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.

- HyperIntelligence

- MicroStrategy WorkStation for a one stop destination for the admin and management stuff

- Provisioning Console for swift deployment in the Cloud

- Plenty of connectors to connect for your data needs

I would like MicroStrategy to be partnering with Google Cloud as most of our data is in there. There are also couple of things like the Writeback functionality in Google cloud

It's a great tool to consider for your Enterprise Analytics Solutions and with the power of Dossier in 2019 it has become more robust

Well we have been a customer for MSTR for quite a years now. I really liked the security and governance provided by MSTR compared to all the other analytics tool we have which has helped us implement some key security measures for different business users and vendor groups

Layout and navigation are very easy to follow.

Desktop and Workstation tools are great for working with both online and offline data.

Administration on Linux based servers is tedious.

If you have Linux systems, make sure to have an X window manager running.

Command line options are limited.

Use quality hardware if you're running entirely in house. If you're going to implement cubes, plan ahead for memory and storage growth on your Intelligence servers.

We processes million of records each day. MicroStrategy Analytics helps us produce readable and meaningful reporting from that data.

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.

Very strong core Enterprise BI capability - ability to work easily across different devices and formats (with particularly strong mobile offering), great platform administration and security features, flexibility and capability in data modelling. Data Discovery capability in Dossier is also very strong. Integration with D3 library and native visualisations also work very well. Also, great connectors pack and ability to integrate via API, great Data Science integration with production models built in R.

Don't have any real dislikes to mention.

Build a solid reporting layer in your DataWarehouse to get the best out of MSTR as a front-end tool (like other BI front-end tools), but MSTR can also plug gaps in the reporting layer through building cubes etc.

Decision support at all levels of the organisation, the need to make information and insight available to our field teams on a mobile device, exec information systems, business problems relating to forecasting and analytics. Multi-million pound cost and time savings as well as new opportunities.

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.