João Pedro Rodrigues - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Analytics Trainee at Siemens Industry
Real User
A very powerful and useful tool
Pros and Cons
  • "Qlik Sense is a very powerful and useful tool."
  • "The one thing I would probably try to add is some kind of tutorial since the tool has a lot of options to work with, and for someone who is just starting and does not have any prior experience, it can be a little overwhelming."

I have been using Qlik Sense as a Data Analyst Trainee. At Siemens, I am doing a data academy to fully integrate myself into the data world and way of work, and the main tool that is used, from a visual standpoint, is Qlik Sense. In that context, I have been using this application to develop small dashboards on my own, which are later evaluated by my tutors, so I can learn how to make good and effective dashboards for someone who was no idea what Qlik Sense is, since the client usually only cares if the data is shown in a "pretty way."

I can't say for sure if it has highly improved my organization, since I joined only two months ago, but the overall feel I get from my peers is that Qlik Sense is a very powerful and useful tool, and it is very worth mastering, especially for people like me, who are much more "visual" than "coders."

The one thing I would probably try to add is some kind of tutorial since the tool has a lot of options to work with, and for someone who is just starting and does not have any prior experience, it can be a little overwhelming. Even so, I do believe the "Insights" button is a great addition, not only for beginners but for experienced users as well. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Analytics Technician at Eurofragrance, S.L.
Real User
Easy to use with good customer support but on-premises models need better pricing options
Pros and Cons
  • "The visualizations are good and keep improving."
  • "They need to make security rules to access applications and data security easier and customizable."

What is our primary use case?

I've been an user for many years and also a developer that's working as a consultant. I use Qlik to develop apps to extract, load, and transform data from different sources and then use this data to make apps for different departments in my organization. 

I am a consumer of this data as well, as I work for the Controlling Department. We also use NPrinting to send reports to different people in the organization and this saves us a lot of time on manual tasks. 

We extract data from: SAP, SQL DB, Excels, Success Factors, Sharepoint, Oracle, and more. 

How has it helped my organization?

Qlik Sense is highly used in my organization as it helps our users to derive insights from the data accurately. 

The visualization objects in Qlik Sense are really good and interactive and help my users to get an understanding of the whole story behind the data. 

Unlike query-based BI tools, the associative model of Qlik Sense has helped them a lot in deriving insights and metrics for the business. Also, it has helped to reduce the time consumed in doing complex reports and sending them to different people.

What is most valuable?

Qlik Sense has a lot of features that I find valuable.

It's easy to use. As a user, you can learn the basics very quickly and they provide you with free material that makes it easy to learn.

As a developer the tool is easy to learn as well. They keep making improvements to make it easier for users to make their own reports without knowing too much about coding.

You can accurately manage a large volume of data in less time.

Qlik Sense uses an in-memory data model.

It can read a wide range of different sources.

The visualizations are good and keep improving.

The customer support is very good.

What needs improvement?

I would love to see some improvements in the following areas:

  • They need to make it easy to generate documentation of apps, giving information about legacy.
  • They need to make security rules to access applications and data security easier and customizable.
  • I would love it if they could make a "recycle bin" as users sometimes may delete an app and then cannot recover it unless they have made a backup of the server recently.
  • There needs to be better pricing options for on-premises clients Right now, they are focusing more on SaaS.
  • NPrinting needs more enhancements in its configuration and error handling.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've never had problems with stability due to the fact that we use an on-premises deployment.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very good and quite fast; they have always provided help when I needed it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a different solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

It's really easy to install and they make it easier each year.

What about the implementation team?

In some companies yes, we did get help and they were very capable.

What was our ROI?

We have not measured ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'd advise that users always try to have more RAM than they think they will need to make it easier to expand in the future. This also applies for CPU cores. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did look at Power BI.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Qlik Sense
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Qlik Sense. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
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Co-Owner at Alvarium
Real User
Easy to set up with excellent technical support and easy collaboration capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "The data is incredibly easy to share with colleagues."
  • "There is no downside."

