Halo Software

Pros

The broad range of connectors, and the functionality and flexibility of the product make it great fit for our company needs. The template database makes it easy to build dashboards by incorporating best practice measures by area of business.

Cons

On-premise only means cloud data sources must be replicated or partially extracted locally for inclusion.

Great for a small companies making their first step into BI but maybe will be quickly outgrown, avoid if a mid to larger size company.

Pros

- Simple BI Toll great for small companies or simple requirements
- Fair price point for services provided

Cons

- Limited customization
- Challenging Integration to other systems
- "You get what you pay for" is true with functionality vs. pricing

Pros

Visibility in inventory production and finance.
Value in planning strategy
Metrics for shop floor goals.

Cons

None so far, this has been great for our planning, company strategy and on time delivery goals. Training users may be an issue when the time comes.

Best reporting investment we have ever made! Great company to work with. Post support is unparalleled. Response and attention to our questions and issues is prompt and thorough. They keep adding enhancements and pre-programmed modules to keep us on the proactive side of daily business decisions!

Pros

Browser agnostic
Ease of accessibility for Remote employees
Scheduled reporting
Simple, varied Charting functionality
Flexibility of using several types of data sources to combine data in one view

Cons

Pane sizing - views with a lot of measures run out of real estate
Time Dimension response when changing from saved view default

Fo us, it was important to have data integration combined with data quality tools, mobile, and a mature data visualization tool. We have all of that and more with Halo.

Pros

We had looked at many options for a BI suite that fits the needs of our diverse client base. Halo understands our unique needs and worked with us to create a solution. Their pre-built ERP integration and mobile framework was more than just another data visualization tool. Halo understands the market and brings immediate value to every discussion we have.

Make sure to take advantage of the proof of concept. This is when you see your data working in their system and it gives you a good sense on how you'll be using it on your daily activities.

Pros

Software and support are great. Our company had several upgrades and we had assistance during each one. The main value is the ability to blend data and use the pre-built dashboards and reports. These allow to see value right away. Whole project was up and running in just a few weeks.

Cons

Their app doesn't have all functions that the desktop version has but considering this type of software we normally use desktop versions regardless.

We implemented Halo for our Sales dashboards initially. It has already helped us to identify areas where we need to focus on increased gross profit or sales campaigns. We are implementing with inventory next which will be a very valuable tool.

Pros

I love Halo's flexibility and ease of use. It is very easy to create the dashboards and reports that you need. Additionally it is great to be able to drill down levels to see directly where the information is coming from. The automatic alerts and collaboration tools further enhance the product to make it very easy and relevant.

The Halo team was great to work with and provided superb customer support. We were able to do a quick implementation and were up and running quickly for our leadership team.

Pros

I like the fact that the information provided is in an easy to understand format and you can quickly see if there is a business metric that needs to be investigated. Halo is easy for the leadership team to use and to do their own quick drill downs without having to ask IT for assistance. It is very intuitive. We view BI as a resource to point management to what to focus on and Halo provides an excellent tool to accomplish this.

Cons

There really are no cons. I find it a bit distracting the way we get pop up boxes when navigating the mouse over the charts, but that is a minor thing.

Pros

How easy it is to create a dashboard by dragging and dropping items. Drilling for the data is very easy and takes a matter of seconds.

Cons

Need more formatting control in regards to percentages, currency, and other misc things. Some charts do not present things easily.

Pros

It is easy to navigate and drill up or down to get information. This is a very powerful tool and allows the user to look at information in various different ways that would have taken much longer to put together manually.

Cons

So far, everything is working out great. We just need to get more data cubes added so that we can analyze additional aspects of the business.

Great product overall. Our users have easily adapted to using it and greatly prefer Halo compared with SSRS reports and/or connecting Excel to a cube. It still uses the reliable Microsoft backend (database engine, SSIS, & SSAS) and makes it all usable without having to be an expert in everything.

Pros

Very user friendly for both users and administrators. As an administrator of several applications, I've found this is one of the easiest to learn.

Cons

Loose a little flexibility with charts and other formatting. However, Halo has been in contact with us asking what they could do to improve their product.

It has several pre-built connectors, which made it much easier to obtain the data of the systems used by our operation.

Pros

It has a great training team, which allows quick implementation with results with less cost and time.

We are starting to use Halo and we are excited with the results and possibilities that it brings us. It is certainly a key tool for rapid data analysis and decision making. We are moving towards an intensive use of Halo in several departments.

Pros

The Halo analytics tools are quite nice to use from building cubes to using the results. At various points, it is quite intuitive.

Advice to Others

Know your data sources well. Understand what and how you want the results before you start building.

I use the Halo BI to bring insights to the managers of our clients. The integration feature with ERPs and Maps are great. It's not just another vizual tool.

Pros

Good for any size of company, easy to implement, Prebuilt for ERP / CRM, Prebuilt templates for our industries and for our clients.

Cons

There is not a negative point

Very good training, easy to understand product and Prism looks great

From the start of training to support afterward, I've been completely impressed. This product is honestly amazing. I have never seen a company provide the level of support with the almost instant response times from their support team. Not to mention the politeness and knowledge provided. Halo truly provides more than they advertise.

