# Altair Monarch Reviews **Vendor:** Altair **Category:** [Data Preparation Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/data-preparation) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 92 ## About Altair Monarch An industry leader with over 30 years of experience in data discovery and transformation, Altair Monarch offers the fastest and easiest way to extract data from any source. Simple to construct workflows that require no coding enable users to collaborate as they transform difficult data such as PDFs spreadsheets, text files, as well as from big data and other structured sources, into rows and columns. Whether data is on premises or in the cloud, Altair can automate preparation tasks for expedited results and deliver data you trust for smart business decision making. To learn more about Altair Monarch or download a free version of its enterprise software, please click the links below. ## Altair Monarch Reviews ### 1. Monarch is an invaluable tool and Altair is an outstanding vendor to work with **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kirk B. | Sr. Systems Engineer, Data Operations, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Monarch fills a niche for data extraction and data prep that has no peers in the market. You could cobble together a toolset to replace some features, but for business users, there is no substitute for Monarch when it comes to reliably extracting semi-structured data. And even at the enterprise level, anything else would be more difficult to implement and maintain. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The HHWU license model has some huge advantages, but it would be helpful if there was a better process for automated enterprise deployments that didn't require any interaction on the end user's part. We were able to automate this, but the process could be smoother. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** First, there is what I would consider the number one differentiator, which is the capability of building models to extract semi-structured data and convert to columnar data to be used in spreadsheets, databases, etc. Then there are the workflow automation features, which can be done in the GUI or scripted from the command line. The task-level automation features are essential to many of our business processes. ### 2. Great solution for overall data governance and management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rashid Hassan C. | Manager (Technical), Telecommunications, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The ease of data preparation and data classification and profiling with Altair Monarch is the best feature of the product. Data integration from other sources and creating streamlined workflows for enriching the data sources also works great with Altair Monarch. the availability of Altair One for the administration of all Altair products at one dashboard is another advantage I found in the solution. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The platform and dashboards work great and the solution is very handy for the organizational need if we succeed to get the best out of the available features. There is nothing to dislike in Altair Monarch. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altair Monarch has solved the data governance and data management issues for us and it is extremely beneficial for getting the best out of your data sources and integrated setups. We used Altair Monarch for data preparation and data extraction and it works perfectly for both jobs. Metadata management and data modeling with accuracy are always great and helpful to optimizing data resources and for the matters, Altair Monarch undoubtedly does the best job in the market. ### 3. Altair Monarch is a Robust Data Preparation Software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sandy R. | Accountant, Real Estate, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 26, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The functions are easy to use. Altair organizes the raw data in their original clustered form into neat data sets that can be exported and utilized for analytics. Has an additional data extraction feature that I use to extract data from submitted PDF or word documents while preparing audit reports. The self-service data preparation makes it easy for me to do most of the practices without needing assistance from the IT team. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The peer community is still small but growing. This makes it very unlikely to meet a fellow with a similar problem as yours. The learning curve for this solution is also quite steep; I had to take a long training course before I began using it. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** As an accountant, data handling gets the best of me sometimes. However, Altair Monarch makes life easier by making data preparation and visualization fun. It has plenty of functionalities including data extraction, saving us plenty of time and bucks. ### 4. CFO / Consultant has made significant improvements via use of Monarch **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marty M. | CFO, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 08, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Monarch allows users to transform data that otherwise is locked and inaccessible. In other words, Monarch allows users to transform data into information. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Can't think of a downside. I am a long-time user of the product and as it has evolved over the years its software engineers have made the product easier to use **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** If your business needs a flexible data extraction/transformation tool that end users can master in less than a day then Altair Monarch is an ideal choice. I have worked in Fortune 500 companies with hundreds of SQL programmers as well as private companies with modest IT budgets and have found the Monarch application helpful in both large and small businesses. If your company is operating on a legacy business application and you would like to extend the life of the application (i.e. avoid the cost of upgrading / replacing your ERP) while enjoying access to the firm's data in a robust, intuative software tool then Monarch is the right choice for you. For those using modern ERPs they too will find great value in Monarch for custom analysis, forecasting, budgeting, excess / obsolete inventory analysis, and countless other uses. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altair Monarch functions are quite comprehensive and the organization is at the ready to introduce new functions as user needs warrant. ### 5. Altair Monarch - powerful data acquisition **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leonid S. | M, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Monarch software can extract data from different data sources - PDFs, TXT files, database feeds, XML, JSON, etc and transforms it according to the business logic. I like the most that Monarch has built-in easy-to-learn technics that allow me to parse non-trivial PDF and Excel files into a relational database for subsequent analysis and reporting. After the transformation is designed, it could be deployed to the Automator - the engine that will run based on the schedule or trigger. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The new unit-based licensing model becomes costly for the jobs that run in the Automator. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automating tasks that people in multiple business areas used to perform manually. ### 6. Unlimited Acceleration by Centralised Data **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tyasia D. | Patient Access Specialist , Hospital & Health Care, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I like how data is always on our finger tips for easy management. It has enabled us to make meaningful decisions based on accountability, insights and data. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Performance is perfect only slowness of support team. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have reduced marketing time. We meet demand on real time. We are able to make decisions immediately with confidence. We are accurate with cost reduction. ### 7. A great data preparation tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Akshit V. | Technical Specialist - CAx Automation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** It is very easy to derive formatted data from row files like pdf, texts, big data etc. The data preparation is very much error free and fast. More time can be utilised for value addition. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The cost of the software is comparatively high. Most of the tools are available in python libraries, so it is a bit unreasonable paying this much amount for these tools **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have thousands of client requirement request documents in pdfs, spreadsheets and invoices in the form of photos. I used this to centralise all the data in a common cloud based database. ### 8. Sophisticated & Iconic Data Extraction and Preparation Tool I Highly Trust **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick C. | Service Manager - Fire Protection, Advanced Services, Facilities Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** With Altair Monarch, it is seamless to collect structured, unstructured and geospatial data across ETL services for real time modeling and preparation. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The fact that no modeling is required makes it easy and rapid to make informed decisions by transforming data into insights with Altair Monarch. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automate data modeling and visualization. Self-service portal allows users to move faster from insights to actions. ### 9. Great extraction tool to save time and increase productivity **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jose P. | CEO, Consulting, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 16, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Extract information from a wide variety of sources. Comprehensive support from its resources sources. A great tool to provide top insights. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** UI could improve (user experience) although it is easy to use **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Generate operation efficiencies to improve business processes and increase productivity (time, talent, money) ### 10. Solution for Data Monitoring and Real Time Anyltics **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Collins K. | Digital Communications Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** This platform is helpful to me as i use it at the company I now work for. It helps me extract data from different sources and puts the data into an Excel spreadsheet which is easy to manipulate into anything i need. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Field definition needs to include more more options to retrieve data. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have reduced multiple lines of data to one.To enhance reference to be easy on one page. ### 11. Altair Monarch Review. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel L. | Junior software developer., Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Altair monarch helps to convert cvs texts to xml for excel. It is so easy to navigate even with a lot database resources that you need to connect. Monarch allows users to transform data that is locked and inaccessible. It extracts information from a wide variety of sources. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Switching between reviews can be tedious. Licencing fee structure and cost. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Converting cvs texts to xml for excel. ### 12. Data Central Hub **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Museums and Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 07, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** We are able to accelerate innovation with unlimited access to softwares and high performing computing resources. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** We can't complain at all it has helped us alot. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have reduced marketing time. We are able to utilise resources to meet demand on real time. ### 13. Centralised Data Management Solution **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stan I. | Global Recovery & Resolution Planning , Broadcast Media, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** It's intuitive drag-and-drop interface that requires no coding. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** We require technical support to speed up their response. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to centralise our organisation data and models,automate transformed data delivery,and automatically update third party systems,databases and dashboard. ### 14. Monarch **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James P. | IT Support Tech 2, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Monarch Support is super easy to get ahold of. They answered all of my questions quickly and easily. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The pricing is a little high for the new subscription plan **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's allowing our finance team, greater control over reviewing data. ### 15. Data Analytics is the Key to Making Right Business Decisions **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mihir A. | Software Engineering Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 15, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Altair Monarch improve customer experience by connecting data across disperate sources for modeling and visualization. Analyzing website visitors behaviors without any manual process. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Since I am able to meet all my desires - I don't have any flaw at the moment. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automate data preparation, modeling and visualization via AI and machine learning. ### 16. Very happy with Altair Monarch **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anna S. | Data Analyst III, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 10, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I appreciate the opportunity to ask live questions during the class and also submit questions prior to class. