MicroStrategy Analytics

No matter how complex the data pull, I can create & save custom dashboards so quick & easy data pulls that I am able to share with my team and other collaboration departments. Exporting data is exponentially faster than with other, similar software programs we have access to.

If you're unfamiliar with MicroStrategy the interfaces can be so overwhelming. I personally do not find the interfaces very intuitive either. Luckily there are tons of resources for walking users through pretty much every scenario you can imagine. And with a little time it becomes second nature.

Depth and breadth of OLAP functions and detailed users guides. Beautiful mobile reports and growing library of visualizations.

Microstrategy has a steep learning curve and we have had performance challenges with large datasets.

The software is easy to install and get up and running. It handles a wide variety of data types and has many options for displaying data. They now have a compilable version that lets developers hard code the dashboards to work with input software which is nice (although a little pricey for smaller applications).

The user interface was less than intuitive, development support was not strong, and some of the features do not respond as expected. Specifically, maps do not appear to scale properly - I wound up with a much larger map (the entire northern hemisphere) than wanted (the continental USA) and could never get them to display properly unless I removed the data element and started over. Setting up dashboard frames to fit various screen sizes is a little complicated. Setting up “reusable frames” was a little difficult to master, because of the sidebar configuration tools.