What is our primary use case?

We use this product for data visualizations and interpretation. We are having success with identifying opportunities through seeing our weaknesses. In my time coaching the sales team, I had to find a way for everyone to have access the as much information as possible. Qlik made this very easy for us. Giving the sales team access to data empowered them and also provided them with confidence and the resolve to take all the opportunities that were available in the market. I am amazed at how well this worked.

How has it helped my organization?

We use this product for data visualizations and interpretation. We are having success with identifying opportunities through seeing our weaknesses. In my time coaching the sales team, I had to find a way for everyone to have access the as much information as possible. Qlik made this very easy for us. Giving the sales team access to data empowered them and also provided them with confidence and the resolve to take all the opportunities that were available in the market. I am amazed at how well this worked.

What is most valuable?

The data is incredibly easy to share with colleagues. This enables us to sit together to identify opportunities. Having the sales team sitting around a table accessing the same data made it very easy for them to work together. In an industry where co-operating is a dirty word, my team relished the opportunity to build a strong team to take on the rest of the industry. They excelled at following up and reminding customers that the opportunity was theirs and not ours. Being able to have your say at the right time really helped pave the way for the team to win.

What needs improvement?

The product is easy to use and provides us with more than what we need. The data is incredibly easy to share with colleagues. There is no downside.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product runs well in most countries - even with limited connectivity.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is limitless. You can scale it.

How are customer service and technical support?

The support for this product is exceptional.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did use something else, however, the product was not relevant anymore.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very easy.

What about the implementation team?

We did get outside assistance and the vendor was excellent.

What was our ROI?

We have about a 100% return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is expensive, but a worthwhile step.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Alchemex and Excel.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Software Engineer at Ingram Content Group
Real User
Quickly and efficiently develop new dashboards that display relevant data
Pros and Cons
  • "We can easily and quickly deploy new dashboards that reach a wide audience and any changes get reflected almost instantaneously for the users."
  • "If a team wants to keep track of source code changes, there is not an out-of-the-box solution for it."

What is our primary use case?

My company is a distributor.

We use Qlik to surface information regarding sales, inventory, ordering volumes, customer data, and other key pieces of information to decision-makers in our company. We primarily use Qlik internally.

To date, we have created more than 1300 dashboards for various business teams within the organization. We have five developers who help create and maintain the dashboards. Some of our advanced users have also contributed sheets to our user community to augment the existing dashboards.

How has it helped my organization?

Qlik has brought tremendous value to our organization in a few key ways.

One thing Qlik has done is to give us a consistent platform on which we can build analytical solutions. Another thing Qlik has enabled us to do is to move rapidly. Most dashboards are now completed in a few days to a few weeks versus a few months with our previous solutions.

Also, Qlik has enabled our organization to deliver data that was previously unavailable to our internal users. We can now surface that information and do so in a consistent and meaningful manner.

What is most valuable?

The fact that we can develop and deliver solutions through the browser really cuts down on the operations overhead of producing dashboards that our company finds relevant.

We can easily and quickly deploy new dashboards that reach a wide audience and any changes get reflected almost instantaneously for the users.

Qlik provides an abundance of tools to use for data visualization. We spend more time focusing on how the data is best displayed rather than developing controls to display the information. 

What needs improvement?

As a developer, the biggest area for improvement is in the realm of source control. If a team wants to keep track of source code changes, there is not an out-of-the-box solution for it. Doing manual version control is error-prone and does not lend itself to simple rollbacks in many cases.

One other area for improvement would be discoverability. There are a lot of advanced capabilities in Qlik that are not easily discovered. Even some of the more 'mundane' features are sometimes hard to find or require a fair amount of explanation before users can take full advantage of them.

For how long have I used the solution?

