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.

I am a financial analyst and monitor sales and GP daily for our business. Without Silvon my job would be very difficult to do efficiently. I have seen the capabilities of competitive software and I am very pleased that we have Silvon. Silvon is one of the most useful and user friendly tools on the market, I highly recommend it.

User friendliness, ability to build custom views on the fly and regoranize data quickly. This allows my team to get down to identify problem areas of the business.

Would like a multi sorting ability for columns like excel has.

Customer service on Stratum is top-notch. Questions and service issues are addressed quickly. The software absolutely does what it says it will do. The cons are primarily around some of the difficulties of building reports. It is impossible to copy and paste a measure item so it is more labor intensive than it seems like it needs to be to build and alter reports. This is especially bad at the beginning of the year when reports need to be changed. Overall, I give Stratum 4/5 stars because I am happy with the support and the way the program operates other than the report building.

Service

Report building

I personally love Stratum, and especially Viewer, because of the flexibility setting up reports and its quick response time. the ability to slice and dice the data is endless. The business considers it a very powerful too. For me, I would like to see two areas changed if possible. The node concept on the attributes is difficult to train on, and adds steps to every filter. If they were designed more like the measures where you can edit them without opening them up to the 2nd node would be wonderful. Also the verbiage used within the software sometimes isn't very user friendly. Terms such as member list, edit attribute relationships caption expression and format string are not terms that are readily understood or received by new users. I still love it!

The flexibility of drilling down from year to months, and then back up. Also the ability to drill down on unlimited attributes. Ability to budget within the tool and at any level. The pre-built Stratum expressions in Viewer. The flexibility of inter-changing rows and columns. the ease of creating/applying conditional filters.

The node concept of attributes, the limitation of pick up fields, the export at size 13 font, the fact that the filters don't export out with the report, the difficulty of adding budget where no history exists,

I find Stratum a useful tool for month-end reporting of sales results and analysis by customers and channels. Even though Stratum was initially bought by our Sales organization for their use, our finance organization is able to use Stratum by tailoring data views that enable us to understand the drivers of our monthly sales including customer pricing. Even though stratum has graphing capabilities, due to our internal presentation requirments we download stratum data to Excel and create our graphs using Excel.

Ease of use in creating views and downloading to Excel

Difficulty in using existing views as the year rolls-over to new year. Many existing views do not allow editing to change the year.

Stratum consistently meets our needs and when it does not the issue is quickly resolved. It is an easy platform to learn and teach.

ease of use, multiple selections

The loading time but it is standard with comparable platforms.

Silvon is great for getting reports on demand quickly using company data that in the past had to be handled via pivot tables. Once a view is set up, even the least tech-savvy user can get the information they need in the click of a button. Their folks are attentive and have many ongoing training opportunities for the casual to advanced user.

My only real complaint is that the formatting component (Planner) does not come standard and is an add-on for an additional fee. As my company did not want to invest in this fee for every user, most everything that comes out of Silvon has to be reformatted in Excel which kills a lot of the time-saving aspect of one button reporting. The coding used is also somewhat convoluted if you're not a programmer.

Stratum.Viewer provides the data analysis tools that our business needs to run successfully. Most users are happy with the product, and our user base is constantly growing.

No software loads on PCs

Amount of time to reload cube

It is a flexible supply chain management software. Inventory, manufacturing, business can be tracked completely.

May take time to become an expert but it depends on the individual.

It helps out with daily work activities. It's easy to navigate through simple tasks.

At this time I have no complaints about the difficulty using the program.

Stratum is a relatively easy to use database that helps slice and dice data. Many different ways to view data help with business decisions.

I like the ability to pull specific data on the information needed.

It was difficult to create reports from beginning.