The ideal software

Pros

When i first started to use MicroStrategy, i was skeptical. The reason behind my skepticism was the huge amount of features that they offer. Usually it bounds to make the quality go down. However,for this particular software,it didn't happen. It's a great experience that helped me move up the ladder in the short span of my career.

Cons

The software can be a little slow sometimes. Sometimes the scaling is not perfect. The slow learning curve is also an issue.

What can't Microstrategy do?

I started using Microstrategy from day 1 at my job and I loved the ease of being able to drag and drop different data points onto a dossier. That was just so amazing. I learned the ins and outs and actually moved my way onto the Microstrategy Team to help develop it and bring it to more people.

Pros

The thing that I like most about this software is the ability that it has to bring in multiple different sources, from multiple different data types and allow the user to use them and present them in a way that is easily understandable. For example on my day to day job I work with excel files, data warehouse queries, and other kinds of data. I am easily with in a couple of minutes able to put all these different data types into one dossier for easy view and consumption for anyone in my business with a Microstrategy License.

Cons

There are a couple things that I don't like about Microstrategy. There are somethings that seem like they should have been there the whole time, for example if I wanted to look at trends over day, month, or week previously I would not be able to do that without creating a workaround for it. They are coming out with a release soon that will make that possible and easy to accomplish. I just feel like it should have been ther from the beginning

MicroStrategy 10 is outstanding

Pros

The technology is great. Even though this is one of the legacy BI vendors, their technology has kept up with the newer vendors.

Cons

The support has been slow for the past year or so.

Next Version?

We use Microstrategy to create demonstration dashboards for our our analytics software. They have a fairly robust user community and they are getting better with each iteration. Beyond the way one has to manipulate the frames and maps, the software is powerful and useful for creating data visualization dashboards.

Pros

The software is easy to install and get up and running. It handles a wide variety of data types and has many options for displaying data. They now have a compilable version that lets developers hard code the dashboards to work with input software which is nice (although a little pricey for smaller applications).

Cons

The user interface was less than intuitive, development support was not strong, and some of the features do not respond as expected. Specifically, maps do not appear to scale properly - I wound up with a much larger map (the entire northern hemisphere) than wanted (the continental USA) and could never get them to display properly unless I removed the data element and started over. Setting up dashboard frames to fit various screen sizes is a little complicated. Setting up “reusable frames” was a little difficult to master, because of the sidebar configuration tools.

Lots of functionalities. We have more than 10 year for 100 users

Reports to stackholders. Reports to clients.

Pros

Versatile - Dashboard, charts and lists: analyze from a more macro perspective or go to the line detail • Flexible - Receive reports by email and create alerts (datamining). Use dynamic filters or create your own personal analysis online • Available - access via Web, Office andMobile New ways to explore data (Dashboards) Tailor made reports with scheduled deliveries Ability to provide customers with OnLine access to Reports and Dashboards Crossing information from multiple Base Data + creation of new InHouse objects New ways to explore data (Visual Insight, Dashboards, Drills) Accessing OnTheGo Information via Mobile Fast + information + dynamic

Cons

Sometimes is not an easy learning curve.

Leader in BI tools

My company previously used tableau as our BI tools. Tableau is impressive in building nice and interactive visualization but not so much on keeping the structure of the data which can lead to data integrity issues. Microstrategy in the beginning was behind in visualization but over time the development has improved significantly in many areas. With microstrategy, the final product can be fully trusted and consistent across the board.

Pros

Evolving periodically for better. Really good in maintaining data structures and hierarchy to ensure data integrity and consistency Capable to do almost anything that other competitors have. Hyper intelligence is a game changer in BI world.

Cons

1. Setup can be complicated and difficult since involved many parties (driver vendor, database vendor, etc) due to compatibility issues. 2. Prefer inner join, less support for outer join. 3. Relationship and data structures development can take lots of time and thought.

MicroStrategy tool was helpful for me providing daily, monthly, and quarterly reporting to directo

Easy sending

Pros

Scalable MicroStrategy was a helpful tool for providing daily, monthly, and quarterly reporting due to the ability to build automated reports that can be sent to large groups of people using distribution lists.,data from multiple SOR sources in the organization helped in monitoring our SLA management. security features to allow the report to be used by multiple roles and levelsMobile functionality

Cons

users not having ability to make changes to metrics and attributes without having to rely to heavily on MicroStrategy developers, it would make the product a great dea and more useful.

