QlikView Business Intelligence - A Beginners View

We recently adopted QlikView as our Business Intelligence application, using it primarily to draw from and combine data from three different databases. It is a very cool product that is great for everything from producing regular standard governance reports to providing a playground for cutting and exploring data every which way. For beginners it is pretty easy to get going with QlikView. There is a 'wizard' approach to connecting to data sources and creating a dashboard (I found this most useful when connecting to Excel files). Learning the basics is remarkably quick and easy. Using an existing dashboard is very intuitive with multiple ways to drill down and filter. As well as the obvious clicking on one or more selections on a list approach to filtering and drilling into data you can click directly on chart elements or items in a chart legend, or click and drag over visual elements to achieve the same result. A range of data and image copy/export options can be added as icons to the menu bars at the top of every object - ideal for quickly dropping tables or charts directly into documents. First appearances may give you the impression that this is a fairly simple and limited piece of software, but don't be deceived. Under the hood there is a huge amount of capability hiding, though beyond the basics there is a steeper learning curve for BI newbies like myself. Support exists through a mix of videos, blogs and forums, and there is a downloadable comprehensive 900 plus page guide. Where data is drawn from a mix of sources QlikView will assume that fields with exactly the same name in different datasources are the same thing, and will create links between the different data tables based on these. This can be great and can save time manually matching fields, but it can also create data 'loops' that require a bit of re-naming in the data load statements to fix. As well as vastly improving our understanding of our business at a reasonable financial cost I have found this to be both an easy way to learn BI basics and a great platform for moving up to a more intermediate level of dashboard creation. If an easy to use geographic location mapping option was included this would be a hard product to fault.

Pros

Easy to get started, very intuitive for end users, great data and image output capabilities, simple to use over multiple data sources within one document.

Cons

Creating geographic mapping charts is pretty complex unless third-party add-ons are purchased.

Qlikview: An Analytical Tool

Pros

This is an excellent analytical tool with below best suited features:
1) Flexible chart design
2) A lot of charts and plenty of minutes properties to configure the chart.
3) Power of custom expression using a expression language called "SET ANALYSIS". This enables a better control on data transformation and manipulation.
4) Script editor where in Data Layer can be defined, designed and managed.
5) Nice client server architecture so that report designed can be easily published over to web and access can be controlled easily through management console.
6) Qliksense, a cloud model, is a best thing qlikview has.

Cons

It's nothing like bad things but good if it has few features (that other BI tool has)
1) Data management should be more user friendly. Right now it is in script editor. Someone with good knowledge of Relational Database can easily handle this but a programmer knowledge is must. End users or non technical person may timid to start with qlikview as they will find it hard to start with.
2) Too many properties and configuration available. (It's not a bad thing at all as it gives more flexibility) But many configuration can be easily clubbed together systematically and user do not waste time to find the properties configuration. Meaning configuration should be simplified and structured.
3) Desktop should be as neat and clean as qliksense. Qliksense is way par than desktop in terms of User interface.

Single point of contact for your analysis!

Completed more than 15 implementation across domains like Government, Distribution, Retail, Insurance,Manufacturing and services. Have overall 10+ years of IT experience and 6+ years in BI Worked with one of the Fortune 50 retail giant who uses QV for more than 200 business users around the world across regions. i would say most of the people are happy with the way how QV is helping them on decision making. Since its a retail business, QV handles more volume of data with ease. Thanks to their In-Memory technique.

Pros

1. Associate linking
2. Self Service - Business users can create their own charts and data table with little technical knowledge
3. Inline (Mapping ) for adhoc dimension or values
4. QVD can act as data cubes or even as Data warehouse for medium size companies
5. implementing QV will take less time compare to traditional BI
6. Partner eco- system and support is very good
7. One of the best In-memory BI tool available in the market currently

Cons

1. Initial investment is little high but they have release Qliksense to counter it and it comes with Saas Model as well with more animated data visualization

turning Big Data into Easy decisions

Once I was able to tame it and learn the tricks, it helped me to provide better insights to my customers and also provide them visibility to problems they didn't even knew they had before we implemented QlikView. Usually after our presentations, managers come out with more questions than answers, but not related to the tool, but to the business model they currently have and how to make it more productive, all thanks to Qlikview graphics and display of trends.

Pros

THe flexibility and freedom that BI developers have to work with the suite to create not only management friendly infographics but also the possibility to drill down to any level you need to pinpoint the exact cause of any issues found in a metric, in real time. I must also point out that it can read from almost any data source and provide you with several options and different points of view on what would be considered a useless pile of data that nobody understands or cares about.

Cons

due to its powerful engine and lots of options, the learning curve can be a little longer and steeper than other products.

QlikView is a powerful, flexible BI visualization toolkit that lets you show your users what's in their data

QlikView is an excellent tool for data visualization. Developers can create intuitive solutions with relative ease.

