QlikView Reviews

We are active in the Hospitality Industry in Africa and we use QlikView primarily, for the time being, in our sales and marketing environment. We are situated in multiple countries and in multiple locations within those countries running on multiple sales systems. Each sales system has got its own features and capabilities. 

QlikView permits us to consolidate all the sales systems together onto one platform and enables ease of access throughout the whole company anywhere in the world. Moreover, QlikView makes our complex data infrastructure understandable for everyone.

QlikView allowed us to determine the sales date which was missing in the biggest sales system. QlikView helps us with detecting shortcomings in data capturing and safeguard our margin. It also enables us to forecast our sales, our revenue, and our cash-flow. 

Our Qlikview applications help us to get a good idea of our Client Base Performance and assist us in the decision making for Seasonal Specials. On the other hand, QlikView helps us to get a grasp on our Suppliers and helps us to negotiate pricing with them.

It enables quick and easy access anywhere in the world in real-time. We have satellite offices on different continents with a different time zone which makes it quite a challenge to show real-time values.

QlikView is for the end-user easy to use; a few clicks suffice to answer the question at hand. 

QlikView has got a very intuitive approach of visualizations, both from a developer's point of view as well as the end-users. It makes complex data easy to understand with little prior knowledge of how reading graphs is required. 

QlikView lacks the development aspects that its sister product QlikSense has got. It would be nice to also get the new graphs that are available in QlikSense in QlikView. 

It would be nice if QlikView could be plugged in into the company's website or an online portal such as QlikSense is capable of. There are ways around but it takes enormous time to develop.

Certain features such as a cumulative result, as is possible in QlikSense, would be nice to have since it takes quite some time to get this right from a developer's point of view.

I have been using QlikView for five years.

It is very robust.

The scalability is quite good, QlikView is fairly versatile yet robust at the same time and can be applied on multiple levels

Did not need any of this yet.

Setup itself was fairly complex since our company battled with a legacy of dirty data and a lack of data literacy.

Implementation happened through a vendor, and their expertise was/is top-notch.

No idea, I haven't made the calculations yet since there have been multiple system changes simultaneously and therefore difficult to determine what is the result of which improvement.

The setup costs for QlikView are fair as are the yearly maintenance fees. The licensing becomes a bit more expensive and requires some planning for onboarding.

I don't know, I was not part of that process and not active within the company.

Since Qlik is focussing more on QlikSense, it is recommendable to look into that direction than into QlikView.

The associative/relationship engine and fast performance are the most valuable features of the product for me. It is excellent for number crunching with basic visualizations and known questions.

QlikView is used internally for financially-focused groups. It has moved folks out of Excel land into interactive/shared analytics.

I would like to see improved performance/scalability at high data volumes + high user concurrency. Having only in-memory capability for hosting source data is a constraint.

I have been using QlikView for 2.5 years.

No issues with deployments/stability. Departmental-scope in use has it well-positioned here.

Technical support is very good.

Nothing else was reviewed, given the business area lead had previous experience with QlikView and wanted that for his department.

Initial setup is straightforward. It is not a complex system to install.

We used a regional vendor that had experts in the platform to help us install/configure/jumpstart our use, working directly with the business department in need.

ROI is unknown. However, licensing costs continue to increase in QlikView and in Tableau, which we also use, forcing us at some point to consider consolidating to one and/or turning some existing/owned MicroStrategy licensing inward to replace if the the upward pricing trend continues.

Pick the right tool for the job/consumers of the products. There is not a single product that can cover all personas/use cases well or there would be only one product out there commanding the world – and there’s simply not just one. QlikView is great for numbers-focused users who live in Excel today and want a better way to create common metadata and analytics that can be easily distributed/consumed by target users.

QlikView’s associative ability. The AQL that QlikView uses to associate and ‘bring together’ similar data types (based on name) is extremely powerful and useful. One click causes a whole ripple effect though the whole dashboard, because everything is associated to one another.

We have used code to create a calendar effect. We then loop through that calendar, executing SQL at the end of each month. This is not easy to mimic in normal SQL, and would require an SQL package to perform such a thing.

QlikView allows us to perform these feats with ease.

QlikView does not work very well with very large data sets. I would like to see that improved.

I have used this product since Jan 2013.

Besides the stability issue with large data sets, I have not encountered any other deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Technical support is 3/10.

I have not evaluated any solution similar to QlikView (e.g. Tableau).

We did not previously use a similar solution.

Initial setup was straightforward.

A vendor team implemented it. They knew the tool best and we could get it up & running a lot quicker. Part of the implementation included training.

