I am working in data analytics. They are the best solutions in the industry. With Qlik Sense, there is a way to integrate it within the company for sharing. It is good for certain use cases, though there are positives and cons for it as well.
Qlik Sense Enterprise with License
Qlik | QSE_May_2024_With_License_Update_02Jun25Windows, Windows Server 2019 Base 2019 Datacenter - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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In-depth analysis capabilities shine but wider support resources are needed
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
I am working with QlikView mainly, and with Qlik Sense, the whole Qlik environment. It is licensed by the company I work for.
QlikView is highly manipulable, so you can build on top of the environment they already have to create your own solution for the problems you have. That is the positive for it compared to something Power BI.
What needs improvement?
Everything depends on the use case, but I would prefer Power BI because of how mainstream it is.
There is not much information available. It is not a mainstream tool that many companies use, so if you are doing something that has not been done before, you can find it challenging to get an answer. Unlike Power BI, where there are many examples of what you want to do elsewhere, with QlikView this is not the case.
The support for it could be improved. Growing the support online would be beneficial for Qlik. Having more guides on complex tasks you want to do with Qlik would help. There is support online and a Qlik community that shares solutions for common problems, but for quite niche requirements, it does not have that sort of support.
For how long have I used the solution?
It has been almost a year now.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
When the company I work for was installing the environment, it took them a long time to do it. The company did not have the scale to get it up and running efficiently. It took them a year or two to get everything working properly because the way we use it in the company is very specific to our professional services. It took them a while to get it working the way they wanted it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Power BI has the edge on scalability. The Microsoft environment has the advantage because of its size. It is easily scalable with Microsoft, with other services Azure and other tools they provide.
How are customer service and support?
I have never contacted Qlik myself.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
It is based on SQL and T-SQL mainly, so if you are experienced with those languages, you would find your way easily.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is not about performance. It is just about how expensive it is to implement.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
For the company I work for, I have heard that Power BI would be a cheaper environment. That is why they are moving forward by integrating Power BI.
What other advice do I have?
I think something Power BI has the edge over Qlik Sense. I am not working directly with certain aspects, so I cannot comment further on those. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 7.
Quick by a Qlick
Dashboard and data exploration are easy.
Data connections with multiple cloud platforms allow for easy insights.
Customer support is superb.
Activation and implementation are easy.
Data exploration with multiple users is not easy.
Charts
Data extraction
Data Manipulation
Unlocks actionable insights through user-friendly analysis features
What is our primary use case?
The main use cases involve getting data in an analyzable format. Clients should be able to analyze it through a self-service tool, which is why Qlik Sense was the better choice. Self-service is the primary use case they had as clients wanted to perform self-service analysis.
Additionally, they wanted to automate workflows along with the analysis. They aimed to have action-driven analysis, focusing mainly on dashboard analysis and automated workflows depending on the analysis they perform.
What is most valuable?
The self-service capabilities that Qlik Sense offers are significant. They offer natural language processing, allowing users to ask questions in layman language, and Qlik Sense will create charts and narratives automatically. Users can access any dashboard developed in Qlik Sense from familiar portals such as Okta or other company portals through embedding features.
The integration with chatbots, particularly Microsoft Teams, allows users to access dashboards and ask questions directly within Teams. The collaboration feature enables users to share analysis by taking snapshots and tagging team members within the Qlik Sense interface, eliminating the need for lengthy emails or screenshots.
The storytelling feature allows users to create presentations directly in Qlik Sense using dashboard analysis, making it easier to answer questions during meetings. The subscription feature enables users to receive charts and sheets via email instead of navigating to the dashboard, facilitating monitoring purposes.
Qlik Sense offers alerting capabilities where users can set thresholds for KPIs and receive notifications when these thresholds are reached. The platform also includes AI/ML features for predictive modeling through a no-code component, allowing business users to create and deploy AutoML models without depending on data scientists.
The Qlik Answers component, featuring generative AI capability, enables users to get answers from unstructured data including Excel, HTML documents, or Microsoft Word documents by creating a knowledge base.
The user-friendly interface operates on a drag-and-drop approach, with Qlik Sense suggesting appropriate charts based on selected dimensions and measures. The associative engine capabilities allow data association between tables, implementing selections across related tables. The platform uses a color-coding system (white, gray, and dark gray) to show related, excluded, and unrelated data selections, providing insights beyond traditional BI tools.
What needs improvement?
The support aspect could be improved, particularly in terms of response time for high-priority issues, especially when dealing with production environment client issues that require immediate attention.
