Sisense is a solution that is definitely disrupting business analytics with its easy drag-and-drop and scalable end-to-end BI processes to prepare, analyze, and visualize multiple complex datasets fast. Even companies with a limited line of IT specialists or big data experience can now crunch terabytes of data and service volumes of users through a single commodity server. Its proprietary In-Chip engine and Single-Track architecture make it efficient to utilize RAM, disk, and CPU, allowing companies to run big data analyses on inexpensive hardware.
Sisense won our Best Business Intelligence Software Award for 2015
After a thorough analysis of various business intelligence software services our experts found Sisense to be one of the best apps of this type available on the market. Sisense got an impressive total score of 9.7/10 which puts it at the first spot in our top 10 business intelligence software list. Its current customer satisfaction rating on our platform shows that 99% of clients had a positive experience with the software. Sisense was also distinguished with the Best Business Intelligence Software Award for 2015 as well as our Supreme Software Award. In addition to its flexible pricing plans Sisense also offers a great free trial that lets you test all the important features of the app before you decide if it meets all your company requirements. You can easily sign up for Sisesnse free trial here.
In this article, we’ll delve into details about what we think are the best aspects of the software and how it compares with industry standards. We’ll also show with which features of the software its customers are especially happy about and we’ll discuss the awards won by Sisense. Finally, there’s also an interview with the CEO of the company. You can also check our full review of Sisense here if you want to know more about the technical details of Sisense.
What are the Highlights of Sisense?
In-Chip engine offers high-performance business analytics including faster query response even while the system handles billions of rows of data
Single-Stack architecture allows data shifting from multiple sources to happen in one BI platform, eliminating the need for data warehouses, additional scripting, and other database relational-related hardware and software
Shortest time-to-insight processing and unmatched total cost of ownership
Intuitive and creative visualization tools plus drag-and-drop environment make Sisense one of the most user-friendly BI solutions
No more data inaccuracies or inaccessibility because the entire organization can run big data from the comfort of their workstations
Sisense can embed powerful analytics in other business solutions using OEM labeling
For more information about features of Sisesnse check out our full review of the software.
5 Things We Like About Sisense
1. It’s powerful yet simple to use
Sisense has two proprietary technologies that make it easy to use even for people with no formal IT skills. At the same time behind its simple user interface lies a powerful BI solution.
First, the In-Chip engine makes data preparation fast and simple, avoiding the nightmare inherent to traditional BI methodologies. The In-Chip engine lets you make different queries and get answers fast without having to program data rules for each query. It uses CPU cache memory with efficiency allowing it to work on billions of rows of rapidly changing data to return ad hoc queries in seconds even as it continues to process big data. The data is prepared only when a query is made (to optimize CPU performance). This makes Sisense adaptable to commodity server infrastructure, meaning, it saves you money from buying high-end servers.
Second, Sisense’s Single-Stack architecture allows you to shift from data integration to visualization using a single BI platform for instant deployment. This eliminates the need for data warehouses, OLAP cubes, and star schemas to handle complex calculations and sophisticated data modeling. Traditionally, the IT department prepares data by programming the sources to understand each other. This eats up plenty of manpower hours and requires a full technical department. Using Sisense’s built-in connectors and integration, you can quickly integrate disparate source files, such as, Google Adwords, Excel spreadsheets, and CRM reports, as well as Zendesk, Salesforce, and data from a wide array of popular business solutions.
You’ll like the drag-and-drop environment in this BI software, making it a cinch to combine large sets of data. Likewise, you have a slew of visualization options to interpret data: use location charts, graphical charts, pie charts, line charts, plot charts, etc. to compare, contrast, track, reveal, highlight, or however you want to interpret your data.
2. It covers full scope of business analytics
It is fast and agile delivering the shortest time-to-insight process. You don’t need a DBA, special scripts to run, or manual mashups; Sisense eliminates numerous tools to run queries and lets you get all the important insights right away. You have a single BI platform, which handles the entire BI workflow from data preparation to dashboard visualization, giving you exponentially faster processing to drill down to raw data from multiple sources. Likewise, you can quickly add tables from numerous sources without the need to aggregate, index, or summarize tables in advance. This means incorporating new data to your business intelligence is done on the fly. For instance, adding new supplier data or campaign metrics to your sales forecast analytics is as simple as integrating this data into Sisense.