Microstrategy

Its pretty easy and compatible product to learn and my client used it extensively for Reporting and Dashboard

Pros

Excellent User Interface Lot of Drag and Drop features so new Users can learn this pretty easily Lot of default virtualization and dashboards are present

Cons

Data cache memory is not large enough to hold terabytes of data Join across different databases is not straighforward

Love MSTR

Pros

Ease of use: as a non-SQL user MSTR allows me to quickly and easily get the data I need in the format I need it in

Cons

Learning curve can be steep. Also charts and graph functions are lacking in the detailed formatting options you need to make a dashboard presentable for executive presentations

A good BI solution for big data work

- Allowed me to query big data

Pros

Microstrategy has the ability to integrate with multiple data sources across the board from all channels of your companies data streams.

Cons

It is definitely not as easy to learn as tableu. The learning curve is a little steep but people switching from tableau should face couple of weeks of challenges.

Easy to use and very appealing interface

We have a reliable and appealing platform to report our daily results. MicroStrategy also allow to implement changes and add new data and objects in a matter of minutes into our production platform.

Pros

It is faster to implement and do not require too much customization. Most of the widgets and features are ready to use. The admin and user interfaces are intuitive and they do not generate errors or bugs during installation or heavy use by the end users. Very stable and reliable platform.

Cons

Price. They initial investment is higher comparing to another bundle software (Power BI, Tableau). However, the extra licensing is not very expensive since we can pay by active user. There is also a free end-user product (Desktop) that is focus on analytic end-users that do not require to modify objects but accessing dashboards and reports.

Great tool

Hello, Microstrategy is a great tool for Business Intelligence. Many years after the beginning of the company, they knew how to follow up their product. Best product in terms of self-service bi, vizualization, reporting and scalability ! We've tested a lot of reporting tools ( BO, Qkvw, Tableau, Oracle) but none of them are better on the full list of functionalities of Microstrategy.

Pros

Number of functionnalities compared to challenger

Cons

Before the v10, Microstrategy was late on specific topics but now they did the good investment for the future.

My company utilized MicroStrategy to provide Automotive Dealers with reporting dashboards.

Pros

The reliability was key. We had to refresh data weekly for over 2,000 dealerships and had many thousands of users, so it was important the dashboards were working 100% of the time.

Cons

It was difficult for our team to make updates to the dashboards when requested by our clients. Also, custom reports were a bit dofficult to create and schedule. Still a good reporting product, though, and a great value for the money because you can display all sorts of data in different ways (bar chart, pie chart, trend lines).

Solid BI tool for enterprise wide reporting but resource intensive (both cost and initial setup)

Pros

- Full of advanced features like data storage in MicroStrategy cubes for faster reporting times, advanced grouping and filtering, ability to write your own SQL in the backend, ability to customize using SDK interface - MicroStrategy Mobile is game changer. Great app and makes a solid impression on C-suite executives

Cons

- Initial setup takes time (If you compare with Tableau, etc, the setup of MicroStrategy is much more time intensive). Have to setup all attributes and measures beforehand.

In-depth Product, Great for Enterprise, Too Heavy for Small Business

Overall it's a great tool, and is best served in a large organization when you can spend time setting up an in-depth project. I have used most major components of the tool for business intelligence and reporting projects at large organizations and the users have been satisfied. For a small or medium sized business who does not have time to invest heavily in the infrastructure, I would recommend a "lighter" program.

Pros

It has an immense amount of features, functionality, integrations, and plug-ins that can be used to better analyze data. It also has a strong analytical engine. It covers just about every need for enterprise business intelligence.

Cons

It is a heavy platform to setup, requiring dedicated servers, and in-depth knowledge on the application itself. It is not easy to architect a project without having specific training of the tool. It is fairly complex for developers.

Great reporting and analytics tool!

Pros

The dashboards and reports that MicroStrategies is able to produce are beautiful, insightful, actionable, and informative. We have been using them for portfolio management and production reporting for several years and are pretty happy.

Cons

The setup can be cumbersome and the software did take awhile to learn. It's not incredibly intuitive like some of the programs I have used in the past, but the results are worth the efforts.

I studied the competition to see if this product was up to the other BI leaders (gartner).

you can set different user roles and levels easily. I was able to advise on this product

Pros

It works with the main Operative System, it doesn't need a expensive hardware to run. Excellent training program (not too expensive). It is easy to automate the sending of reports to user lists (great the report tool too because allow you to switch from a table to a chart in real time). It is a web based solution so it is accessible from any device from anywhere. generally user friendly because it helps the user to create the data cloud without having a thorough technical knowledge of SQL or programming. It is compatible with most data sources with connectors. An important and unique feature is that of being able to insert comments, note and share the analysis.