Qlik Sense Cloud pricing is relatively high. While on-premises versions work with user-based licensing effectively, the cloud version's capacity-based pricing needs more clarity. There should be more comprehensive documentation and explanatory videos available to help clients understand and calculate capacity-based pricing, making it easier to predict costs before implementing Qlik Sense Cloud.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Qlik Sense for 10 years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I have not encountered any deployment issues.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is pretty stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Qlik Sense helps analyze data and can handle larger amounts of data compared to other BI tools. Qlik Sense has never had issues related to large data sets. For deployment options, it works in two ways: on-premises and Qlik Sense Cloud. Qlik Sense offers a public cloud where dashboards can be hosted, which is becoming the more feasible option that most organizations are choosing.
How was the initial setup?
Setup has always been straightforward. The Qlik Sense help site provides comprehensive information for setup support.
What other advice do I have?
Most organizations had scattered data across many legacy systems. Qlik Sense has consolidated all the data in one place and provided answers to all their questions, helping to make better decisions and enabling faster collaborations.
If you have a scattered system and want to analyze your data, structured data, along with the unstructured ones, Qlik Sense is the best option where you can collaborate both data formats into one and perform analysis on top of it. This eliminates the need to rely on multiple systems to get answers.
On a scale of 1-10, this solution receives a rating of 9.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
QlikSense: Making Sense of your Data
Qliksense: Best Buisness intelligence tool with advanced features
In-memory data storage boosts performance
What is our primary use case?
Qlik Sense is a kind of modern BI tool that allows me to integrate multiple data sources, providing governed access. I can build all my dashboards in Qlik Sense, which are of very high quality and interactive.
I can easily drill down from one piece of information to another. This is the main purpose of using Qlik Sense, as it's a standard BI tool. A very good point about Qlik Sense is that it is an in-memory data tool. Even if the data volume is quite large, it stores my data in memory, so whenever I need it, it can render it at high speed.
What is most valuable?
The advantages compared to other BI tools show architectural differences. The main feature is that it keeps all the data in memory. It doesn't retrieve the data from data sources when I need it on the dashboard; instead, it quickly provides the desired data, making it very fast compared to other BI tools.
The ROI is very high using Qlik Sense. It offers many benefits of BI. It is flexible from a developer's point of view, allowing me to accomplish many tasks compared to other BI tools. From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
What needs improvement?
Although it can be improved, it stores all the data in the dashboards and its proprietary QED file system, used internally by Qlik Sense. One area of improvement is that it doesn't offer an API for accessing processed data stored in the QED files. There is no provision for an API to retrieve data from QEDs for third-party applications. Providing an API feature to access data from the dashboard or QEDs could be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for five to six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is highly scalable. I can perform horizontal and vertical scaling. The software can be installed on a cluster, and nodes can be defined as primary and secondary. All these configurations make it highly scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Customer service is satisfactory. They have a good level of knowledge base on their community sites. Generally, I do not need to contact the tech team, as solutions are available on the community site. If I do not find a solution there, reaching out to them is easy.
They sell products through partners, who raise tickets on my behalf to get solutions. While tech support is comprehensive, the stability of Qlik Sense means I generally do not need it. I have been using it for more than five to six years.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used this tool five years ago but no longer use it. I switched to Qlik Sense and then Looker among other BI tools, moving away from OBI.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. Qlik Sense stands out with its comprehensive ETL capability. I can write ETL within Qlik Sense and build my entire data warehouse. Compared to OBI, Power BI, Looker, or Tableau, which offer limited data transformation, Qlik Sense allows me to build layers and visualize data. It excels in extract, load, and transformation capabilities.
What was our ROI?
If my organization is looking for a BI tool to take data-driven decisions, Qlik Sense is among the best. If not using any BI tool, the ROI is very high. In my organization, we moved from OBI to Qlik Sense due to limitations with OBI, resulting in very high ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Costs depend on the deal. They offer various licensing metrics based on our needs. For small or large organizations needing many or few licenses, pricing varies.
For solutions used by many clients, core-based licensing operates on a subscription mode, allowing unlimited users. If the solution is for internal use by few users, it's better to choose only necessary licenses.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate it more than nine out of ten. I am very happy, and the entire organization is pleased with Qlik. I was responsible for implementing and configuring it, facilitating deployment on the cloud and building applications on top of that.
Overall, I rate the solution more than nine out of ten.
Interactive visualization improves decision-making for managers
What is our primary use case?
