MicroStrategy Reviews

Enterprise level reporting and dashboarding. After building the data model, it's easy for users to put together their own reports. Visual insights is good for ad-hoc analysis. Distribution services very useful for emailing reports to customers on a daily basis.

It takes a bit of time to get everything setup and requires a knowledgeable architect, so the cost of implementation is front loaded. A few bugs here and there but MicroStrategy does a pretty good job at releasing updates and fixing them quickly.

Contact MicroStrategy sales for a free demo or proof of concept. The sales engineers there are up front and honest, and will tell you if they think it's useful and cost effective for your business. Hiring a good implementation consultant is key to creating a successful long term application, don't skimp on initial costs or it will hurt you down the line.

Converted all of our systems of records to one central repository. Mobile dashoarding and altering for fast response times. Emailed reports on a daily basis for up-to-date information for action insights managers. Closed loop implementations with write-back to the database via transaction services.

MicroStrategy offers centralized administration, automation of administrative processes, and several key components that allows an admin to run commands, flows, schedule distributions, etc.

Also, the in memory capabilities are impressive since 10 onwards.

Finally, I really like the SDK they provide to do almost anything you can imagine.

Either for Admins, Analysts, Data Scientists, Reporters, end users, MicroStrategy offers a great deal of knowledge to gain by only using it.

It's not dislike as much as an expected impact: when you have a BI suite with so many capabilities, you need to bear in mind the whole ecosystem to avoid problems.

Also there is little documentation on SDK.

The recent change in knowledge base is awful. Also some microservices running in Java and 3rd party requirements for newer functionalities (MySQL, Apache Tomcat, MongoDB, etc.) are not the best options for Windows environments.

MicroStrategy might seem a little overwhelming when you first see all its capabilities, but you must consider if you want a self service BI software only, or a BI suite that can do almost anything. Of course, the more you want to do, the complexity grows.

Reports and dashboards peformance, automated user creation and deletion, groups assignments, etc. Automated flows for development implementation. SDK customizations for look 'n feel, SDK integrations with custom SSO systems.

Data mining, predictive analytics, reporting delivery.

Fraud analysis, exploratory analysis, customer attrition analysis, customer segmentation analysis, etc.

Centralized location for reporting makes it easier for users from different departments to access the data.

Very powerfull tool if metadata is well conceived and if the tool is well leveraged from the users and the admins.

Easy to manage and create reports for non IT users

Very user friendly interface

Can optimise and manage projects completely through the application itself if the tool is well leveraged.

Advanced analytical engine

does not reuire advanced level in SQL to customise reports

Widgets ready to use

Very stable and reliable

Rare error messages for front end users

Constructive error messages

Very helpfull Support throught Microstrategy Forum

Creating, managing accounts and granting roles and access is fast and easy

Creating projects simple projects is easy

Data source connectivity is good

Integrate well with existing systems

big inprovement from Microstrategy version 9 to version 10

IT gets hard to support users because the tool allows a lot of freedom for the users ( creating reports, subscriptions...)

As an admin not easy to learn, requires at least a couple of Months of challenges

It takes times to configure the software the first time

Relaoding the data when you reboot the server takes time depending on the infrastructure

At first it was hard to trust data especially when comparing sales with previous years

It does not require expensive machines.

Easy DIY reports.

Multiple ways for reports deployment.

web and desktop based solution

Account management

Rreporting and dashboards.

Sales forcasting

c'est un outil flexible, on peut faire des tableaux de bord rapidement avec visual insight.

Grand rapidité d'exécution.

La souscription des historiques, l'envoi par mail fonctionne bien.

MicroStrategy est un outil puissant, il permet de faire des liens avec Microsoft office, même si je n'ai pas encore essayé. Ce lien ne peut fonctionner que si on utilise les "documents".

La gestion des utilisateurs est très complète, elle permet l'interdiction d'accès au tableau de bord mais aussi à la donnée.

les utilisateurs peuvent importer leur fichier excel et les croiser avec les données du data wharehouse existant.

Ils peuvent également extraire leurs tableaux de bord sur Excel ou faire une impression en PDF.

Le passage en environnement de production est assez simple.

il faut avoir une formation poussée (technique) pour mettre en place cet outil. il faut une bonne infrastructure selon la taille des données, une grande capacité disque et une bonne RAM.

Il y a beaucoup de paramétrage à faire au niveau administrateur si on veut pousser toutes les fonctionnalités de microstrategy, comme la gestion des utilisateurs et interdiction d'accès.

Il faut tout d'abord avoir une bonne infra structure et prévoir des environnements DEV, TEST et PROD.

Nous avons pu mettre en place des indicateurs pour les partager au sein de l'entreprise.

Toutes les personnes de l'entreprise ne voient que les indicateurs auxquels ils ont accès avec une bonne gestion des accès.

Ils peuvent créer d'eux même leurs analyses libres, en utilisant les cubes ou en reprenant les fichiers excel.

MicroStrategy is easy to learn and teach users how to navigate through it. I like the new features like the dossiers and Library. MicroStrategy is also easy to integrate with other data sources to quickly analyze data, create dashboards and make quick business decisions.