Not easy to answer. What we use it for, internal to the company, is to track internal costs as we manage quite a number of cost centers. We've successfully managed our budgets and have recovered quite a substantial amount of money for our CC as QV has allowed us to track incorrect CC billing.

QlikView really works well. We have had no complaints from users about its functionality. There has never (or hardly) been a time where a user makes a comment like “Oh, pity that QlikView can't do this…”

Ability to connect and transform data from a variety of sources into the same application. From an analytical development perspective, there is a wide scope to create complex calculations within chart expressions, (including recursive expressions), which, combined with the trellis functionality, means more output with less setup effort.

A well designed app brings freedom of inquiry to meetings, allowing me to answer questions in real time and this has transformed progress and outputs of our monthly group meeting.

Finally, it really is a case of data instantly updating upon selection. No more watching an egg timer as a server churns away.

Meetings are now proactive rather than reactive with analysis conducted straight away. We're making better informed decisions - and more of them!

I have automate a complex set of analysis within a matter of days (as a relatively novice user), that had taken weeks, with less useful outputs, in other software.

Syntax editor needs some work, it's frustrating to have valid syntax being flagged as incorrect. It would save time troubleshooting errors that don't exist when the script runs or charts render.

1 year, but not a heavy user - though this will change!

• The in-memory engine is really powerful, making it possible to deal with huge data records on the fly (more than 400 million in a table). I have built data models with over 1 billion records and the performance is good.
• With in-memory calculations at the UI (on the fly), it is possible to build charts, tables, etc. directly on the user interface (UI).
• Cubes are built on the UI. No need to pre-aggregate data, but it is of course possible to do that in the script (which I would not recommend) or better deliver data as SQL-View.
• Scripting possibilities to build complex applications and functionality.
• Web integration capabilities, for ex. you can include JScript Objects or R for better visualization.

We are service providers and built applications for our customers, not for us. Our customers are able to evaluate their marketing campaigns at the aggregated and customer levels. They can use micro-segmentation to select the leads.

We actually use QlikView, which does not allow easy-to-use framework management. There is a deployment framework, which I do not find easy to use and somehow not stable. I hope QlikView can improve this.

I have been using this solution for 3.5 years now.

There is no general rule, but we use the deployment framework, which allows us to produce a QV application user with four different levels of deployment:

• One level for the extraction of the data (1 to 1)
• In the second level, we get the original tables and based on the user requirements, build the data model and make the necessary transformations.
• In the third level, we get an intermediary state of the data model to be loaded in the end-user application.
• The fourth level contains the end-user application. We do a “binary” load, which is a command line in the QlikView script that allows us to copy 1-1 to the application we are copying from, in this case, from the third level. We have separate development from production and testing in a highly reachable environment (cluster environment).

It is stable, but of course stability depends on your IT infrastructure and deployment chosen.

Data model, data size, RAM size, hardware CPUs and UI expressions / charts, are strongly related. It is possible to scale QV without problems, but the issue is more complex than not having enough RAM. Complex expressions at the UI level, single threaded object calculations, complex data models, huge data size, etc., can alter the performance of the QV application and thus we might think we need to scale. There are many tools to measure QV performance and to try keep them at an optimal level. Otherwise, if everything else is fine, we need to increase RAM. Actually, we have 1 TB RAM on our production server.

Technical support is good, but could be improved.

Initial setup was straightforward. You need a server, install QlikView with its web server option and then you can start doing applications.

For more complex architectures (clustered, with two or more servers), you will probably need Qlik Tech support.

We contacted Qlik Tech directly for a cluster implementation (at my current company).

Pricing/licensing depends on your company size, the uses of QV, # of users, among others. Named CALs, at approx. 1.200 EUR (see the Qlik website), would be required if you have permanent users with write access to different applications, while Document CALs are good if you have users that will only see a document to perform their jobs. There is good and simple documentation explaining your best pricing / licensing model.

For my previous company I compared Tibco, QlikView, Tablaeu, and other tools, as indicated in the Gartner Quadrant. We did workshops with them, and were happy with QV because you can build something immediately. In the case of Tablaeu, you need a really well-established ETL and / or views. Otherwise, it is complicated for a normal user to build correct charts. Users have normally very little understanding of the data structure. Other tools need pre-aggregation and a long development process. With QV, it is possible to use views, pre-aggregated or raw data and you can still manipulate the data in the script, i.e. do ETL (see Deployment Framework).