3. Minimal total cost of ownership
Because its Single-Stack eliminates the need for different analytics tools, DBA, additional scripting, and manual mashups, Sisense drastically lowers down the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your BI architecture. You get minimal TCO, too, because it lets you work on commodity hardware, thus, avoiding costly data warehouses and high-performance servers.
Likewise, the In-Chip engine helps you to run BI analytics with unparalleled performance within a drag-and-drop interface. This means you can perform in-house BI processing without having to pay for professional services or maintaining a full technical department. You can build interactive dashboards and visualization reports on the fly, such as: location maps, KPI gauges, line charts for trends, plot charts to see correlations, and pie charts for item comparisons. The vendor also claims that non-technical users can query “100 times more data at 10 times the speed of in-memory solutions.” Scouring for insights over the entire history of all your past and current customers, for instance, is now possible to perform by yourself or anyone, alone, in the comfort of a cubicle without having to bug entire departments. This empowers organizational members to ask meaningful questions or reveal insights from perspectives that you might have not thought of.
4. Single version of truth
When you have multiple sources generating data and large volumes of these are constantly being moved from one platform to another by different users, there is a real chance of data error. Big data can be interpreted in different ways and in different angles, making a single erroneous or omitted data throw off the entire insight. You can avoid this dilemma with Sisense because it consolidates data in one location, ensuring that people in your organization are looking at the same information.
Moreover, Sisense dashboards are web-based allowing users to share reports and collaborate using the same insights. Because there’s no need to download files, you avoid having multiple copies and the risk of altered data. Moreover, Sisense has a Crowd Accelerated BI technology, which can handle simultaneous multiple queries, so even if collaborators send hundreds of queries at the same time, the system is still up to speed. When you have collaboration operating in an accurate, real-time, and data-driven environment, you get outcomes that are better aligned with your situation.
If you want to run analytics with real-time data, you can simply refresh the dashboard and, immediately, the latest data is reflected in the system. If you’re tracking online sales at the height of a peak season, for example, the most recent data within the hour is critical to give you a clearer picture if sales is still trending up or starting to slide down right at the moment. Without this real-time capability, it’s harder to forecast trends and institute rapid interventions, if need be.
5. Embedding Sisense analytics for other products
Using its REST API, you can quickly embed Sisense into your on-premise or SaaS application. Whether you’re a vendor or hosting your own solution, insights can be quickly generated from business processes such as CRM, accounting, and project management, by accessing Sisense’s full-stack, fully featured data analytics. The embedded analytics also lets you visualize data in an intuitive, user-friendly interface. Sisense takes care of the complex processing from data preparation to dashboard reporting.
Immediately, you can handle terabytes of data using low-end hardware, turning your other systems into high-performing data crunchers. Your other systems are also given robust backend for ETL and data preparation, an interactive dashboard, and fast time to market benefit. Other benefits of embedding Sisense include: fast response to queries; data integration from multiple sources; ongoing maintenance and tech support; and creating an end-to-end solution. All these benefits mean you can explore data at any angle and level of detail, and find that insight that will leverage your advantage over the competition. To put it in perspective, in a sea of blue balls, you can spot the few darker blue balls and target them with precision.
Vendors will also like that Sisense offers OEM white labeling, meaning they can customize the look and feel of Sisense to match their software, so customers will never know they are using a Sisense backend.
Sisense pricing plans
Sisense offers a scalable and flexible annual pricing plan that is meant to be adjustable to clients’ individual needs, budgets and company sizes. You can get specific rates if you contact the vendor directly and share some basic information about your company so they can properly adjust a quote depending on the size of your business and the scale of your operations. For more details please visit the vendor’s official website.
There is also a great free trial plan that allows you to test the software’s capabilities and see how profitable it can be for your company. You can easily sign up for Sisense free trial here.
What Customers Say about Sisense
Many agree that Sisense is disrupting BI as we know it. A Forbes article even called it, “Taking big data analytics by storm,” mainly because Sisense removes data size and performance restrictions of in-memory and relational databases. Companies with a single commodity server and limited IT capabilities can now run volumes of data for business intelligence.
One of the common comments about Sisense is its ability to reduce BI into a single platform despite data coming from different sources. George Ricketts from Chicago, IL said, “Sisense allows us to visualize our disparate data from multiple sources like Google Docs and MySQL.” This flexibility, he said, helps them to make better decisions. “It connects to almost any data set that we have.”
