiplatform, and speed in queries.

• Improvement in the graphical user interface
• Introducing HTML 5
• Context sensitive
• Drag and drop visualization
• Responsive design.

More than five years.

The associative engine and feature-rich expression scripts are the most valuable features of this product.

Easy, low-TCO solution to consolidate and visualise data for analysis and reporting purposes.

It provides better visibility of the company's position and its operations.

I would like to see more visualisation objects features.

I have used QlikView for more than a year.

I encountered minimal deployment issues.

Technical support is excellent.

I have experience with other similar visualizers, but QV offers a better experience in terms of ETL development.

Initial setup was straightforward, with a simple, easy interface. We had a simple setup anyway, not much complexity. We were able to get QV up and running in a very short turnaround time.

It was implemented in-house assisted by a lean vendor advisory team.

• The way data is loaded, transformed and stored in one single file with a high compression rate
• The development flexibility allowing almost any type of relationship between data from disparate sources

Uniformization of KPIs across all departments brings efficacy and effectiveness to coworkers in problem solving.

Performance at front-end level could improve but usually there is a workaround - by reducing application size, splitting applications or the way the UI is presented - without affecting user experience.

I have used it for two years.

There can be issues in terms of stability during usage peeks. In these situations, the server can experience short down times. Again, many of these situations can be prevented by using the best development methodologies.

Technical support is very good. They are always available on providing guidelines.

There are other data visualization tools similar to QlikView. Spotfire, for example, has incredible UI possibilities, but I think QlikView is very ahead in the competition in terms of solution flexibility.

QlikView setup is very straightforward, only requiring server parameterization in terms of ODBC and the QlikView Server. It is not complex when compared to similar products.

It was implemented by an in-house team; some persons on the team had previous experience with QlikView. The learning curve is very quick, but the best practices provided by Qlik must be followed from the beginning of implementing the QlikView architecture.

Due to the quick development of QlikView applications, best practices cannot be disregarded. (For example, load only fields/tables that users need to be available in the application’s layout. When the number of applications starts to increase, this can seriously affect user.

Dynamic dashboards is definitely the most valuable feature. You select your filters and all your graphs and tables are automatically updated; it really saves time when doing analysis! 

Thanks to Qlikview we have been able to set up and share dashboards across our services. We can monitor our internal productivity and revenue, but as well our client’s activity and be proactive if we see a sudden change in volumes. We also monitor our service levels.
Qlikview is giving visibility to our directors and VP , accounts department, as well as operational managers who can follow on their teams productivity. 

Qlikview is very intuitive and user friendly compared to other solutions, however I regret that some of their features are not available for Mac users.

A build your own report feature on standard .qvw would be great. Qlik has recently launched Qliksense, it answers this need but we cannot use the Qliksense feature on Qlikview reports. An all-in-one solution would be perfect.

Since 2008

Initial database set up was the main concern.

Customer Service is good, however we mainly use the Qlikview community. We can reach out to other users / developers who are always available to help.

Before Qlikview we had 2 BI solutions : Cognos and Hummingbird. Hummingbird was more a database extraction tool available for our clients. We then developed our own operational web-based database for our clients to check their transportation invoices and extract instantly the data they needed for reporting purposes. When this solution was live and operational we stopped Hummingbird as it did not make any sense to maintain both solutions.

In parallel, Cognos was our BI tool for dashboards/ graphs. We decided to change to Qlikview since Cognos was more complex in terms of development and less user friendly. 

I would say straightforward. Training was provided by our supplier, and our developers already had BI knowledge . 

Our vendor (Decideis) helped us with the initial set up and training; we then deployed the solution ourselves.

We are really happy with their knowledge of Qlikview. 

Cognos was evaluated and Qlikview was highly recommended by one of our customers.

Define precisely your needs, your budget and the resources available to set-up, deploy and maintain the solution. There are different solutions on the market, choose the one that will answer your needs. 

The features of this product that are most valuable are: its point and click user interface, speed, ability to follow dependencies in data, ability to fix any view in my special sheet, ability to track back to data sources for any output value or part of a graph.

We implemented an application for control of sales team, for controlling. Accounting people or our sales director are able to work with it without extensive training and they are able to do their own analysis without support of IT people. We developed an application for health insurance company that allows them better control of a cost paid to hospitals or doctors. They have very detailed analysis of drugs paid by insurance.

Areas of this product with room for improvement are ETL, presentation of data on a map, what-if modeling or predictive modeling, license policy.

We are using it for, I think, 6 years.

No. But you should respect such special features when you design a data model.

No issues with stability.

No. But we did not used QlikView for Big data.

Customer Service: The customer service is done by partners. So if you have knowledgeable partner the service is good, if not you can easily switch to another. Our country is small and there are several partners who can support QlikView, so I think that every customer could receive good support.Technical Support: Technical support from QlikTech is at standard level. What is non-standard in a comparison with other tools is the very low number of errors that we found. I do not remember any important error during the time we used it.

We used Microstrategy, Actuate, Crystal Reports. Microstrategy was much slower (all of them) and it had very bad support in our country. All three tools consumed much more days for building the applications – but it was 5-6 years ago, I am not familiar with today’s versions.

It was straightforward, but we have skilled people and we are not beginners. We are an IT company.

We did implementation in-house and we deliver projects for our clients. We have people that passed training in QlikTech.

Day to day cost consists from maintenance fee and we have a man, who is responsible for development of the internal application. But the same man together with other members of BI team are working for the customers. Setup cost was not high. When we started we bought 5 licenses and developed the application in-house, but during the years we have invested in the development of our internal applications. It is a continuous improvement.

We have knowledge of Microsoft Analysis Services, Jaspersoft. We sometimes use Jaspersoft as an embedded reporting tool into application. QlikView was nice and easily to learn, so the evaluation period was short.

To do careful requirements analysis, be sure that you have all relevant data available, start the project with somebody, who has an opinion of QlikView.