As a MicroStrategy System Engineer and Admin, it's challenging when you open support tickets the response times can be lagged or the support team doesn't seem to be very knowledgeable on issues and may take a while to resolve. Sometimes the Iserver goes down but the cloud support team doesn't notice. Also MicroStrategy sometimes have bugs that should be well documented but often that is not the case.

It's a great BI tool that once implemented will provide great BI solutions to the company.

We are able to create and distribute business reports on key KPI metrics

able to use MicroStrategy Mobile which has made it very easy for the Business users to access and analyze data from anywhere.

Ability to integrate with many outside sources has been very helpful and allows for quick integrations and analysis.

MSTR's underlying technology is best in class. The answer to "is [X] possible?" is always "yes". The dependency chain is unbreakable, which is really comforting from an architecture development standpoint. One of the pain points we had with Looker prior to switching to MSTR was that it didn't have a robust dependency chain (we did like using Git for version control though).

The SQL generation is also *very* readable, in contrast with many of MSTR's competitors.

The in-memory cubes are powerful - 2B row limit per CPU. We used these cubes to build some otherwise prohibitively large dynamic dashboards.

UI, support, stability. Support is predicated on a vast knowledge of MSTR's intricacy's, including deep logging features which do not feel Cloud-worthy. Cloud is clearly a new philosophy for them. Professional services is hit or miss.

The "managed service" aspect of the Cloud product still relies on a deep understanding of the platform and its nuances and jargon.

If starting from scratch, be sure to include nimble, scalable data sources such as Snowflake or BigQuery

Self-service access to complex data that would be otherwise inscrutable to business teams. We've found numerous asymmetrical opportunities to improve our business.

We've also productionized large chunks of our client-facing work - the dashboards help us find the fires and put them out, find the smoke where there might be more fires, and find the successes we might have otherwise missed.

I like how easy it is to roll things out to the entire enterprise. I like how the architecture functions and how easy it can be to build reports. I like how you can create clean and easy to use dashboards for the users.

There are so many times when you have to scroll uncessarily. Copy and paste should be easier. Why can't I copy a condition and change one thing?!?! I have to create a whole new condition instead. I also dislike the fact that I have to use Developer for some things and the web interface for others. They should be integrated into one tool so I don't need a special download.

Make sure the implementation is done correctly. Also hire a really good administrator and architect, because those will be the most important parts of getting you up and running. Don't pay for the training until you have been in the tool 6-12 months because the training will be lost on you.

Right now we're just trying to display the right data to the right people. We're moving forward with mobile because that has been requested a lot. We're hoping to help people make better decisions faster so they can make those decisions based on real data rather then a gut feeling.

i used multiple bi products and microstrategy is still the best sql generator out there. by a long margin. i like the other functionality that gets added to it but i love the adhoc sql generation capability the best. i love the tech notes, support too. the new features are fine..i kind of think about them as keeping up with the trend..

some basic technical functionality is still missing. distinct aggregation is one of them. even the cubes dont show distinct aggregation for subtotals etc., i also dislike the fact that whenever transformation metrics are added , the engine by default scans the fact tables twice.. instead of intelligently using the olap functions from sql or its own olap functions. this hasnt improved over years.

also, as a bi consultant , i sell microstrategy as the best adhoc reporting tool out there, however, it only serves 40 to 50% of adhoc functionality a business requires. we still have rely on analysts to write sql to pull the data to answer the other adhoc queries.

its a nice tool. the benefits are similar to what any business that goes on a bi journey does. compared to the other bi tools out there, i believe it is better in terms of development provided the developers are trained on it.

The application is easy to use and learn. Building dashboards is as easy as drag and drop from your dataset. I train users are our company and can't say enough good things about the application.

Very little if anything at all. I use a lot of the MSTR capabilities of MSTR in my day to day activities at work. The only thing I would change would be to make dashboards have the same capablities as documents. Documents are my go to but there are pieces of dashboards that I wish were in documents.

I train users to use the application for day to day, week to week and period to period data comparison of the store sales or category sales. This enables business users to determine what items should stay or go in their set.

MicroStrategy Mobile,

MicroStrategy Adhoc Capabilities,

Strong Administration,

Visual Insights (With improvements needed towards usability and performance)

Awaiting/Excited to use/try Dossier that MSTR is coming up with (Going to be BI Revolutionary)

Enhancements are sometime slower for smaller or minor issues

DEFECTS/LIMITATIONS keeps piling up

Will recommend MSTR to improve their KNOWLEDGE BASE site

Good tool if you are clear with DWH/BI usage from the enterprise standpoint.

Requires proper Admin to maintain the SERVERS

Requires technical skills to build the core Metadata alone

MicroStrategy comes with lot of innovative ideas every year - so they are catching the market and focusing accordingly

Very good adhoc flexible tool - if you've good schematic design (with good data model design)

Mobile Apps are easy to build and deploy - specific to mobile audience and will be like REAL LIVE APP with all key usage/features

Health Care Business & Financial Business. We get lot of operational reports or user daily usage reports or Mobile Ready Apps to interact and take decision immediately from the Mobile devices in LIVE

I'm not technical enough to do the super fancy stuff, but our Microstrategy admin can do some amazing things with this tool. He makes dashboards that link to other reports, add visualizations, and do calculations in the background, custom filters, and so much more. We use this everyday in the business and is the lifeblood of all reporting.