My company has been using Qlik for about four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

While we have been on Qlik there have not been any outages. I would say the up time for Qlik is impeccable. We do occasionally have to take the system down for upgrades and maintenance but those are easily scheduled to occur during off-peak hours and are typically done well before users expect the system to be available.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Qlik scales relatively well.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Director, Supply Chain Services Operations at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
The QIX engine performance speed is a valuable feature.

What is most valuable?

QlikSense has drastically and dramatically made our analytical function more efficient. The QIX engine delivers performance speeds that are simply unmatched by any other BI tool.

How has it helped my organization?

Qlik has, simply but strongly put, removed a significant amount of our time spent engineering data and given that time back to our team to analyze and draw insights that drive decisions and outcomes for our company and for the healthcare industry.

What needs improvement?

If Qlik can further unify its products into a single platform, there would be no stopping them!

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using QlikView in 2013 and have begun work with Qlik Sense in the past year.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We did not encounter any deployment issues.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Only when our usage outgrew our physical environment (server size) did we have stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

From the support group to the extensive user community network, we have received excellent support and customer service when faced with environmental or development issues or questions.

Technical Support:

The support is thorough.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to Qlik, our data modelling and reporting process consisted of SQL -> MS Access -> MS Excel -> MS PowerPoint; when requests or report criteria would change, that vicious cycle would be repeated and sometimes it was painfully labor-intensive. Qlik optimized the data engineering aspect and packaged that entire process into one place.

How was the initial setup?

Our initial setup was straightforward in the sense that our team leveraged Qlik for internal efficiency only. After time, we built our confidence in our external work and usage spread like wildfire.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented through a vendor, who was very knowledgeable with BI and Qlik.

What was our ROI?

Qlik output operates at the capacity of multiple FTEs. The "faster" time to analyses and insights, and the single source of truth nature of that output has led to better business decisions and faster revenue recognition.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Build some expansion and user growth into your initial purchase.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had other tools in use so were asked to try those first. MicroStrategy and Domo just didn't meet our expectations. Tableau was close on the front-end, visualization aspect but lacked the speed and power on the back end.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user377328 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user377328Management Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User

Really Very helpful review. I would like to know Real Time data capabilities how Qlik Sense helping to business users and Technical Person. I have been using Qlikview around 6 years but whenever we compared with Qlik to Other BI like Power BI and Tableau they are having good real time data capabilities

PeerSpot user
Head Of Business Intelligence at Israel InterUniversity Computation Center
Real User
Offers good performance and connects to a variety of data sources
Pros and Cons
  • "It allows you to create a new column using split on a current column, which we find very useful."
  • "The security rules should be made easier to use."

What is our primary use case?

Qlik Sense is the BI platform for my company.

At Carasso Motors, we use Qlik Sense and QlikView as back and front end tools for building data warehouses that are used across the company. We also build a variety of data GUI models that are also vastly used.

The main operation of the company is selling new and used cars, which is our focal point on building decision support models that are used by managers of all ranks.

In order to support all fields of operations within the company, we needed a platform able to connect to different kinds of data sources. Qlik Sense makes it easy for us.

How has it helped my organization?

Qlik Sense helped us with extracting insight from our data more quickly than before.

We have a need to connect with different kinds of data sources and combine data from different sources into a joint ERD. We find it easy to use the Qlik native data connectors.

As an example, we are now working on a new app that combines data sent to us from a survey that we sent using SurveyMonkey. The survey responses were gathered by email in Excel XLSX files and combined with survey data taken from Salesforce objects using the API connector.

This kind of ERD would have taken much more time to build with PBI.

What is most valuable?

The data manager on Qlik Sense allows you to clean the data before uploading it into the intuitive interface that creates an automatic script you can later edit to your needs.

It allows you to create a new column using split on a current column, which we find very useful. This feature saves us a lot of development time.

What needs improvement?

Adding a process tree so that we can see task dependencies would be an improvement.

The security rules should be made easier to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Qlik Sense for three years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Adam Abwat-Johnson - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Developer at Soak.com
Real User
Easy to use for sales and margin reporting in a retail setting
Pros and Cons
  • "The drag and drop UI has been the most useful to me."
  • "The only thing I would say that comes up is that sometimes it can be a bit buggy."