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I have no dislikes related to the classes or Monarch. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Altair Monarch is very helpful to my job functions. Our files are very large and Monarch helps to only display the data that I need. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am able to extract data from several files and filter as needed. Monarch saves time and helps format data. ### 17. Subscription license renewal **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** My only experience with Altair Monarch has been working with John Hernandez with support to resolve a license expiration warning. He was very quick to respond. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I don't have anything to dislike so far. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Monarch at my company to handle license management for applications. ### 18. Monarch extracts report data easily! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark L. M. | Chief Data Officer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 10, 2022 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Altair Monarch provides and easy and intuitive way to extract data from core system reports that sometimes are the only source of target data. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The software interface is a little bit outdated, but generally works well, is intuitive, and easy to learn. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Key tool for extraction of data only available via imaged reports from our core system. The tool is also valuable in scanning hundreds of reports in one workflow. ### 19. Great data extraction tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 20, 2020 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I used this to convert csv text to xml for excel. The data load was under 1MB but still pretty fast. The tools and demos provided on startup were very helpful. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** No dislikes at this time. Maybe cost could be lower. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Watch the demos! They are so helpful! **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am extracting and transforming data to a more usable form. ### 20. A Better Way To Prepare Unstructured Data **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Foluke A. | System Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** We easily gain access to complex data, prepare those complex data and also make sure the data is free from any discrepancies. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** It's a nice data preparation tool, nothing to dislike. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** What a great Software. It is very wonderful **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Datawatch Monarch helps us extract and transform unstructured data into a clean workable report. Its make our data preparation a stress free activity to carry out. We easily gain access to complex data, prepare those complex data and also make sure the data is free from any discrepancies. Such data is easily exported to any business intelligence platform for analytics and reporting. This helps to improve the overall business outcome. ### 21. Great if you need an elephant gun **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thomas A. K. | Director Revenue Cycle Management, Hospital & Health Care, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The tool parses formatted text reports with ease and reliability. Loaded with useful tools for large volume, multiple sourced data analysis. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Too much for my simple needs. I would prefer purchasing a slimmed down version which simply parses a text or pdf report. In my small company, this is all I need. I would like to be able to purchase just the extraction tool for $200 - 400. We would likely purchase more licenses at a level which meets our needs. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Great purchase for users working very large data sets with multiple format inputs. Over priced for the extraction only function. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Parsing text and pdf reports into Excel format. This has greatly expanded my ability to analyze the clunky reports generated by my revenue cycle system. I also parse reports from outside sources. ### 22. Great Products and Service - Datawatch works with you as if your task is their top priority **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kristen S. | Senior Data Analyst, Financial Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I have been working with Datawatch for eleven years now and their service just continues to get better and better. Their staff takes your task /project personally and they work quickly to find a resolution for whatever questions you have. They are so personable that they reach out from time to time to make sure that all of your needs are being met. I love that they host training classes where you can bring projects to them if you are facing issues and they have multiple online tools that help you stay informed about new features and products. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I don't have many complaints. The only negative I can think of is that the initial cost of the systems is a bit high but it does pay for itself with time since the process becomes automated. You no longer need a staff member to perform the daily tasks manually. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** If you are looking to ways to save time on lengthy manual tasks such as exporting data from flat files into an Excel spreadsheet or reconciling reports, this tool is extremely beneficial. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** When using Monarch Complete, I am able to take a task that would normally take hours to complete and return results within minutes. We also are starting to use Automator and this will fully automate these processes so that we can better utilize our time for more analytical work instead of data mining. ### 23. Great product! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Management Consulting | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Monarch has allowed us to take all of our invoices, regardless of the format, and standardize it completely so it can be easily uploaded into our SQL database. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** We have one complication where we are unable to accommodate for changes in the format of pdf invoices. For example, when a line item description is too long, it wraps onto 2 lines. While we haven't seen it wrap onto the third line, it's quite likely to happen and we can't prepare our Monarch model for such an occasion until we have an example to work with. Monarch plays an incredible defense, but the offense is a little rusty. I like to be prepared for anything and Monarch can only prepare for what it's already seen. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We receive data from a multitude of sources and in a variety of formats. Monarch allows us to take all of those sources of data and standardize them so we can upload them into our database. Monarch allows you to do a lot of things other than just put it into a database, but I am a die-hard database gal, so I don't want to bypass the database :-) ### 24. Providing Clarity to Disparate Data Sources **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Companies began amassing databases with thousands of data points that have some significance, if management is provided essence of the story they tell. Monarch can trim, append, analyze and output the common thread for their product or business plan. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I began using Monarch 15 years ago as a desktop package with some instructions and templates that I tried to learn from, although they did not specifically pertain to my objective. In the last few years and latest versions, the company outreach with user Webinars for deeper understanding are making it simpler to expand my familiarity of included features that I was too cautious to try. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Participate in the company provided Webinars to unlock greater potential. I learned solutions to challenges for which we had been dealing with "work-arounds". **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our Legacy core processor produces 1K different printable reports, some exceeding 10,000 pages, of daily results, sorted several different ways to accommodate some user's request built over 20 years. People change and needs change but the Legacy reports don't. We are able to take select data points from a variety of different reports and external sources, build relationships in Data Prep Studio, and present the current requirements without the expense of building changes. The most impressive benefit of this product has been our ability to look back, recreate a "point in time" view using archives, without reloading backups, rebuilding processing. ### 25. Datawatch Monarch kicks butt **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert F W. | Chaplain, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Very easy to set up fields and records to be extracted; much easier for multirow records that most other software applications I have used. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** There is nothing I dislike about Monarch by Datawatch, it has performed well for me for 20 years, and only improves. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Extracting data from print image text files; extracting data from PDF files; performing basic analysis and transformation; exporting data to be used in other analysis software applications. ### 26. Beyond Expectations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The ease of use of the system, once the model has been set up, each report is seamlessly processed and our reports are all in the required format. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Switching between views (Report/Table/Summary/Export) can be tedious. Also, the reports only look at a handful of extensions rather than all file types. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Look at the time taken to do the work manually vs what Datawatch can do for you. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy review of monthly accounts and operational reports. The time taken to analyse data is greatly reduced, even with very large volumes of data. ### 27. Worthwhile Product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 07, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The product is amazingly robust in both it's data prep capabilities, as well as the sheer number of different types of data the program can consume. Also, the ability to create a workspace with a great number of data transformations that don't have to be recreated once initially setup is crucial. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The learning curve (at least for me) was rather steep. I would love the ability to export more content rich reports or dashboards. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our company consumes data from many disparate systems to provide data analysis to our clients on an ongoing basis. The ability for us to extract data, manipulate it one time, and then quickly be able to replicate those analyses by just substituting a new data set is huge. ### 28. Make your system generated report work for you **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Set up the model once, report is organized in a meaningful, usable, format. Tweak as needed. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Datawatch Monarch has gone from a simple to use tool (old name simply "Monarch") to one that has lots of bells and whistles but is not as user-friendly as older versions. Luckily my old, simple models still work! **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Takes system generated reports and allows them to be customized to my needs - and, the customized report, once the model is written once, takes just a couple seconds each week/month etc. to generate. And, I can tweak models to quickly satisfy internal customer requests for specific data. ### 29. Personal experience with Datawatch Monarch **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The Data Preparation give you all the functionality that you need. It so easy to navigate even with a lot database resources that you need to connect. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Previewing your data on a large databases is giving me some performance issue. But this can attributed to your connectivity. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Able to deliver separate reports to each users based on their area of focus. ### 30. Use for excel, works great **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joe G. | Servicing Team Leader, Financial Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** How easy the software is to use. I use it with excel and have zero issues **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I don’t have any dislikes with monarch. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** I’m taking large amounts of text files and converting them to excel format. ### 31. Great products for data mining **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The ability to mine data from various sources and file types. Datawatch products also allow you to manipulate data in many ways without accidentally corrupting the source data. This is one feature that separates it from Excel, Access and other data manipulation software. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Licensing fee structure and cost. Product is not intuitive. You have to have some training to get the full value from the software. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Purchase training if you are new to the product. Also sign up for the official forums. There is a wealth of knowledge on solving unique problems. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Utilizing Datawatch Monarch on a daily basis to convert financial reports from various agencies to a usable format. Counting, combining, summing information and tying tables together for analysis. Using the information to provide reports for clients. ### 32. Amazing Experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tara A. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Very easy to use and customize for any and every project that I have had so far! **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Do not like dragging PDF's in. Sometimes it works well and other times its time consuming to get the columns to pick up like needed. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Highly recommend! Amazing products, amazing service! **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Have been able to create and customize work flows for employees to follow up on accounts. Very beneficial because it saves not only myself but everyone in the office a lot of time! ### 33. Automatation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Monarch and automation really does make your work more efficient. It saves a lot of manual work from having to be done. I can have processes picking up and running files before I come into work, having it ready for me right away. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Sometimes projects will crash and not work correctly in Monarch. Automator is a bit glitch-y at times and I have to log on and off. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Give it a try to see if it is the correct fit. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Datawatch helps us solve our incentive side of the business, we are able to gather and put together incentive data much quicker and more accurately. Having the ability to collect data from multiple sources is great. ### 34. Right Product at right Cost **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2019 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The application is what we want, but the best part was the support. They are excellent bunch of people who are on support with a quick reply. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** nothing much to say here , I wish they can include some more excel functions. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Please try the product and don't worry after implementation support, they are great with minimum SLA. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data capture, transformation and automation. We have saved a lot of time. ### 35. Great for PDF Extraction **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Accounting | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I primarily use this tool to extract PDF data into a tabular format for analysis. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I think there is a focus on trying to establish Monarch as a data analysis tool. That being said, I feel as though innovations/change is primarily focused on improving analysis tools/methodologies. I think the PDF extraction component could always be improved upon. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data in formats that are simply not prepared for analysis. As a result, Datawatch saves hours of manual entry. While this can be done with a tool such as python, I think Datawatch has unbeatable OCR/Extraction/Validation tools that provide an end-to-end solution. ### 36. Best product for extracting data from reports and a reasonable cost. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James M. | Data Analyst, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** It allows our company to extract usable data from text based reports so they can be imported into our SQL database, Including text, PDF's, Some DAT files and others. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** It still struggles with PDF data extraction, still better than other options, **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are compressing the amount of labor time it takes to transform text based reports into usable data. ### 37. Datawatch **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Visual changes. Change history gives so much flexibility. Ability to save so much time and energy and collaborate easily. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Buggy, uses a lot of memory so crashes often. New report design in DPS is great, but would like to see search functions (Control + F). Sample text also gets stuck and doesn't scroll left & right sometimes. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We take our clients' legacy reports and efficiently convert into our import format. No need to teach the client how to fill out, wait a long time for it to come back, and then have to fix the data and communicate back and forth. Increased accuracy and control over our project timelines. We've saved over 3600 hours of effort in 7 months with less than 20 people using it. ### 38. Daily Monarch User **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin W. | Accountant, Banking, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 23, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Ability to create Project to capture data, run filtering, and produce usable extracts for further analysis or processing. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** different versions to complete specific enhanced tasks, which increases cost **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Additional functions from the standard functions prior assist with daily analysis and reporting, as well as creating journal entries for various functions. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** benefits analysis and processing from ability to dissect reports and setup subscriptions ### 39. good program **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** the capabilities, I am still learning them, but from seeing some of the samples it can do, I am excited to learn about them. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** sometimes its too complex. hard to understand initially **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** you will need a lot of training to make sure you use it effectively **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Budget and reports, instead of using excel. Also parsing data from our ERP called Meditech. ### 40. Seamlessly compile and review reports **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The ability to build reports and quickly rebuild them every month to trend data. It also allows the joining of data from separate sources and build insights that you wouldn't be able to with out the product. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I would like it if you were able to do more time value of money calculations. There needs to be some NPV, PMT calculations, etc. I would like to be able to format reports so they wouldn't need to be put into excel prior to submission to management. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are better able to quickly identify trends and build reports for management. ### 41. Very good product for data parsing, just haven't had the time needed to thoroughly use the product **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yen V. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Makes tedious things of the past easy now **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Wish there were more tutorials for data parsing **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data parsing. Faster data parsing. ### 42. Vice President **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Once a model is established, retrieving data thereafter is quite simple. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** complex models can take more time in creating but worth the investment in the long run. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Spend the time to learn the product and experiment with complex situations. The sooner you become an expert, you'll see increases in efficiency and workflow processes. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** extracting data from reports not otherwise available per perform reporting and analysis ### 43. Very nice software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I appreciate the extensive data cleaning capability and the user friendly environment. I think the environment is quite intuitive **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I have had a few experiences with the program lagging a bit especially with larger files. I am not sure how avoidable this is but saving time is always helpful. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** This is a great software to have and easy to use. Go for it! **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data cleaning and preparing for visualization. Loading unformatted data. We have saved a ton of time through automating unformatted text documents into workable data. ### 44. Gets the job done. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** It has eliminated a huge gap in our internal processes - we are able to complete work more efficient. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** There is a huge learning curve and too many products. I prefer to use Dataprep but feel like training is for Classic, Swarm, AND dataprep. I just need to know one **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** Do online training before meeting with a Datawatch rep **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Getting information into an importable format. We also use it for audits to make sure things are correct. ### 45. Very Useful **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** I use Monarch for data modeling and it's gotten more intuitive to use. The automatic recognition features are great as well. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I haven't had a problem with the software **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Converting text or pdf files to excel format ### 46. Amazing data transformation power **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The ability to automate data import and cleaning is a game changer. The fact that the automator can work without needed user intervention to run it allows the user to focus on much more value-add tasks. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** It can be difficult to eliminate unwanted changes from the memory tool when creating models. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being able to convert data presented in useless stings of garbage into meaningful usable data makes reporting a thousand times easier and faster. ### 47. Great Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Wholesale | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The capability and accuracy of the software to convert text or pdf into excel **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** I have no comments on this topic about the software **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** I highly recommend to use this product **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have many reports from the spool file as text and pdf and setting up models in Monarch or prep studio has improved he efficiency of conversion into excel reports. ### 48. Datawatch Monarch - A SUPERIOR product for all data extraction and mining needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** the power of taking large amounts of data and the ability to simplify it quickly into a quick summary **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** Sometimes the program bombs if you attempt to give it too much data... **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Summarizing paid claims data - HUGE increase in efficiency AND accuracy in reporting these numbers. ### 49. Must Have Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Austin P. | Senior Consultant II, Accounting, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2017 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** Simplicity, look and feel, and overall speed when working with moderately sized files. I tend to use this software on a daily basis to convert files that were previously unusable to a format that can be used in our analysis. The biggest feature that I use is the use of regular expressions to trap data. This is a very powerful tool. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The software does tend to crash when joining multiple files that are in excess of a million rows of data. I'm on 32-bit version which is likely the cause of that. **Recommendations to others considering Altair Monarch:** I highly recommend going with Datawatch. I would encourage the admin to first find people within the business that have a drive to learn to be an expert with the software because it has unlimited uses if you work at it. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** Converting unusable PDF and report type files into flat files that can be analyzed and used for other purposes. ### 50. Very Useful Tools **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Altair Monarch?** The ability to format data to spreadsheet from text reports. **What do you dislike about Altair Monarch?** The only thing I can think of is that it is slow to open initially. **What problems is Altair Monarch solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to process and analyze reports via spreadsheet data where before we had to do all of this by hand. ## Altair Monarch Discussions - [What is data preparation?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/achieving-critical-business-objectives-with-data-no-longer-requires-hours-of-manual-work) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Altair Monarch pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/altair-monarch/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-15+13%3A30%3A55+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=acb90da6-5b09-4d8f-b107-cffe4a483e84&secure%5Btoken%5D=ec3077cc3739a8f146a938955dfc9b2d9a7a3387f4a6fecef0c92b8438e7c881&format=llm_user) ## Altair Monarch Features **Data Source Access** - Breadth of Data Sources - Ease of Data Connectivity **Functionality** - Diverse Extraction Points - Data Structuring - Consolidation - Data Cleaning - Visualization **Data Interaction** - Profiling and Classification - Metadata Management - Data Modeling - Data Joining - Data Blending - Data Quality and Cleansing - Data Sharing - Data Governance **Diverse Extraction Points** - Diverse Extraction Points **Data Exporting** - Breadth of Integrations - Ease of Integrations - Data Workflows **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation ## Top Altair Monarch Alternatives - [Alteryx](https://www.g2.com/products/alteryx/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (781 reviews) - [Alteryx Designer Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/alteryx-alteryx-designer-cloud/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (151 reviews) - [Qlik Sense](https://www.g2.com/products/qlik-sense/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (762 reviews)