Pros

Ease of use - once you get into using it, you get hooked on what can be done.
Security - as an administrator I decide who sees what and at what level.
Prebuilt to my needs - haven't found what it can't do yet or what the great support team can't help us with.

Cons

What do I like least about this product. Well nothing so far. The only limitation when creating a View is your imagination.

Advice to Others

Absolutely and without question, use the Halo Support Team. They are the best.

Halo delivers a premium BI solution that is more that just easy to use, state of Art solution. The products time to value is fantastic you can have BI dashboards available in half the time of many competitors, and can be supported by users in the departments with little support from IT. We really were excited about the pre-built interfaces to many of the standard ERP and CRM solutions, along with Standard view templates by industry and company departments requirements.
With the most recent release they know have predictive analytics to allow you to forecast "look forward" trends based upon industry standard predictive models.

Pros

I feel the customer support and quality of the software is fantastic. we have gone through 6 upgrades without issues, and the support was working with us every step of the way, without any extra costs other than the annual maintenance. The other real benefit we experienced was the ability to import data from multiple sets of systems, integrate them into one cohesive data set, validate the data, and deliver actionable prebuild templates for our industry.

Cons

As Halo grows the software is getting better and better, they are investing heavily with industry experts and is becoming a Tier one supplier with more knowledge than just another BI platform.

Advice to Others

in the selection process take advantage of the proof-of-concept sales process. If / when you select their software take advantage of their industry experts and potentially some of the consulting expertise to get some very quick wins. you will see results in days/weeks not Months & Quarters of many of their competitors.

Halo BI has developed a fantastic product for solving the analytical problems a company typically encounters. Pairing a strong data engine (data warehouse, ETL) with an easy-to-use front end they've created a solution that we embraced quickly and appeased both the technical data guru's and the data consumers who just want to drag, drop, point and click. Mobile reporting and the ability to handle forecasting round out the offering nicely.

Pros

Easy-to-use front end for dashboarding and reporting. Most users pick up on navigation very quickly and are excited to be able to view their data from many different perspectives. Simplicity in use for end users with a powerful data warehouse and ETL to provide the data to them are a great combination. Having it be a mobile solution as well was key for our user base. Customer support has been excellent to compliment the solution.

Cons

Very good solution overall and a lot to like here. If I had to pick something it would be enhancing formatted reporting, though I haven't seen many solutions that address this well today and also provide the benefits Halo provides in one package.

Advice to Others

Definitely add Halo BI as one of the solutions to seriously consider. It's a strong product with great customer support and a desire to get it right that exists across the company. Aligning these was key to earning and keeping our business.

Prior to having a BI solution we were like many other companies I am sure. Exporting data straight from our ERP system into mostly Excel based reports. This was not only time consuming but also led to many errors in reporting, often having more than one version of the truth. That is why we decided to explore what our options were with BI. During our evaluation of many different BI vendors/software we quickly saw Halo rise above the rest. Halo Source is everything you need from a data warehouse, and cube creation perspective. On top of that, it is using full Microsoft based technology which makes the learning curve extremely fast, even for those non-developers. A deciding factor for Halo was the data quality module. Everyone has some form of dirty data, but Halo has a solution for that. It was the only company that offered this sort of feature and was a major reason we selected Halo as our business intelligence solution. You absolutely do not need to know how to write SQL to spin up your own data warehouse and cubes for use with Halo Prism. On the topic of Prism it is very streamlined visualization tool. Drag and drop with as many visual options as you would need. Prism has allowed us to gain insight into our data that we have struggled see. We truly believe that this will be one our most successfully projects that has the largest impact since our ERP implementation, and even then this is really the icing on the cake for our complete ERP suite.

Pros

Support from the point of sale and beyond. I have never been sold a product where the vendor kept constant contact even after the sale and install. Halo truly cares about their customers and their product, and we look forward to a long successful relationship with them.
Prism is extremely user friendly, drag and drop measures and dimensions to quickly and easily answer questions about your business.
Only software/solution to address data quality as a key part of the ETL process.
Solution experts who really know my business and our ERP system.
Training was exceptional.
Prebuilt templates to address industry specific needs.

Cons

Wish we could have moved forward with our BI approval faster. This was on us not Halo we just were not sure as a Business what we wanted. But once we had our demo it was clear Halo was our top choice. Power BI put a wrench in this process giving pause from our Executives, but once I tried to replicate some reports in Power BI and saw how large the learning curve was and that it did not include the foundation of any BI solution (a data warehouse) Halo again was where we turned.

Advice to Others

Halo offers the complete package. From the backend date warehouse, Data cleansing, Cube Creation, predictive analytics, and a slick visual front end. If you don't believe me have them do a proof of concept with YOUR data! This is something most other vendors will not even entertain. What better way to show value from your BI software than to evaluate it with data and metrics you know. Do your homework and call references, Halo gets nothing but positive praises from anyone I have talked to who uses it.

Likes Best

Ease of use, easy to deploy, quality work of the developer.

Likes Least

We have had no issue with the product or with the service from Halo BI.

Recommendations

Conduct a POC using samples of real business data.