1. Check your user and business requirements first and check if QV can help you solve your user / business needs.
2. If yes, check what are the potential uses of QV and describe the environment, company or unit size, # of users, # of applications, # of KPIs, and data volume. After this first check, you may be able to determine how big would your applications be, and thus estimate current and future RAM, necessary IT Infrastructure, # of servers, etc. I would talk to IT to see how to integrate QV into your IT environment. Many people start with an isolated QV implementation in their unit, which is fast, but then you have no single point of truth (this may discourage adoption because the user does not trust the data). But it depends on your goals.
3. Start working and promote user adoption, showing good functionality, fast implementation, and reliable data. QV can then become the main BI tool in the company.
4. Looking forward, QV can be extended in the use of mash-ups, Jscript extensions and analytics with R, so that you can build up in the future. Qlik Sense is a new Qlik Tech product, which offers many new possibilities.

• KPI's
• Dashboard creation

Powerful, scalable, and a bit addictive, allowing you to "see" your data in ways never thought possible. We can now take medical stats presented in an academic journal and applying them to community-based medicine. This literally changes physician behavior like no other tool.

We were struggling with running application reports, and were spending substantial time, and high-end resources to deliver the basics. Implementing QlikView for our clients also allowed us to aggregate our client-based data and see "What type of reports are they running" "What time of day" "Which users". This data alone allowed us to immediately focus on the points of user experience which would impact the users the most.

Online education, but they are revamping.

I've used it for two years.

No issues encountered.

QlikView is a very heavy RAM utilizer (all strong BI tools are). When we hit around 20 concurrent users, the user experience began to suffer. We contacted Qlik Support and they assisted us with a review of our infrastructure. We followed their suggestions to the tee, and were back with great speed!

It's excellent, and very responsive.

It's excellent.

Simple, low level learning curve.

We did it in-house.

Currently $1 spent = $3 recouped (including labor/support/Infrastructure).

Push for more services in your installation (consulting, IT, Development, Design). Sales can be very creative.

We also looked at Tableau.

Review your end-goals, internally and externally. This can be a powerful tool for your clients but also for internal decision making.

As a BI professional sometimes you have to tackle projects with poor or no documentation at all, just the datasources and some vague requirements. In QlikView it is quite easy build up a first data model (dimensional or not) and use the first stage to understand the entities and relations between it and the business. From there you can explore the business, understand the users real requirements and needs and improve the model with a few changes, without much effort. This is because Qlikview has a very flexible and short cycle of development in each iteration.

For the user QlikView is a wonderful tool of data discovery, providing powerful tools to navigate easily between a sea of data in an intuitive, easy, and clear way, allowing them to go from facts to KPI and vice versa.

Qlikview can be used both as an advanced reporting tool as well as an BI KPI tool, becoming the base for continuous process improvements. In general the benefits of the tool become clear at the early development stage when the user is challenged to input clearly his ideas, problems and needs and that will affect the process in which he participates. Typically in a second iteration the key user will ask for a new release more oriented to advanced KPIs rather than just reports. This is a direct consequence of the process making things clearer and evolving. So the main value supplied by Qlikview is to reduce uncertainty, make the participants question, discover, interact with each other, and eventually improve the process. Properly used should function as an improvement catalyst for the processes involved.

It is well know that the ETL is quite far away from leading products like Data Stagem Informatica and others. Currently Qliktech is working on this problem with Expressor, a powerful graphic dataflow tool. Another area is the licensing scheme, which leaves out many SMO. To remedy this and try to stop the eruption of third parties (e.g: Tableau), QlikTech launched Qlik Sense, although the future is unclear and there may be a possible merge of the two branches (Qlik Sense + QlikView). Finally QlikTech, since release 10/11, leaves the development of new graphic charts to the community with mixed results.

I have using it for the last five years, since 2010 at least.

The deployment of the dashbords, in the simplest scenario, is so easy you just drop a unique file (qvw extension) in the published folder and the solution appears into the main web page that works like an index of all solutions: the access point.

The product has great stability although in some circumstances, especially if it is low in resources or the reload process encounters some kind of dead lock while extracting the data from the DB, it could/will result in the shutdown of the service. The good news is the automatic behavior: I never saw corrupted data or unstable behavior, just restart the service / reload and all works well again.

The product is designed to scale both horizontally and vertically. Some organizatations which have servers and dashboards that handle until 30 Tb of data have had some issues that finally have been addressed by the support service of QlikTech.

The customer service is provided by the local reseller and is fine. We have mainly used it to get the new releases and some support during the installation.

