ibi WebFOCUS vs. Qlik Analytics Platform

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

If you want to setup analytics dashboards for reporting or simple data analysis then Qlik is your tool of choice.

Complex data structures are handled well, but you’ll need to keep de amount of data on the low side. Integration with other software is possible and easy.

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's flexible in allowing the development of fully-fledged analysis tools and dashboards, but also smaller "widgets" to embed in our websites to bring stories to life, and enables us to develop things once and then re-use them in different contexts.
• The development platform and management console are both easy to use, and, with proper data development by our expert developers, can be used by relatively junior colleagues to produce great-looking and very useful products.
• The way the platform handles a mix of data sources from different APIs and internal data stores is good.
• We like the visualizations and from a corporate perspective find it easy to develop one-size-fits-all visualizations that present a wide range of data items well in a responsive way.

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

• The learning curve could be less steap
• Very big sets of data are harder to process with the alike software
• There could be a better role based setup posibilities

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

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

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

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

Qlik is great for companies with lots of business domains and departments because it scales well, especially if data that is reported is saved in SQL and similar structures. Its ease of use and good UI enables business units to create and manage their own reports. That removes a great burden of creating and managing/modifying these pages from the IT team. Overall, it's a win-win for both IT and business units.

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

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

They are all good tools, each having their own pros and cons. Qlik Analytics Platform was easy to set up, more than affordable, and has a good user base. Though not as large as some of the other tools, it is growing every day and for the price, it is very hard to beat. I would recommend it. Microsoft Power BI is a little more intuitive to some users, many of them engineers, because of its similarities to Excel. I do like that it follows a similar structure to Excel but I think that it also has the same old-school GUI, which could be improved on. I prefer the way Qlik Analytics Platform's visualizations look because they appear more modern and smooth rather than rigid.

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

• Simplification and adaptability of analyzes according to the type of user
• Integration with data sources and direct via rest API, allows for simplification in modeling
• Need for a lot of specific knowledge of the instrument and the range of products in order to best meet the needs

Incentivized