Pros

QlikView has a positive 80/20 ratio. The first 80% of what you need to know (everything you need to know for most visualizations) can be learned in 20% of the time. The remaining 20% (complex expressions, extensions, and other advanced options) takes 80% of the time to learn.

A skilled analyst can sit down on day one and create a useful, meaningful QlikView solution. An advanced user could spend years learning new possibilities and creating more advanced offerings.

Cons

QlikView is an "in-memory" BI tool, which does offer speed and data manipulation capabilities. However, the data model is loosely managed. If it's not structured carefully, loading and processing times become unnecessarily long. The underlying model could be strengthened and otherwise improved to help the platform scale to larger projects.

With very less/minor effort we can build attractive Dashboards in no time. Cool formatting features.

Performance, easy use, less maintenance required.

Pros

Dashboard Designing made so easy in this Tool.
Bunch of formatting options and features.
Scripting capabilities took this tool to next level to build more complex dashboards in a simpler way.
Implementation and maintenance is so easy compare to Business Objects.
Data integration, mapping capabilities, drill functionalities are too good.
In Memory capabilities gears up performance.
Another big advantage is, just one product.

Cons

Not that great when you work with data sources like BW and Big Data.
R integration is not possible.
For Detailed reporting is it not the tool preferable.
If you are looking for a great scheduling and publication capabilities you may not like this tool since this requires a separate setup like NPrining etc..

Have been using QlikView for 13 years. Love the product!

Pros

QlikView is extremely easy to use, user-friendly and developer-friendly. At the same time, it offers a lot of depth - when a complex solution is required, QlikView offers robust tools for your most intricate analytical needs.

Cons

After 13 years of using the product, there are many little things that I don't like. For example, while QlikView scales up very well to handle hundreds of millions (sometimes even billions) of rows of data, QlikView Server management tools are relatively simplistic. It's easy to manage a single server or a few servers, with a few dozen of reload tasks, but it may be difficult to manage many servers with thousands of users and hundreds or thousands of reload tasks. Having said that - QlikView is still one of the most well-rounded tools that offer a great frond end and a phenomenal back end in one package.

I work everyday with QV. You can customize everything with extreme ease in a very short time

my work revolves around these BI software. They gave me the opportunity to take certifications

Pros

The very high level of personalization of formulas and objects. Moreover there are different versions of the software (like the QV publisher) to further restrict the accesses of the staff involved in the consultation. Excellent tool for SQL

Cons

you need some training to use this software, and a minimum of one year of use to be able to use it with ease. It is not easy to understand the "set analysis" syntax to make intrarecord selections.
The qmc could be improved. It would be interesting to integrate the possibility to refresh the document directly from the front end to update the data analyzed. Improve the use of macros and enable the QV publisher to use them

Great tool

I mentioned above - we needed to consolidate, analyse and use data for managing 13 hospitals. There were various ERP systems, HR systems, clinical systems, etc, so we had to implement interfaces and put all data on the same level, then automate the pumping of data, reporting, etc. (this was not in my current job)

Pros

User-friendliness of the tool while doing analyses. Many companies use excel, pivot tables etc., but once you discover how easy and fast it is with Qlik, you will love it. It is also possible to use it for free, with limitations, so you can test it. We have implemented this tool in hospitals, from where we needed the data to be collected on 1 place and then analysed. Normally you have a problem, that you have various sources of data. Each hospital is using different information system (ERP, clinical IS, HR system, etc), but once you set up bridges and automate the interfaces, you will have the same level of data quality from all sources. An the the fun begins.
Especially great is the speed of drilling in data and adjusting the dimensions, because often analysis is about discovery, not a reporting the same charts on and on.
Simply great tool.

Cons

Maybe only that it takes some time to learn how to use it, but compared to many other systems it's good. also you have to learn how to code in data interfaces (there is also a good wizard for that) or you can find a consultant for this (even online), not even this is not a big deal.

Merging and structuring data to create meaningful single customer views

Allowing us to knit together multiple data sources into a single customer view to aid our marketing and sales teams to better target their audiences.

Pros

Has a multitude of options to enable the creation of complex dashboards. Fantastic online community providing excellent support and guidance. Good intuitive, professional interface makes it productive to use. Can handle extremely large record sets without a problem.

Cons

Tough initial learning curve to get to grips with the language and best practice methods. Some extras likes maps and email marketing ability carry additional costs. Requries computer with lots of RAM.

Like it’s little brother Qlik Sense, this program works well.

We absolutely love the Qlik family of programs. They work well and do as advertised. We had decided to switch to the much-cheaper Qlik Sense but still occasionally use QlikView for the customers we already had in the system.

Pros

While this program takes some time to get used to, once you learn it, it’s a breeze. The ability to manipulate data to make it just as you want is a major plus. Many other programs restrict your ability to show your data in just the way that you want.