I dislike the fact that it isn't as user friendly as say Salesforce or something like that. I sometimes have to rely on the admin to help me with more complex reports or filters. It can also be a bit slow due to the amount of data we have, but that's more of a data problem.

If you have a dedicated admin then this is a great tool. It's possible to make it user friendly and just load up all the filters you might ever need and do a training session and let it go, but the real power comes from the advanced dashboard features and some of the advanced filters.

All of our reporting needs go through Microstrategy. We use this for internal and external reporting and can trust the numbers it provides. We also hook it up to other systems to feed in data and it works great. Once the reports are built it runs flawlessly.

The option of using predictive analytics and time series forecasting is the key highlight of the product, which gives the MicroStrategy an advantage when compared to its peers. In addition, the option of connecting the data from various sources automates the data ingestion process and the wrangling can be done in the tool itself.

Even though the product has many advantages, the user interface is somewhat confusing for the users, because there are lots of options and fields which makes it confusing. The educational resources which are helpful for teaching the new users about how to use the product are not up to the expected standards doesn't cover the essential features.

The product is bit on the expensive side when compared to its peers, the customer support for the product is reliable and quick to respond but the user interface seems confusing for the new users, and the educational resources for using the product covers the product at a high level rather than explaining the key features and options for the users.

It had used the MicroStrategy for performing Business Intelligence services, such as predictive analytics, data visualization, and prescriptive analytics. It also has the option of building the dashboards and user stories which I found it helpful for the presentations and technical reporting/documentation.

Easy to get up and running. The product is also multi functional, you can build cubes, reports, Data Entry transaction reports, send everything via email, write to file, etc. I especially like the re usability of objects. End users do not need a lot of training. This product is flexible to where you can add your own java code to enhance the end user experience.

I have not been able figured out how I can control table joins within reports, so I have to created free form sql reports, which is messy to upkeep. The documentation is lacking for this product

Licensing cost. Upfront costs can be expensive, however, upgrades are included in the yearly maintenance fee, which is something not all software companies provide.

We use MicroStrategy for data entry and also we use it for revenue vs forecasted. Our end users use it alot to get project end statistics to the client

One of best Business Intelligence enterprise reporting tool, which has loads of rich features available to the business user on the web and PDA, with ease of use, and advanced analysis in a single end-to-end solution.

The MicroStrategy Desktop can read majority data source, from the simplest flat files to most complex databases and online data sets, so data from all sources is available in one place. The visual interface lets business users quickly blend and analyze all their data.

The function that should boost business productivity and efficiency

- Enable to optimize business rules

- Make better collaborative decisions.

- Advanced analytics

Recommendations for consideration:

- Reusable and Rich Metadata Layer

- Market Proven Enterprise Scalability and Performance

- Dynamic Report Personalization

- Centralized Enterprise Administration

- Flexible and Powerful OLAP Analysis

- Heterogeneous Data Source Access

In a case still, on the old version, don't wait.Upgrade to the latest version.

Global operational delivery performance indicators that capture between the factories and stores, business users will access the visualization dashboards to get an insight into their portfolio/accounts and be better informed about their status and possible opportunities.

I like MicroStrategy's simplicity to create complex multi pass SQL reports, visualisations over varied datasets, the breath of areas in which the product can be used. I currently work within insurance typically a very complex data environment with strict data governance controls we have adapted our MicroStrategy installation to cope with the agile demands of data discovery whilst also accommodating change control and data governance.

I also like MicroStrategy's ability to stay abreast of upcoming opportunities within the BI arena, specifically the introduction of mobile functionality, system manager to automate report production MicroStrategy office, R support and the list goes on.

With all BI tools there is unfortunately a period of setup and learning required, I believe that MicroStrategy make this more onerous than most other providers. Perhaps MicroStrategy could benefit from opening up the learning material on it's product functionality to allow technical users of the product become more familiar and help out on typical problems encountered in real life situations through social media shares.

I look forward to licencing and product registration changes in MicroStrategy 10 as these would have been described as complex and confusing in previous versions. I feel that MicroStrategy support in Europe (Ireland) is perhaps not as comprehensive as it would be in the US, let downs include learning experience, product support, fault fixing and specific installation recommendations.

I would recommend to users who have little experience in more technical product offerings yes.

Over the past year our Analytics team have been working on report automation using ETL tools, Stored Procedures and of course MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy has been key in delivering effort savings of 30+ man hours per week for business as usual reporting. Some of the product that have proved most beneficial in completing this type of project include online interactive documents/dashboards replacing manual office based packs and also MicroStrategy Office for those hard to convince users.

We have also plans to ramp up our usage of predictive analytics over the coming year and MicroStrategy's ability to use R models will assist in delivering real time analysis on everything from Customer Renewal Propensity, Cancellation prophylaxis and Dynamic pricing.

