ibi vs SAS Visual Analytics

Information Builders Inc. (ibi) offers a feature-rich business intelligence data and analytics platform that unlocks actionable insights and the power of decision-making for users throughout an organization. Rated highly for ease of use by most reviewers, it empowers self-service data discovery with a user-friendly UI that enables drag-and-drop data analysis and visualization; some users noted that this UI looks outdated, especially compared to those of competitors. The platform offers a wide range of prebuilt data visualizations that users can further customize if necessary. This platform excels at creating and designing reports, then distributing them either at-will or through the automated scheduling tool, as noted by a majority of users who reviewed reporting. Most notably, the platform has an outstanding support team — all of the users who reviewed its support expressed satisfaction with their proactive, responsive assistance, citing the vendor’s dedication to the success of their customers as notably apparent. Customers can tailor the platform to their needs, as its flexibility allows for customized solutions. Frequent updates add value over time, though some users remarked that these sometimes break features from older versions. Other performance issues noted in reviews include lags when performing complex queries, infrequent crashes, slow load times and issues when accessing the platform from specific devices or browsers. While easy to pick up and use, especially for the end-user, some reviewers said that there is a learning curve to master the many features of this tool — a few users noted that this learning curve lasted a few months for some team members in their organizations. Overall, ibi data and analytics is a worthy pick for self-service data visualization and reporting, especially in the hands of an organization willing to invest the resources and time to make it shine.

SAS Analytics is a versatile business intelligence and analytics tool that empowers users to explore and understand data through interactive data visualizations. Many users who reviewed data analysis said that, coupled with the power of predictive analytics, the platform offers a plethora of graphics options — charts, graphs and dashboards — with deep-dive capabilities, such as filtering, to zero in on pertinent business data. Many users who reviewed functionality and data preparation said that, possibly because of its capable ETL engine and in-memory architecture, data processing speed is very high and reports load faster. A majority of users who reviewed data connectivity said that the tool is efficient in pulling data from multiple sources for data modeling and analysis. On the flip side, quite a few users who reviewed functionality said that the platform’s integration with Python and R is still in the development stage and this limits its functional scope. Some users who discussed user-friendliness said that the processes are not the most intuitive — errors and warnings in logs are misleading, and new users may find adoption difficult. Though the industry scope of user tutorials is limited, a majority of users said that the steep learning curve of the platform is sufficiently addressed by training. For many users, its cost-prohibitive licensing plans caused them to not consider it their first choice when it came to purchasing a BI solution. Overall, SAS Visual Analytics is a versatile tool with fast data processing capabilities and strong visualizations to generate reports for insightful data analysis.