Silvon was the only vendor that demoed and met our main reporting requirements (twice... initially when acquiring a reporting tool for users on the iSeries and 7 years later when we re-visited our reporting tools for SQL server). We especially needed criteria like "all these but not those". Stratum allowed our users to write and run their own reports, freeing up IT time for projects. The users love the crosstab reporting! Silvon employees are knowledgeable, friendly and caring. The on-line documentation is full of examples and the help videos are great!

We love the ability to manipulate the criteria. A primary requirement for us for reporting is give me all these (items, customers, etc.) but exclude these few. User lists allow us to do that!

We definitely needed Silvon's help to get the tool up and running, but they helped us with the extract, load and processing set-up.

Stratum is very effective in compiling data and sales numbers for my accounts. I can drill down in many different ways to effectively get the tracings needed to conduct my daily meetings and calls. Sometimes it takes a bit of work to learn how to obtain the information that I am looking for but can always save my progress in order to utilize the report again in the future. I regularly import to Excel in order to manipulate and run totals for my yearly budget.

The program allows for me to utilize our sales tracings in order to effectively conduct calls and meetings. I can also track my progress and export to Excel in order to prepare for my upcoming days.

Difficult to get some of the more "funneled" reports and may take time to have the numbers needed but can be saved so work is not all lost. This saved report then can be used in the future.

I like that you can splice and dice data and look at it various ways. If the report set up is done, you can access it quickly at a moments notice in near real time, within a days worth of updates.

My least favorite aspect of the program is that it does not inform you when you are outside of your authorized limits and cannot perform a function. It needs something else. It just lets you spin and try until you give up or determine it is not in the cards. It's a waste of time and disincentive to exploration. In fairness to Silvon, it it is hard to determine where Silvon's limitations are vs those dictated by administrators.

Silvon Software has been providing Business Intelligence software before BI became a buzz word!They provide a robust, scalable solution to deliver business insights against any data set.

I'd have to say that I like the flexibility of the software the most. Insight to Sales, Inventory, Production, Receivables, Payables, General Ledger etc. can be gained by importing data from these applications into Stratum. The software handles 100+ concurrent users.

I frequently export to MS Office tools for better graphics and annotation capability.

Overall, I find Stratum easy to use and exceptional to use as I review data at several levels. However, I struggle with the use of filters. As I drill down to several levels , it still pulls all original data in the fields instead of narrowing the list. I would like to see the filter function replicate the functionality of Excel.

Ability to drill to several levels and change the hierarchy of the fields.

The filter and search functions is not user friendly. As I drill down to a certain level, I expect to use the filter and only see values that are in the field I pick. Instead, I see all original values . I would to see the filter function perform similar to Excel.