MicroStrategy has a solid record as an enterprise BI solution. It allows to build fairly complex semantic layers to deal with challenging warehouse structures and complex reporting requirements, and provides good security and access control. It can easily connect to most commercial databases and the web portal allows for an easy and secure distribution of reports and dashboards to users. The web document features it contains out-of-the-box are usually enough to build compelling dashboard suites and web applications. It is expandable through SDK and lately MicroStrategy has made efforts to reduce the difficulty on integrate external visualization packages such as D3.

The self service tool Visual Insight has evolved a lot over recent years and it has become much more useful and competitive to alternatives such as Tableau, and although it is not quite there yet, it is expected that the tool will continue to evolve.

Development of standard MicroStrategy documents is not very intuitive, and requires training and practice. The MicroStrategy Developer tool has not had a significant upgrade in at least 7 years, and while web development capabilities are constantly added, the Developer tool is still needed to perform some tasks, which makes it all more confusing.

While MicroStrategy seems to be investing a lot into their self service tool Visual Insight, and the mobile capabilities, standard documents and dashboards, with are quite useful for a lot of users have not been updated at the same pace. Several web enhancements on VI are not replicated on the standard documents, which again makes matters difficult for developers when we want to port a self-service dashboard to a standard enterprise document, better suited for widespread distribution and access control. It would be good if Microstrategy considered to update the web capabilities of these documents, such as more functional OOB visualizations and selectors.

On VI itself, it still needs more work as there are several features that are available on other similar tools and are not still present on VI. For instance, the ability to define parameters and use them to define attributes, calculations and selectors should be considered, or the tiled approach and automatic resize is not good when you need to present a consistent view.

MicroStrategy is at its best when it's intended as an enterprise solution, with a good team of developers and admins to model and support the system, and build the complex reports and dashboards required, with potentially self service and data discovery capabilities built on top of that. If it's purpose is just to be a self service, data discovery tool then probably there are better tools available at the moment.

We develop web applications based on analysis of customer data. MicroStrategy allows for rapid development of a suite of interlinked dashboards with complex data structures that can be presented and sold as a consistent web application. As these aplications are sold to external customers, we need to ensure a top quality, security and stability, which MicroStrategy provides.

The ability to quickly put together a project that allows users to have great insight to their data in order to make improved decisions. It supports many data sources and can handle complex analysis. I like that the applications can be customized to user type - from casual user that just needs basic information to an advanced analyst that wants to build their own reports.

I like most everything - I think there remains improvement that could be done in the area of data visualization.

Do a trial and I think you'll see that it can meet or exceed your expectations.

I have used MicroStrategy to solve problems in many industries including Retail, Telecommunications and CPG. Currently I'm working on applications that provide trends of sales and inventory and also calculate shrink. Profit improvement is realized by helping retailers reduce shrink on products that have a short shelf life.

Microstrategy does few things extremely well but the things it does get right really resonate with its user-base. I'm a fan of the "curated" experience you can provide through Microstrategy, specifically: the wide range of integrations with other products, the ability to curate an "experience" for an end-user, and finally the newly added transparency into the product through APIs.

Microstrategy is a product that attempts to cast a very wide net in terms of its customers. The unfortunate side-effect of this is the large degree of sprawl that happens within a product. Have you ever heard the phrase: "Jack of all trades but master of none."? This is such a fitting description for Microstrategy that I have trouble putting it into other words. The enterprise offering for Microstrategy is clunky, visually outdated, hard to administer, full of bloat (read:over-configuration), and presents itself as an absolute relic in terms of SLDC.

Microstrategy provides a curated data "experience" for our end users.

Full reporting suite, it has the functionality to provide all of the varying aspects needed.

Some aspects of the software itself are exceedingly stupid. Some windows show up off screen and can't be moved. Some screens freeze for no reason. Functionality that exists in Developer only sometimes, or web only sometimes, or dossier only sometimes, FIX THIS. There is a file path bar which is super helpful for listing items to deploy, and you can right click and copy that information BUT YOU CAN'T CONTROL + C??!! It just feels like total amateur hour. MicroStrategy training is NUTS. Which classes go with which certification? Oh that certification I got last year doesn't exist any more? This training of largely basic principles is split up into how many classes with a bunch of unrelated material padded into it? Training should exist to build your userbase and, therefore, your brand. TRAINING SHOULD NOT BE SO PROFITIZED.

Reporting. Of course.

MicroStrategy works well for our enterprise. I am our architect and administrator. I really like the control I have through admin tools as well as security and access features. We're working to provide increased self-service to our end-users and the secusirt and access features really help me be comfortable with that.

The reason I gave MicroStrategy a 9 out of 10 is that there are a few idiosyncracies with the version we're on. I keep hoping that there will be fewes as we pugrade but that hasn't happened. The issues really are more nuicanses than real problems, thoguh.

Make sure you have a good relationship with your sales and account management team, They can be invaluable.

We use MicroStrategy for day to day operational reporting as well as data entry using their TRansaction Service features. We devliver reports to about 300 people througout our organization. That's almost 1/3 of our employees.We receive data through Transaction Service from a much smaller group, maybe about 30 people.