Cons

It takes a long time to configure the software the first time (installation and connection to server). Old-fashioned design, the Desktop environment can be a bit more intuitive and quick. Has a licensing system that is a bit too complicated. It should be improved data export functionality.

A Million Applications

Pros

This software is so versatile. It let's me slice and dice data from a variety of sources into user friendly dashboards and reports.

Cons

Building a new dashboard can be tedious but I'm not a programmer by trade. I have been able to isolate the reporting sources and fields and build my own dashboards it just hasnt been as fast or simple as I had hoped.

Very high-end

Pros

This software is loaded with features/functionality; I don't think I've run into anything that it just can't do. Their training and user forums are also extremely helpful.

Cons

Very steep learning curve for administration/development and requires very knowledgeable support staff to get and keep it going. I think that is to be expected with such a complex product however for a smaller company it can present challenges.

A very comprehensive data analysis tool

Pros

This is a very powerful software that allows us to manipulate mountains of data into usable reports. There are tons of options of how to format and organize the data into various reports for different audiences. The possibilities are basically endless.

Cons

It's not a very intuitive user interface, and can be very difficult to figure out the best way to accomplish a certain look for the reports you're generating. Often times, trial and error seems to be the best way to go. As I gain experience with the software, I'm sure this will become less of an issue.

BI Analytics Reporting Tool

Pros

We use microstrategy to create custom dashboards for internal use and for our customers. We are able to create SSO from our customer portal to microstrategy to allow our customers to have access to their dashboards. With microstrategy you are able to provide summary level dashboards with links that allow you to click to drill down to receive further details. We are also able to provide links so the user can export the reports to excel so they can further filter the information as needed. The creation of cubes enables us to have the data calculations ready and available to reduce the response time to present dashboards to the end user.

Cons

Our customers would like to be able to subscribe to receive scheduled emails of their dashboards versus having to login to our portal to view the information. We have not be able to figure out how to provide them this feature.

I liked using the system but it was hard to always trust the data

Really liked the ease of use.

Pros

It was easy to use and create adhoc reports. I was able to send out reports to my clients or those who I supported to give them a good look of their business.

Cons

It was hard to trust the data. When you can't trust the data then anything the software can do becomes mute. It was partly our fault but didn't love that aspect.

Best Reporting/Analytics Software Ever!

Pros

This software is super easy to use and manipulate data for various kinds of reporting. It has helped me find shrink issues more than once.

Cons

The only con is that it needs to be used in conjunction with a retail software. I would recommend using Mi9.

Really Improved with recent updates

Pros

I used to not be a fan of microstrategy’s analytics / BI software, but they seem to really listen to their customers and improve their software with every release. I especially like the enhancements to the geographic data features and visualizations in their recent release. Turning GIS data into an aesthetic map chart is simple now.

Cons

While microstrategy’s software has improved greatly in recent releases, I still think the forecasting functionality could be improved. You can’t do as much with forecasting in this software than you can in some competing software.

A well organized and useful software that could use some aesthetic improvement

MicroStrategy is a powerful analytic tool that we use to pull anything from lab data to customer service performance stats. It is customizeable and has a great multitude of functions.

Pros

I use this software to run reports on DNA samples that I process at my job. It is intuitive and well organized. I learned how to use it very quickly. It has convenient features such as labels that appear when you hover over an icon. I also have not had any issues with it such as lagging or crashing or other functional failures.

Cons

The only room for improvement is the web design. Adding some colors, bigger icons, and reorganizing the display of options would make it easier on the eyes and brain and more delightful to use.

Numbers mean everything

Pros

I enjoy having the ability to run custom reports that help me understand how my staff is behaving on the phones. Exporting that data is a breeze, overall a great product.

Cons

It can be intimidating for new users, better integration of help functions would be appreciated.

A comprehensive but complex BI tool

Pros

Microstrategy is a world leader when it comes to BI and analytics. The tool is great for large-scale deployments where many aspects of the business need to be considered.

Cons

While catering to all potential BI and analytics needs, Microstrategy seriously lacks when it comes to ease of use. Competitors like Power BI and Sisense have made deployment of BI tool extremely easy and in comparison, Microstrategy feels lacklustre.

Great tool, free desktop was a bonus!

Using this tool, to learn and get into enterprise analytics was fun. The free desktop version also allowed folks to analyze excel and other data sources. this gave them some useful utility to look their own data and seeing trends.

Pros

quick to learn and start using from no experience. The videos on you-tube also helped pickup some of the concepts. The free desktop tool, also had a good guide and videos to get started.