The technical support in my country is provided by the master reseller and it looks good even when they have to pass the case to Qliktech to figure-out the problem and find a solution. In this last case it can be somewhat delayed because these cases needed to reach the top levels of the service.

I have used (and still use) Microsoft BI: SSISm SSAS and SSRS. The productivity level of QlikView is quite superior, whilst Microsoft licensing scheme is really better, specially when there are large number of users and a lot of SQL licences deployed making it (MS) much cheaper.

The initial setup was absolutely seamless and the only requirement for a successful deploy is a little training to the users, not only about how to use QlikView, but what can be done with QlikView, giving them the initial spark.

In general the vendors which I have worked with were very well qualified, although not very inclined to share information easily.

This question is hard to answer because except for a few cases its impossible to measure how the project (not the tool) improves the results of the organization. Such measures are available at the organizational level, but it is difficult to quantify the proportion of the contribution from one tool to a whole process.

The start cost is around of US $25.000 and the annual royalties are around 20% that includes customer and technical support and upgrades.

I have evaluated Tableau and Microstrategy. The first one is too basic (wonderful if you are a final user). The second one: extremely complex, just for very large organizations and large IT teams.

Think seriously about the possible population of users, how it will grow-up, and check the licensing cost and its limitations.

The in-memory technology allows you to easily manipulate and analyze vast amounts of data with simple clicks. It allows for real-time analysis of data via visual representations, as well as data tables. It supports using variables in calculations, as well as their proprietary SET analysis, which allows for calculations based on calculated dimensions, aggregations, and other logic against real-time selection of data.

It is very flexible in terms of calculations and presentation of values and data. It makes very quick reporting and data analysis possible.

This product has allowed us to create several applications and dashboards for use by management and different business units to conduct self-service analysis, as well as built-in intelligence. This accelerates business decision-making. It avoids the lengthy delays involved in requesting the information from IT or having to deal with the disconnect between technology and the business side, both from an objective point of view, but also from the customer view.

It also enables management and the end user to change the criteria of the reports and data without having to go back to IT with changes. In other words, dynamic reporting.

There definitely needs to be an update in the number of chart types available and the options within each chart. There are various charts that could use more customizable options, as well as certain charts that are missing such as waterfall charts, histograms, etc.

One glaring omission is the lack of mapping technology in QlikView. Although they do offer solutions through third-party add-ons, other similar providers have this as a default feature in the app. I think currently, mapping technology should be standard with these applications given the competition and the capabilities it brings. It seems that because of their third-party developer relationships, they are holding back on adding features to the application, which would put those developers out of business.

The licensing scheme leaves a lot of room for improvement. I believe it is cumbersome and expensive to maintain. In order for a user to view a published application, they need to have a viewer license (approx. $350 the last I remember). However, if they need to view multiple applications, they need a viewer license per application. $350 X # of applications they need to view per user. This will get very expensive if a lot of users need to view the application. There are application licenses, there are named user licenses, there are session licenses, and developer licenses. There are way too many licenses of varying costs, none of which are very economical in my opinion. If you need to view more than three applications, the best alternative is to purchase a developer license, which allows for unlimited applications. However, that will set you back about $1400, even if the user is not a developer.

I have been using it for four years.

Licensing costs are a big one, see aforementioned point. Second would be the hardware requirements from a developer point of view. Because of the in-memory allocation of the application, really big data sets take a really, really long time to load, often times making the user wait quite a while for the loads to finish. If you are making changes to one dataset on an application that has multiple load statements, there isn’t an option to only reload the changed statement. Instead, the entire load has to be redone and thus the cycle begins again, as does the waiting.

I have not dealt with technical support or customer service. We have an implementation area that deals with technical support for server related matters, however, we got the installation and support through a reseller. In our case, internally for all technical support related matters we have to go through our internal channels and processes and in turn if it is something that they cannot handle, they go through the reseller for resolution.

The choice to use this product was an organizational decision.

Initial setup was straightforward.

We had a recommended vendor do the install on site. My only advice is to have users that are somewhat knowledgeable of the application to test. (It can be installed individually for testing.) Also, I recommend thorough testing of all aspects of loading data.

Try to speak with the vendor in terms of the best possible licensing scheme, keeping in mind scalability and future deployments. In the end, if this is not properly calculated, it could be very costly.

It is a great tool for analysis and dashboards. It is better complemented by bringing in data as complete as possible in terms of calculated fields, case statements, etc. QlikView syntax can take some time to learn and might not be as flexible as SQL or other similar languages, in terms of capability in manipulating data.