The MicroStrategy analytics platform supports multiple reporting styles and device types so that users can get their data as per the company needs.

I like the desktop version of it more. Its very easy to create metrics and use them in different reports. Multiple people can work together on a particular project.

Get small bugs that really trouble sometimes. Also, the customer support is not very robust. There are forums but cannot find trusted answers to all the problem-related queries.

Architecture few is the slowest to make complete structure for data modelling. Working on FreeForm SQL is easy but that not the complete benefit of BI tool.

Easy to setup , working on freeForm is easy . Intelligent cubes makes reports faster.

The overall experience was good. I used it for about 1 year while I was working for Business Analytics. Business decision and data for taking action. Working on Intelligent cube data/reports are faster and easy to use. Using reports for daily schedule , Alerting system to check on KPI.

That it is a one stop shop for all of the important data I need to run the ADHOCs for my role. It is really easy to build reports by using the filters to customize and narrow what I specifically need.

I wish you could combine some reports into one instead of running two separate reports. You can get a lot of metrics for one category or area of the field but it would be great if you have a large report and then filter once the report is generated.

I think MicroStrategy is worth switching to because all companies can have ease of data pulling. This makes creating AdHocs a lot easier and more attainable.

The most used reports and looking at sales from a certain time frame from and seeing how that compares to another time frame. This helps develop weekly business.

The ease-of use and how powerful it is to generate any kind of reports without spending endless days programming like in other tools. It has helped our company to reposition at the highest levels of the retail industry by helping store managers to access data in a more friendly way

Performance is not the best feature, you have to work extensively building a proper data model and afterwards it is not easy to adjust it to the dynamics of the business.

If you go live try to do it over an Oracle Database. Results improved.

Store management, fast access to data, flexibility, easy-to-use environments.

MicroStrategy backend is a warhorse.

The SQL engine (the component that generates the SQL code for reports) is very smart and has a lot of setting to adapt to your database to improve performances.

Security is strong and flexible, user can have access to different reports/dashboards or to the same object but allowed to see only part of the data.

The plugin architecture allows to add new functionality or to integrate MicroStrategy with your environment.

In the last version they improved the front-end for data exploration, but they are still behind Tableau. Much nicer than other tools.

Sometimes you can find annoying bugs that you wonder how they didn't catch before (the new quarterly release programs should help here).

The tool added a lot of functionality in the last few years, but how to use/implement them it's a bit complicated, the added new functionality but the had to build them on top of the old interface.

Get someone with experience to help you.

Use the MicroStrategy community to have help to solve your problems.

Building dashboards and reports for users from C levels to the new accountant. The new Dashboard capability is much more customizable and it looks awesome.

Prototyping from a simple db query is very quick and it helps a lot.

The MicroStrategy capability to be db agnostic allows us to use different databases, we are now exploring the hadoop space with MicroStrategy.

It's very easy to use that tool. It's Intuitive and fast. The new integrations with 3rd parties provide us a productivity gain that make it better any other olap tool

the price is not reasonable. Despite the last features rearrangement, we still paying a lot for the tool

I'd like the MSTR's Directors to think about lowering the price of the tool.

Basically management issues. E.g. Purchase of Medicinal products based on warehouse resupply point; . We need to act in advance of that situations. If we could gather informations about how long the partner will take to bring us some product, what our real consumption average against our supply for that good, we could decide between wait for reach the ressuply point or start the process to buy immediately.

- High scalability

- Very stable

- Excellent reporting capabilities

- Very good mobile BI (on apple products)

- Good data exploration tools for power users

- Complex deployment and development

- Evolving slowly

- High migration costs compared to the gains

- Web interface is a mix of (very) old and brand new, with little coherence

- The complexity of the tool make it unsuitable for the general audience, the target audience is the data analyst

Microstrategy is a complete BI solution for people with BI needs that are high, diverse, and relatively stable.

It allows a small-scale team to address most of the BI needs of a large company.

Because of its high set-up cost (both technically and financially), it is not well suited for small-scale projects, or companies with fast-changing needs.

Microstrategy shines when it comes to reliably deliver basic reporting to large amounts of users.

Native iOS apps (that can be rebranded to your company's colors) make it an excellent mobile BI solution.

A team of 4 people can deliver mobile dashboards to 2500+ users.

The data discovery tool available in web allows to deliver self-service BI for power users.

The potential of MicroStrategy and their visualizations in amazing. An example I saw that still blows me away was how a company with a mouse mascot (we'll call him "mikey mouse") uses real time data to influence crowds and behaviors with incentives to move to other areas of their amusement parks. If the tool can do that, I have no doubt it can do what I need it to!

Some things which should be simple are hard. Mobile solution to them means a mobile app. HTML5 dashboards are limited.

The learning curve is steep.

No mac version of developer

Do it. While their will be painpoints, these happen when you do out of the box things. If you stay in what they do, it is smooth.

Single system to enable business to own analytics apps.

