ibi WebFOCUS vs. Looker

WebFOCUS is a good comprehensive tool for BI for companies. I feel that scenarios where you want the user to interact and be able to ingest data in different formats would be a good use of the tool. Performing data discovery is easier with InfoAssist, especially the most recent versions, and allows users to customize their views and provide comments.

Incentivized

When you need to create a centralised dashboard for multiple stakeholders that blends cross-channel reporting. As an SEO agency reporting for clients - Looker is a great solution. It's less appropriate depending on the intended users. For instance, in my experience Looker reports have been under-utilised because they're not accessed regularly, provide too much noise or often simple PDF reports are preferred

Incentivized

• Webfocus reports all have the option to export to Excel. The excel spreadsheet is always very organized and clean, and the information is very easy to read.
• Webfocus is able to maintain data from years prior. We can look up what we featured in catalogs and all the sales history attached with it.
• Webfocus is able to provide support to a variety of departments. For example, our buying team uses it for planning in advance and our marketing team uses the tool to see how categories and products as the selling

Incentivized

• It is very easy to start a new dashboard and configure what you want to display by just selecting/dragging from the list of available columns.
• It is intuitive, mainly if you use other Google services like Google Sheets.
• The look and feel is modern and nice.
• It it very useful to have an immediate visual overview of the data in a spreadsheet.

Incentivized

• The Developer Studio has some bugs. I've faced errors where swapping between our DEV and PROD servers causes that the software stops responding.
• Easy to find documentation and examples. WebFOCUS has some help with this but it'd be better to provide more real life examples.
• Sometimes it's harder to code the graphical interface of the report because of the HTML styling.

Incentivized

• I wish I could get more granular in the Google ad data, such as down to the campaign type, instead of having to see only all campaigns.
• The setup can be time-consuming if you're not using the product regularly.
• Editing the dashboard requires a few logins; I wish it was more seamless.

Incentivized

This software is deeply engrained with my organization and has become a tool that would not easily be replaced without spending more money and resources to get the same results. License cost is comparable to other report writing tools and the capabilities are greater than the competition without having to buy multiple apps to do the same thing.

Incentivized

We are very haooy with Looker, it provides us with all the funciomalities we need for both the day to day oerformance tracking and longer periods reporting. It is easy to use for account managers, configurable and customizable for soecialists and what is most imoortant, our clinets generally really love it

Incentivized

Best BI tool/product I have used. The others don't compare overall. Some can look fancier, but when you actually use them with large data and data from numerous systems/sources that is where most of the competition falls away. I also don't like downtime. I have basically none for a large user base with WebFocus. Even SAP Crystal Reports went down for 4 days once - 4 days because the admin password got locked out due to a glitch and we had zero reports for 4 days. WebFocus has never had more than a few minutes of downtime. It's like a tank that just keeps rolling. There is no other choice for reliable BI.

Incentivized

Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.

Incentivized

Tracking availability formally for almost two years and we are at 99.8%

Incentivized

No objections

Incentivized

Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok

Incentivized

They have extremely knowledgeable techs that I have worked with over the years. Some have actually become really good friends of mine. I see them often at local user groups and when we show them how we are using their tools to save millions of dollars throughout the company

Incentivized

Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.

Incentivized

It's hit and miss, the last class was overcrowded and people were having trouble connecting which took up much of the time. Instructors vary

Incentivized

Plan ahead on what data will be accessible and the type of security required on the database and if you will want to use security that is built into the software. It is worth consulting with the vendor on what your plan is and how they recommend you proceed in order to get results you are happy with.

Incentivized

Very satisfied, easy to implement

Incentivized

Above average. Feature wise [Information Builders WebFOCUS] stands out. User friendliness is OK. It can handle the most complex tasks and its extensions with for example R make it extremely versatile. Support is lagging in western Europe, although i am more than happy with current level. With takeover by tipco it remains to be seen how European strategy will evolve

Incentivized

In my opinion, Looker is no Power BI. It is good, but I think Power BI is amazing. That said, in my experience, Power BI is nowhere near as easy to setup and report on Google services as Looker is. We plan to continue using Power BI for c-suite and corporate reporting, especially for internal databases, but will gladly use Looker for our marketing information for AdWords, Analytics, Search Console, and YouTube.

Incentivized

• We are not yet a success story. Though we've been implementing WebFOCUS for over a year, we have very few products in our Production portal. Of course, this is not all the responsibility of Information Builders, but we were ill-advised by our 'training coordinator' in our training of staff and coming up to speed with the tools has been very slow.
• Once skilled analysts and professional IT staff achieve a grasp of the products, they are able to very quickly create polished and well-received products.
• The DW/BI project has helped us to establish standards and protocols of communication that will allow us to more quickly meet knowledge transfer requirements

• Other than some people not liking the numbers, I don't see any negative impacts; we haven't experienced that.
• The reports help us unravel the story of our users and how they are sifting through our pages.
• Our clients enjoy seeing the numbers to understand better what stands out on their sites.
• The reports have helped us see what campaigns are working and where we need to tweak things.
• The reports have enabled us to have better conversations with stakeholders about how their web pages should be modified, edited, etc., to reflect the data.

Incentivized