Dundas BI

Affordable, flexible solution for manufacturing operations BI

Comments: We needed a self-service BI solution that would cover manufacturing operations dashboards and use cases. We wanted a tool that would allow for the distribution of centralized common dashboards but also allow for self-service customization. It needed to connect to multiple disparate data sources, and provide native ETL. It also needed to allow for real-time refresh capability. Finally, it needed to be affordable and scalable to our global operations footprint. DundasBI was the only solution that checked all of these boxes, and so far the tool has been a great help to reducing external spend and internal, custom-coded solutions.

Pros:

-Real-time dashboard refresh capability -Built-in ETL -Flexible seat types and affordable licensing -Superior flexibility and customization, without the need for coding -Out of the box performance and usage tracking

Cons:

Customization and flexibility come at the cost of a steeper learning curve compared to other solutions.

Amazing Experience for Your Dashboard's Users

Comments: The Creation GUI is very quirky, but the results are well worth putting up with it.
I have never had an idea that I could not eventually create (sometimes, some java script is needed).
The fact that they expose all of their API tools to the end user is amazing, and allows you to create some awesome things.

Pros:

- Support team is very helpful with basic use cases. - After a dashboard has been created, it looks great and works well for the end user. - People with zero programming experience are able to create dashboards.

Cons:

(All very minor things, which might be addressed in future updates) - Data cube creation, metric sets, and dashboards must be created using their GUI- they cannot be generated using scripts or edited as script. - You cannot copy and paste sections of one dashboard or datacube to another. - Data cube nodes cannot be copied. - All programming scripts are stored in an sql database, which means you cannot use version control systems (such as Git Hub).

Promising, good and high potential but not there yet

Comments: Dundas BI is a very good contender in the BI segment and has great potential. At the moment it is a tool for developers proficient with JavaScript and not recommended for end users. There are great potential with DBI. Unfortunately v4 got the wrong focus on non-essential upgrades thus put the bar high for version 5. To compete with Power BI, Tableau and QlikView DBI need much improvement on user-friendliness. If DBI can be really improved on administration and formatting and keeping the flexibility it will surpass most of it's competitors.

Pros:

Relatively easy to get started and creating visualizations and dashboards. The scorecard, which is a kind of repeating panel is brilliant and undervalued. The report is a great addition which makes DBI an all-in-one BI tool. Dashboard layers and pop-ups enhances the experience. Data driven notification adds to a useful experience. ETL cube with data warehouse has powerful transformations and much capabilities. The open API with JavaScript makes it flexible beyond expectations.

Cons:

Project and file and content management is amongst the worst in class! This need to be completely changed in v5! It's a frustrating experience to organize content. Auto save is okay, but need to be able to decide where. Check in /out is over-used and add frustration to developing dashboards. Poor cube management; need option to process multiple cubes and have incremential processing as option. Need an equation writer for those who is not proficient in JavaScript. Need more formulas for metric sets. Hidden metric sets in dashboards are a bad idea. Properties tab need complete re-organization.

Powerful tool with higher overhead

Comments: Dundas is a fantastic company that really seems to care about their product and their customers.

Pros:

The tool can do anything you want. I don't think I've gotten one "no" since I started asking about capabilities.

Cons:

The time needed to implement some features is high. And if you need to make changes to it later, you typically have to re-do a decent number of steps in the middle of the process (not on the dashboards, but in the data cubes that underlie them).

Great Value, Strong Feature Set

Pros:

Built in time period over period analysis, built in correlation matrices, ability to auto export data in various forms to excel, pdf, or other formats.

Cons:

There is no "undo" button on some pages,which makes error recovery more difficult. However, the company has already indicated they are working on a fix for this.