Robust SQL engine, numerous types of connections to several data sources, relatively easy integration of multiple data sources in single dashboard. Enterprise product enables us to pick and choose the components we need, and we're able to meet most reporting problems with the wide-variety of tools within platform. Cloud services also helps us spend less time on operational stability.

Some disparity among different types of objects (reports, documents, dashboards) both in UI as well as feature set. Graphs look great in dashboards, but terrible in reports. Efficiently utilizing full array of features in platform requires a lot of education about what all the products do.

Creating a "single source of truth" data. Standardizing data governance across enterprise. Enabling users to be self-sufficient with self-service BI.

quick and easy reporting, lots of customization, easy to read and understand.

slight learning curve at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy

If you need daily reporting of various account activity, this is a great platform. You can customize it so it fits your needs and it has a very clean dashboard.

I log into Microstrategy every day to analyze reports, I can easily customize them so they fit my needs, it's a great way to stay organized and up to date on what is going on in my accounts.

Visual Insight (and the way it does OLAP on the fly!)

Transactional Document

Maths / financial library and functions.

Limited visualisations in Visual Insights.

No Microstrategy maintained bug free repository of Visualisations.

Installing new Visualisations from community repositories can break existing running visualisations.

Uncontrolled buggy updates to community repository of visualisations.

Visualisations are not able to support many dimensions in a meaningful way, most work with only a few dimensions.

Triggers are not very intuitive or useful in the first attempt.

Microstrategy Office plugin does not support Visual Insight.

Upgrades can break existing running projects.

There is nothing better than this out there!

I had variety of problems to solve. Spectrum includes from Product analytics, Marketing analytics, Company KPIs to Financial calculations.

Microstrategy is having simple user interface and easy to create multiple reports and Dashboards.

Multiple reports can run at the same time and good options to export out.

The user interface is simple but still needs improvement. Not a lot of shortcuts or edit options are easily visible unless you explore it.

Compare with Salesforce and Tableau.

We have been running lot of queries to understand about different attributes and metrics. It is fairly fast for most of the reports and dashboards are quite helpful to identify trends and seasons.

MicroStrategy is the one of the top leading BI tools which is highly scalable and reliable for Enterprise Analytics and Reporting.

License cost is high and ease of use is little complex for end users especially users with little to no knowledge of an analytics tool.

MicroStrategy is an industry leading BI reporting and analytics tool which is very sophisticated. I would recommend this tool to any organization planning to implement BI initiatives. This tool has all the latest features that a modern BI Tool provides.

Solving reports and files having complex data which is hard to understand from an internal and external user community perspective can be solved with intuitive reports in the form of grids, charts, documents and dashboards and lot more functionality. There are several other functionalities that are built in MicroStrategy such as OLAP, Scalar, Scientific and other aggregation functions which enable users to do simple to complex calculations on their data.

Ease of use. There are multiple ways to do the same thing (navigation bar, starburst menu, or main screen). Easy to find existing reports if company organizes it well. User's don't have to worry about relationships between data sets if the admin sets up the system well.

Data may be hard to find but it greatly depends on how your company decides to organize it. Sometimes a little unstable (online version) but most issues are due to your company's server capabilities. Some reports take a VERY LONG time to run but once again, most of that due to how much data the system has in it PLUS the server capability.

This software is comparable to other Report Writers...Crystal Reports, Cognos Impromptu, etc. in that a user can easily create reports from data that is coming from various company wide applications and then either format and print OR export to Excel.

Being able to easily run reports from data that is coming from various sources within the company.

The drag and drop feature makes it very easy to customize reports. With a little bit of tweaking, you can filter attributes to make the data show what you need.

The metadata layer can sometimes be sluggish.

Be sure that there is a strong knowledge behind the programming. Our current Admin has no access to the database from which all the data is pulled, nor does he understand the implications of data, or have any way to verify it. I did all the validation and continue to do so, and it is not an easy task, but if the admin had that knowledge he would be able to handle most questions.

Visualization with grid-based data allow both straight data and graphs-based learners understand the data.

Incorporates the best of both worlds in Business Intelligence reporting; Easy to use, self-service analytics for business users, and Full-feature reporting solution for IT.

Stellar Sales and Product Support so far. Relatively new adopter.

No major dislikes of the product to-date.

Only minor concern is that some the education courses could be more polished. But, the fact that they have a complete education curriculum and certification program is a plus.

Currently only in early stages of development and implementation.

However, we have been able to quickly replace some existing, problematic Excel reports, pivot tables, and graphs with solutions that work and provide an attractive presentation.

We are working on implementations of Advanced Insurance metrics dashboards, reports and graphs.

Virtually every element is configurable. The SQL Engine is quite robust and efficient. The availability of a web API for total customization is invaluable.

The endless configuration options are as much a detriment as a feature. There always seems to be some check-box that we forgot to check to get something as simple as sub-totaling to work correctly. Additionally, the support is abysmal and while there appears to be a vast community of users online everyone seems to be on older versions that are quite different than the current/latest version.