Likewise, many users find Sisense easy to set up and use at an affordable rate. “Onboarding is smooth and we got clear pricing model,” Jennifer, a project manager from Nebraska, said. “We were able to crunch numbers at once using our five-year old server, plus the support guys at Sisense were great.” Jennifer said the solution has helped them maintain a low overhead, while enjoying the insights they get from plotting and comparing their sales territories.
Another recurring positive comment about Sisense is its high-performance feature. “We’re amazed at its power to compute large sets of data,” Richard M., a software developer from Pennsylvania, said. “We have around ten product lines with each one having its own global market. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t match their sales performance against each other not only because we’re comparing apples to oranges, but the sheer data volume requires tons of work which we felt didn’t justify the outcome. But if we can do this with a few clicks and drag-and-drop moves, why not?” Richard said they did run the comparison and discovered customer queries that match the answers provided by their other products. “We got a good number of cross-selling opportunities.”
Awards and Quality Certificates Won by Sisense
Best Business Intelligence Software for 2015
After a close inspection of its features in various contexts and problem scenarios, we concluded that Sisense is an excellent business intelligence software that is democratizing big data analysis even for companies with limited IT capability and hardware. It combines high performance, practical application, and low-cost entry that match both the needs of small businesses and large enterprises. This range of flexibility makes the software unique in its category, giving its clients great capabilities to adjust to their current BI needs.
Supreme Software Award
This award is given only to top B2B products and represents the highest possible level of service. It highlights the vendor’s extensive knowledge of the industry they’re selling to and the needs of their customers. As a disruptive BI software, Sisense is at the forefront of delivering high-performing but low-cost big data solutions that can shape the entire BI landscape.
Expert’s Choice Award
This award is given by our team of SaaS experts to products that we think show especially good quality in terms of satisfying the current needs of the B2B and SaaS markets. Sisense helps companies deal with problems they currently face with solid and efficient solutions. Its ability to handle complex data without sacrificing usability makes Sisense an very attractive BI solution for many companies.
Great User Experience Award
This certificate is granted to products that offer especially high level of user experience. We evaluated how easy it was to start using the product and how well-designed its interface and features are to facilitate the work process. We were impressed by how the intuitive dashboard and creative visualization tools of Sisense allow people with limited IT knowledge to crunch big volumes of data for insights.
An Interview with Sisense CEO
Amir Orad,
CEO of Sisense
We asked Amir Orad, CEO of Sisense, why organizations actually need Sisense. He summarized the benefits of his service saying that “Teams who use Sisense can become big thinkers by having the freedom to ask any question and get meaningful answers from their data quickly and easily.”
We sat down with the CEO to find out more about Sisense. Asked about what makes Sisense unique Orad pointed out that “it has everything you need to prepare, analyze and visualize complex data. You have instant deployment and no data preparation nightmare.” He cited Sisense’s proprietary In-Chip engine and Single-Stack architecture as the BI solution’s main unique features. Both technologies allow users to get the shortest time-to-insight processing and an unmatched TCO, he said. “You also get an unparalleled performance even when working with billions of rows of data that are changing rapidly.”
What about specific problems that Sisense can actually help you solve? Orad gave us three scenarios where Sisense really helps organizations.
First of all, it handles complex bid and disparate data. “Our award-winning In-Chip technology at the core of the Sisense engine allows it to effectively use CPU cache memory as well as process and prepare data only when a new query is made, allowing Sisense to easily scale to terabytes of data and thousands of users easily,” the CEO said.
Secondly, it removes constraints of traditional BI. Even small companies with commodity hardware can now analyze complex data, he said. “Sisense eliminates the need to use a hodgepodge of tools by letting users build complex data models in a visual environment, and giving end users the freedom to explore, filter and drill down into this data in any granularity, independently, and with instant answers to ad-hoc questions.”
Finally, it takes the burden off IT. Because users with limited technical background can easily learn how to use the intuitive interface of Sisense, the implementation of business analytics is more democratic with the software. “While other platforms might boast shifting data-related tasks to the IT department, Sisense removes workload instead of shifting it between stakeholders,” Orad said. “Data is easily available to analysts and administrators, while IT professionals are free to focus on their core tasks.”
Sisense SmartScore and Customer Satisfaction
Our experts have conducted a full review of Sisense detailing its features, user feedback, customer service, and other key aspects. Using our SmartScore system we gave Sisense a really impressive score of 9.7/10, while our Customer Satisfaction Algorithm estimates the overall user satisfaction rating for the software at 99%. If you’d like to have your product considered for any of FinancesOnline awards or quality certificates please contact us.
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