Helpful tool for Business Analytics

The overall experience was good. I used it for about 1 year while I was working for Business Analytics.

Pros

I like the desktop version of it more. Its very easy to create metrics and use them in different reports. Multiple people can work together on a particular project.

Cons

Get small bugs that really trouble sometimes. Also, the customer support is not very robust. There are forums but cannot find trusted answers to all the problem-related queries.

Great for reporting

Pros

This tool is very dependable and easy to customize, has great visualization and very user friendly interface. It is very good for reporting.

Cons

Its installation was not the easiest and took quite some time. It is also quite pricey.

The best Business Intelligence software

I am using the Microstrategy platform in order to generate reports for forecast, orders, invoices, scorecards and dashboards so that I could have a complete overview of the business.

Very powerful data gathering, takes awhile to master

Pros

I love how powerful this program is. You can gather data from different applications and compile it all into microstrategy. You can then organize and display the data in many ways to fit your needs.

Cons

This software is not very user friendly. There are many different attributes you can assign but the definitions and understanding on how each behaves is difficult to master.

Good presentation but it is slow

It is good for weekly usage but slow for daily usage

Pros

Visual effects and graphics were brilliant

Cons

But it processeed data very slowly getting a report for an analysis was time consuming

Strong mobile reporting platform

Microstrategy is a great platform for mobile analytics and offers a lot of functionality out of the box. If you are looking for a solution that will cover 80% of your needs when it comes to mobile reporting then seriously consider Microstrategy.

Pros

Depth and breadth of OLAP functions and detailed users guides. Beautiful mobile reports and growing library of visualizations.

Cons

Microstrategy has a steep learning curve and we have had performance challenges with large datasets.

Micro Strategy

Pros

I like the simple ease of being able to bring the data in and make something useful from it.

Cons

Not everything is very straightforward. Definitely takes some getting used to. Once you do there is so much that can be done.

Does its job well

We tried MicroStrategy on a trial basis. We experimented with the same dashboard designs we frequent in our current subscription software.

Pros

It's not difficult to use on a basic level. I can certainly build a basic dashboard that my bosses would find satisfactory.

Cons

I found the learning curve to be a lot less forgiving than some of its competitors.

Decent but fading Analytics Solution Tool

Suffice to say it needs a major overhaul or it is being threatened to be overtaken by new entrants in the market.

Pros

Some of the generic functionalities are very well implemented. It is a great bridge between SQL and Excel-like tools. You can view your data, import it, export it and operate upon it.

Cons

Where it fails miserably is in its UI and ease of use. It is not a tool you would want to learn for fun or even love working with.

Reporting made easy for the business user.

Insight into operations and licensing without needing the internal data warehouse knowledge

Pros

The software is very easy to use with an uncluttered interface and generating reports is a breeze. The option to share and schedule reports helps to be on top of business, across multiple users and teams.

Cons

The app could use some UI modernization. A mobile app to look at reports and dashboards would be great.

Good analysis, bad softward

Improve the UX

Pros

Generates good reports - but little analysis. The word limit is pushing me to write longer review which is not needed

Cons

Hard to download The download experience reminded with computers in late 1990s. Also, my work firewall did not recognise it as safe software, so I am using this app from my home with my personal laptop... This is not a normal business experience

Version 10.x is really powerful

I've been testing the latest version 10 and it is really good, it has new features to create dashboards in an easy and quickly way more similar to what the market for self service BI is requiring

Pros

Good design, easy to use, development is really fast letting you select the data and object that you want to visualize and therefore just create a dashboard within seconds.

Cons

The best is to have a well designed data model first or a data warehouse to pull the data and just do some of the latest transformation with the tool, that way you can get the most of it.

It's not bad

Pros

It has some good graphs, and you can add your own ones. Intelligent Cubes are the only unique feature I've seen it in this BI tool. It has a good community.

Cons

Dealing with SQL queries, and Microsoft Access was difficult, and probably result in an error. Even though the query was 100% correct. It generates wrong values for the query I used. I think I prefer another tool.

MicroStrategy Review

Used for BI reporting capabilities. We were able to generate dynamic reports utilizing a plethora of fields determined by the business. Ability to drag and drop fields into columns or rows, drill down/expand, and export information as needed.

My team uses MicroStrategy analytics to measure our success and create dashboards.

Pros

We can easily create new reports and dashboards, as well as visualizations that enable us to understand how our team is performing and where we can improve our results.

Cons

Some of the dashboards take quite a while to create. While they look beautiful when they are done, it takes too long to get them done, by which time some of the data is outdated.