We were looking to add a platform for interactive dashboards and self service reporting. Still working on implementation so no benefits have been realized yet.

we are currently an obiee shop with many power bi users. we were impressed that mstr has the metadata layer so we can control the data, but allow analysts and users the flexibility to create and enhance their own visualizations. Mstr won the poc due to their AI, hyper intelligence, natural query language etc. they are several steps ahead of the competition. also, their sales team was AMAZING!

haven't installed yet so there isn't anything to dislike yet :)

new and improved visualizations.... not yet installed so no benefits yet

The OLAP functionality of this product is best in class. The cubes created in MSTR can utilize all cores of the server and thus can be configured to use MPP architecture.

Another feature to highlight here is the latest Big Data Engine; MSTR's BDE is a Yarn based application that embeds right on top of Hadoop FS providing direct access to files in FS without need of any other language - Pig/Impala/Hive. I believe this is the closest a BI tool can embed on top of Hadoop FS.

The last one (not a feature though) which I would like to mention is the SQL that MSTR engine creates to retrieve data from warehouse. The multi-pass SQL is a very effective tool that provides lot of VLDB settings to tweak the SQL in regards to database, load and multiple other factors.

Version control is still a major concern in MicroStrategy. I am aware that MSTR is working on it as an enhancement.

License cost is also on the heavier side. Perhaps the desktop version that launched recently, might help ease pressure on budget.

We were able to automate multiple repetitive tasks in the BI environment using administrative tools provided with this product. This helped the team focus their energies on critical work tasks.

I like the Visual Insight piece as it allows for quick attractive dashboard creation and lends itself easily to self service analytics. This allows for easy drilling and drag and drop analysis. This is the ideal solution for data discovery and exploration. Its attractive and if you prepare tables appropriately the cubes can be created in less than a minute. Cubes are in memory, so allow very fast interaction with the data subverting the need to ping your SQL server each time you change a filter. You still have the option to run live or schedule in memory cubes to refresh at any interval. If done right document are some of the most attractive dashboards I have seen, The convenience of an online tool is also fantastic.

The documents piece has an incredibly steep learning curve. Many features are not intuitive and there are inconsistencies in the features like some tools allow prompts where others do not. Navigation and menus are a bit clunky in tools other than VI. In all tools it can be incredibly difficult to modify or edit a specific part of a graph. Also some of how the various tools interact is clunky and inconsistent. There are many bugs, inconsistent and unexpected occurrences at random and not a lot of training material. The official MSTR training courses through the PEP licensing is usually good but I have had terrible experiences with in person trainers from errors in the manual to instructors not knowing seemingly basic stuff.

Every new release focuses on Visual Insight. This means that the product is getting better. This portion of the tool makes MSTR valuable. Its relatively intuitive and allows for great self service options. Its not the easiest tool to use but it is robust. Of the 7 BI tools I have used MSTR's VI is among the best. The other tools are difficult and cumbersome but very attractive if you have the time and skills. Although the price tag is high this is an enterprise level tool and is effective at what it does. The quirks and bugs make me crazy every tool comes with its baggage and you have to hope that they are resolved in the next release.

We have financial data that we are trying to display in a format that makes it simple for users to know the most pertinent information at a glance but to also have the option to dig into the data if desired. We need a central location for all users to go for reporting and allow self service so we don't need to rebuild for each minor change desired.

In Memory partition or PRIME feature for faster performance and capability to handle high data. I tried to using this feature for some of the largest cube and found that cube has published time has been reduced to half. The only issue i faced it was consuming a lot of temp space on SQL server .

Data blending is another feature which i an really impressed.

R Integration with MicroStrategy and its behavior. In case if we have more than 1 metric in document using R, MSTR generate a seperate call to R for each metric, means if you have 4 metric calling R , it will generate 4 calls to R, impacting performance

MicroStrategy is at its best when it's intended as an enterprise solution, with a good team of developers and administrator.its good for dashboarding.. oustanding tool

We have developed some of the most complex documents for our product some of them related to customer current snapshot , its Behavior and prediction analysis. Since these dashboard / document are based on in-memory cube they fast and gave them complete insight of their data along with past ti present comparision.

Microstrategy synchronization between web and developer. single interface for end users to create their content and view it on the web directly. Microstrategy's distribution services is one among the best features. The rich looking dashboards that can be created using Microstrategy compared to other tools.

Some of the basic type of filters (Drop down+search+checkbox) and few other combinations which are very much basic filtering types which should be available are missing. recent versions have lot of bugs, and Microstrategy asking customer to upgrade to next versions is not the solution, as the next versions have some other bugs which need to be addressed before releasing newer versions.

Know your usage before choosing any tool.. each tool has its advantages and limitation. Comparing tools will not help.

Transaction services, Microstrategy office are helping one of the best features, though transaciton services needs some bug fixes in version 10

I use MicroStrategy in many ways but I always try to maintain a different approach to gathering information from this system.

I would say the search engine could use a lot of tweaking as it doesn't deliver results as well as other tools and I always get the feeling that some data is not being captured or distributed.

If you need business analytics in a proper form with many different ways of analyzing data then this is the solution. The team I was on really enjoyed using this tool and helped to make some significant improvements to the overall delivery.