In the bank, since 2017, I have found Qlik Sense to be a valuable tool. Our use of it primarily depends on the user release. We use Oracle Analytics Server for a CPU release, and alongside that, we use Qlik Sense for C-level, regional managers, and branch managers.
I don't use Qlik Sense personally since my bank prefers it for C-level managers. Although I don't use it directly, another department uses it to prepare reports for Qlik Sense, targeting end-users like C-level users.
What is most valuable?
Qlik Sense provides better visualization. When I look at the reports and dashboards, it has an interactive interface with Qlik graphs, pivot, and interactivity, which makes it easier to use than other tools. C-level managers can easily make decisions about their operations.
What needs improvement?
Actually, I don't have any specific ideas. The last time I built a report for the IT team to monitor their process was about a year ago. They received requirements and tracked progress, measuring how they processed tasks. Power BI offers better pricing compared to Qlik Sense. Qlik Sense has better performance, particularly in its archival system. However, Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use. Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it in the bank since 2017.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable. I would rate it ten out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I believe it is easily scalable. If you buy enough resource licenses, it's okay for you. It is extensible. I would rate it nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
Support depends on your consultant firms. In Turkey, the consultant firms are very professional, and they support you. I don't know about other countries, however, in Turkey, consultant firms were very professional. I give them ten points out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Among the BI tools and data analytics tools, Qlik is the most expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Power BI is a better tool than other options.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.
Effective with good performance and versatility
What is most valuable?
The solution offers good performance. In terms of development and everything, it's very effective. Additionally, it is a single product that I can use as an ETL database, BI, and more.
What needs improvement?
The appearance could be enhanced, especially when compared to Tableau or Power BI. Maybe more AI or real-time analytics could be incorporated.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Qlik Sense for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. I would rate it around seven to eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is also very good, around seven to eight out of ten. It performs well in terms of performance and load compared to others.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support requires improvement. I would rate it around three out of ten. Basically, I think they lack in the support system.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used SAP BO, which is more traditional. Performance-wise, it is not so great.
How was the initial setup?
If it is complex, then it becomes even more time-consuming. Setting up a server should take around one or two hours.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation team consisted of around 20 people.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's expensive. Compared to Power BI, it is definitely costly. I would estimate the cost at maybe five out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
It's a good product. Performance-wise and scalability-wise, it's good. Overall, it's a solid product. They need to improve their marketing strategy, like Power BI, the Microsoft product, however, they are not selling it in the right manner. I would rate the solution eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Available at a favorable price point for users
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company for dashboard building and reporting purposes. In my company, we have a lot of dashboards that are live, and we also work with quite a lot of reports.
What needs improvement?
In our company, we found a few requirements in the tool, which we directly shared with Qlik's team through our account manager.
With the May 2024 release, the tool has covered a lot of products, but I feel there is more to come. I am expecting new updates in the tool.
Qlik Sense requires one to have a lot of technical knowledge. It is an area where improvements can be made.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Qlik Sense for three to four years.
How are customer service and support?
My company gets support from the service vendor team, so we have not contacted Qlik directly.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Earlier, I used to use QlikView. Every tool has its own set of pros and cons. It is not fair to compare a tool with another product.
If you look at Power BI, there are a few things you can do that would take a bit of time in Qlik Sense. On the knowledge side, people might need to know how to handle Qlik Sense technically. Power BI requires relatively less effort for a person to manage, especially given its exposure to Excel, so it is a reason why people might be already aware of Power BI and not Qlik Sense. Power BI borrows many features or examples from Excel or Access, which are long-standing Microsoft products that people are already aware of in the present.
What was our ROI?
When used manually, the tool has saved our company a lot of time. For certain projects, we have saved a couple of files for each iteration.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Considering the deal that we have acquired, Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price.
What other advice do I have?
The tool's data analysis is useful to help out the teams across the globe and to track their work.
Qlik Sense is linked with our company's SQL servers.
After working with QlikView for a very long time, I felt it did not carry over many of the features to Qlik Sense directly, and it was done over a period of time. Until the tool's MAy 2024 was released, we did not have a hide option for every object, which now they have given, but there is a workaround for it using the layout container. In QlikView, such features were easily available with an expression view. It was much easier in QlikView than it is in Qlik Sense's latest version.
My company is not quite open to AI because of the compliance issues and the data restrictions that we have in place. We are managing AI-related areas in a controlled manner using Python and a few other things, which are being built in-house rather than using open-source platforms.
I rate the tool an eight to nine out of ten.