Cons

The price can be a bit much. They did listen and thus created Qlik Sense, but at the higher price point, you would expect this program to have the same features as its competitors, but alas, it is still lacking. Not too terribly much, but there are features that it really should have that it does not.

Best dashboard visualization tool

Qlikview enable us to create high performance statistical dashboard which help us provide great user experience to our clients. Another thing is the drilldown capabilities you can have this easily and without scripting or coding.

Pros

I like the most on this software is the creation of formulas for your chart object. it enable you to create formula on what you imagine. You can get the computation the you need. Another is the performance, For me this is the fastest data visualization tool i have used.

Cons

I think the only cons of this software is the price. Its pricey but it worth it.

QlikView and Qlik Sense

Pros

QlikView's unique in-memory, associative data engine makes it possible for an organization to gain insight quickly from vast amount of data.

QlikView is trend setter in the business discovery space and a leader in the Gartner's magic quadrant for business discovery tools.

Cons

QlikView's visualization capabilities are not as strong as one offered by Tableau but Qlik Tech is addressing that with a new product -- Qlik Sense. It has yet to be seen how QlikView and Qlik Sense will work as a suite.

Qlik Tech has yet to articulate their long-term vision for QlikView and Qlik Sense. Customers feel uncertainty due to lack of clarity.

QlikView allows you to build fantastic data based apps for your users

Pros

QlikView has so many options and capabilities that it can generally do almost anything that you want it to do. The associative model makes analysis exceptionally easy.

Cons

The amount of options and capabilities make it difficult to pick up, plus the scripting language to load data can be a hurdle to overcome. Building apps is fairly complex, but when built, those apps can be given to business users.

Brilliant piece of software for business reporting!

Brilliant if you have had the correct training!

Pros

Can pull in data in its rawest form and make sense of it by creating charts, lists, graphs.
You can design and develop almost anything and can link in other pieces of data from Excel or tables files sat on the server.

Cons

This is not the easiest software to use and will require extensive training which in itself. Since using this I have had 2 separate training courses to get my head around the coding and scripting side of it. The design part os easy if you have someone already transforming the data for you.

Business analytics and visualizations at their best

Pros

Qlikview is a great tool
1.To build aggregations and analytics on fly.
2. Charts and visualizations are best.
3. Relational data model is easy to build and provides lots of flexibility to analyze data.
4. Tool can read data from many data sources and ERP like SAP
5. Lots of technology upgrades and integrations like NPrinting, GI maps are very useful features.

Cons

1.Language syntax is close to SQL but not exactly. Its sometimes confusing.
2. Does not provide lot of flexibility with objects and sheets

10 years have given me the opportunity to see QlikView in action

Pros

Qlik has always been about giving the user unparalleled flexibility. Some customers use QlikView as a powerful visualization tool on top of a well though out BI stack. Others leverage QlikView's ETL and scripting engine to wrangle disparate data sources into a simple to use tool.

Cons

With flexibility comes some complications. Dashboards and reports can be built out quickly but new customers will find that the number of options can be somewhat overwhelming. Complex visualizations and manual scripting can take time to polish, often leaving the customer wondering where the 'Wow' they saw in the sales cycle went.

Powerful, detailed dashboards, difficult backend

The dashboards are powerful, but not as attractive as other software in this market space. There is a steep learning curve. Our SQL developer was not able to get it to work so we had to hire a consultant who was specifically knowledgable in the Qlik iteration of SQL. The long license leases seem to be a shady way to increase the profits without providing any additional functionality.

Pros

The dashboards are powerful and you are able to drill down into more granular views

Cons

The queries on the back end are not standard MSSQL, MySQL or pSQL, so you have to learn Qlik's custom SQL iteration to get it to do what you want it to. The time out for license leases is ridiculously long, which forces you to buy licences for people who may only check dashboards once or twice a month.

QlikView is good, and makes it easy for my work to be shared with other individuals.

Using QlikView has helped me produce nice graphics that are completely zoomable to the end user. QlikView also has some nice graphical and analytical capabilities that help me communicate my message.

Pros

QlikView's data visualization options are nice, although not best in class. The way QlikView offers zoom in capabilities is much better than any other data visualization tool I've ever used, and the ability to share analysis is great.

Cons

I had an enormous difficulty connecting QlikView with various data sources, although once connected, the system works fine. QlikView's graphics are a little different than other data visualization tools - like the zooming - which are sometimes an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage.

Excellent tool for data visualization for small to medium size businesses.

Pros

Ability to combine data sources
Good features to make analytics dashboards
Natural search to navigate complex information
Robust mobile apps
Simplicity and ease of use
Integration with other Applications

Cons

Data management isn't so user friendly
The price can be a bit much
Requries computer with lots of RAM