We are trying to use this for complicated projects vs spreadsheets etc. Analytics can get very tiresome if not managed properly.

The dynamic report builder offers logical steps in creating different views of attributes and metric options used in reports. Sharing feature allows for standardized reports across all users.

Need more dynamic output choices for creating customer (B2B) facing presentations.

Consider data architecture thoroughly before going into production, especially if using parallel to other data sources/providers.

Creating actionable reports addressing KPIs and trends. Ability to track POS sales performance of existing and new product releases allows us to address any opportunities with value added services.

-Rich, Reusable and Efficient Metadata layer.

-Least dependability on ho your DWH is structured.

-Unmatched enterprise data security features

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I find everything just right with tool if you consider a fully fledged Enterprise reporting capability both for operational and business use.

They need to work on pricing compared to other niche players in this space.

Business users often want the agility and flexibility to build their own reports and dashboards without relying on the team of Developers. MicroStrategy Visual Insight – a fully integrated component of the MicroStrategy

Platform. We are currently using the VI capability to build self-serve on the top of data ware house.

The MSTR schema provides a comprehensive OLAP layer that ensures that the data is accessed with highly optimized queries and with a pretty good performance. Also, the support for mobile transactions is a really useful feature.

Some of the old dashboards and documents are not that good looking. Also Visual Insights still needs some polishing to compare to other self service BI tools like Tableau.

The main business problem that we are solving is granting access to our stakeholders to their information, from a centralized location but using a federated model that allows them to use Visual Insights for Self Service BI with out the need to contact the BI staff for ad hoc reporting or for frequently asked business questions.

We create self service spaces that include only the information that they need and we empower them to create BI solutions by themselves.

MicroStrategy has a good front end for complex SQL reports and is fairly easy to use from and end user perspective. But the UI is not very polished. The system also requires significant hardware investment. It works best with the native MSTR DB.

i do not have its very good tool and extraordinary tool.. there is no dislikes for this tool

Sometimes there is confusion between History and My Reports. I've had old reports that do not update that exist in My Reports, where there are others that live in history that, once clicked on, will refresh automatically with the current requested data.

MicroStrategy's Dashboard 2.0 app allows for users to make actionable decisions based on the data in a quick manner - even from within the dashboard itself.

MicroStrategy considers these features as important for mobile data:

Ability to access data offline

Data security

Ability to utilize full mobile experience, such as access to GPS

Ability to take action within the mobile app, i.e. post comments, share data/reports, etc

Downloading big data to devices during off-performance hours

Its solving for lot of issues mainly its good for dashboarding oustanding tool

Pulling reports to reflect what inventory has sold where. I pull lots of reports that reflect previous weeks months years data, including pricing and the changes in margins.

Having a standard format returned daily means easy training and handoffs. Being able to give someone the same report, where they can manipulate categories to return the same metrics is very helpful since I work in a corporate Retailers office.

I like how you can manipulate data, and connect to different sources. I like the ease of use from both the Desktop application and web application. It is very easy to use and learn. You can do so much with it! As a developer i can create attributes and metrics on the fly and it works most of the time. The margin of error is small. Having the ability ad hoc reports is amazing, users can make their own reports and we dont have to worry about it.

I wish the company wouldn't go towards mobile. Not everything can be mobile, they keep pushing mobile friendly apps, and tips. Some companies need data the old fashion way. The dashboard creation can be made simpler, it is a little bit tough at the moment.

This solves the problem of having different data from multiple sources, and the inability to create reports on the fly. Can't say enough good things about microstrategy

MSTR is the only BI with decent SQL engine. it is an application that allow developers to go beyon what the application is able to do. I have been using 1/2 a dozen of BI tool and MSTR is the onle one with the least obstacles blocking developers from delivering a state-of the art solution.

comparing the response side between sense and MSTR, i think MSTR reponse time is not there. Maybe 2019 version will be different.

Building an embeeded analytics with action

The ability to manipulate how the report returns data (similar to that of a pivot table) and the ease of choosing the specific metrics.

Being able to save and schedule reports to run at the key moments, allowing the servers to not be stressed when the rest of my coworkers come in and run their reports.

I've worked at companies without the entire package. Having to log in daily/weekly instead of receiving the reports via email can become tiresome.

Sometimes there is confusion between History and My Reports. I've had old reports that do not update that exist in My Reports, where there are others that live in history that, once clicked on, will refresh automatically with the current requested data.

Buy the full package including email delivery. Having these in your inbox in the morning saves a lot of time.

Pulling reports to reflect what inventory has sold where. I pull lots of reports that reflect previous weeks months years data, including pricing and the changes in margins.

Having a standard format returned daily means easy training and handoffs. Being able to give someone the same report, where they can manipulate categories to return the same metrics is very helpful since I work in a corporate Retailers office.

able to do almost everything I want to be able to do. Can sit with uses and design reports and dashboards that can be run daily and sent to their inbox. Can create metrics to accommodate most of their requests. Like their communication and consistent software updates. Good price point

little buggy, need more visualizations.

Great dashboards, able to design reports that can be setup with subscriptions.