What is our primary use case?

As a consultant, I used this for a wide variety of use cases. Mainly, the first thing people would look at would be sales and margin reporting, especially in retail (which is the area I work in now). I have also used Qlik Sense as an integration tool to gather data from multiple data sources to be exported and sent to AWS to be picked up by a web marketing tool.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved the amount of time it takes to get information out to the business in a few ways. Firstly, by replacing reporting that was done manually in Excel by business users and giving them that time back. Next, by providing cleansed data to analysts so that they can create their own analysis.

What is most valuable?

The drag and drop UI has been the most useful to me. Working previously as a consultant, the self-service wizards for loading data weren't too important, as I knew how to load and manipulate data in the script. However, being able to see a list of the different chart types and fields certainly sped me up in terms of creating dashboards and visualizations.

What needs improvement?

The only thing I would say that comes up is that sometimes it can be a bit buggy. The product updates that come out are fairly regular, which is always nice, but getting bugs here and there that you have to work around can be a bit of a pain at times. This can be taken into account by waiting for a month or two to see if any patches come out (much like with how you would treat Microsoft releases) but if you want to get the latest updates as soon as possible then you need to prepare yourself.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is generally good. I haven't had the same sort of instability that I had with QlikView, but that may be a coincidence.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is pretty good, but it is very RAM and CPU intensive, so you need to keep on top of this.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer service/support is good through the partner, as this is the suggested way to receive feedback.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used QlikView before (and still have some reports on this). We changed when Qlik ran a good promotion to get people to switch. I had used the product before and knew the benefits that come with Qlik Sense (i.e. the easier self-service for business users), so I was happy to get the chance to switch.

How was the initial setup?

Setup is fairly straightforward. We had a single server to put this on, so we were able to just "next" through the setup wizard, other than supplying a few passwords for services.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented ourselves, as I had previous experience doing this. Our partner, who we have used for work, is generally helpful and had a good understanding of the product.

What was our ROI?

We haven't really measured this, but this will improve once business users are trained to work for themselves.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't evaluate any other options as the promotion on getting Qlik Sense whilst being a QlikView customer was too good.

What other advice do I have?

I would say when you start with this tool, take the time to prepare the data first before creating reports and showing the business (especially if you are the only one doing this). This will help with getting ready for giving users the ability to create reports themselves, as opposed to them having to ask you all the time.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1101450 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a university with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Drag-and-drop dashboard building helps to easily create many types of visuals
Pros and Cons
  • "The drag-and-drop dashboard builder is an intuitive interface for building dashboards from source reports."
  • "This solution would be improved by adding some Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) components that are easier to interpret and design."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is making dashboards, executive summaries, and creating an interactive analysis for several teams. Some of these teams are tech-savvy and thus are able to analyze the data themselves. For them, we also provide complex and relational analysis. 

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has definitely improved our organization. People are able to drill down information, see visual maps, and create a robust analysis. We provide teams with useful information and analysis to aid in decision-making. Using these dashboards, teams are able to make decisions faster than they otherwise could. Also, in some cases, we have overlapping applications.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop dashboard building, with many types of visuals. Users are allowed to present multiple reports, side-by-side, using dashboard components on a single dashboard page layout. Dashboard components come in a variety of chart types, and we can customize how data is grouped, summarized, and displayed for each component. The drag-and-drop dashboard builder is an intuitive interface for building dashboards from source reports.

What needs improvement?

This solution would be improved by adding some Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) components that are easier to interpret and design. Maybe adding a module where we can drag and drop various models, test them in a sandbox, and test the outputs before putting them into production would be helpful. 

For how long have I used the solution?

Two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a very stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution seems very scalable in terms of data and sharing.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution with an in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I suggest talking to the Account managers, as they are very resourceful and responsive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other solutions before choosing this one.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Qlik Sense Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Qlik Sense Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.