Sisense Review

Sisense is one of the leading business intelligence tools available in the market right now. The company first hit the market in 2010 and since then, they have provided businesses of all sizes with a platform to unify data, analyze it, extract meaningful information from it and make business decisions based on the obtained data. Many giant companies like Sony, NASA, Comcast, ESPN, and NASDAQ have been using Sisense to harness the power of their data for the past few years.

Sisense doesn’t offer any default pricing packages for users to choose from; to get an idea of price, users will have to submit price quote requests. The following details need to be entered to get a quote: full name, phone number, corporate email, company, job function, project type, number of users, data volume and project timeline. Even though the company doesn’t advertise any pricing information on the website, their prices have historically been known to be on the high side.

Sisense has a web interface which is very user-friendly but it also comes with a database, known as ElastiCube, which needs to be set up on your machine to run the platform. Sisense also has Android and IOS applications in addition to the web interface that can be used to access certain BI features on-the-go. Overall, it is laden with some of the best BI features that you can find in modern tools; here are a few of them:

Ad-hoc analysis of high volumes of data

Sisense is well-equipped to deal with data in high volumes. It rids the users of the hectic pre-processing procedures that often have to be done in other tools.

Centralized data reservoir

All the user data is present in a single location.

Visualization

Even though there are many business intelligence tools that excel by giving users a number of choices to choose from when it comes to visualization designs, Sisense excels by providing users with more insightful data. The interactive visualizations reveal a lot of insightful information and all you have to do is scroll your mouse over them or make a few clicks. Users can also change the size and position of graphs and other visualizations.

Single server data handling

Sisense can easily be scaled to handle large amounts of data without the need to add extra servers.

Security

Sisense has always kept security a top priority and offers different types of security for its customers. System level security allows companies to manage integrations and maintain high levels of role-based security. Object level security can be used to restrict and allow access to specific dashboards and databases. Data level access allows companies to restrict the level of access that is given to users.

Deployment options

Sisense provides users with the ability to choose whether they want to have a cloud-based BI tool or an in-house one. The latter can be set up completely on the premises.

Sisense produces data-rich, highly aesthetic reports within a small amount of time and their sophisticated in-chip engine rids users of the need to prepare data prior to processing. Sisense can easily be integrated with some of the best software and social media out there including (but not limited to): Box, eBay, Facebook, Gmail, Google Drive, Excel, Microsoft Dynamics, PayPal, QuickBooks, Splunk, YouTube, and Zendesk etc. Using the “data-connectors” feature of Sisense, you can connect any number of different data sources together and import them on to your single customized dashboard. Hadoop, Teradata and MongoDB connections/integrations are also possible.

If you are a BI expert or have used some business intelligence tools in the past then you will likely not find it hard to get acquainted with Sisense. However, if you are a newbie then the tool can present a bit of a steep learning curve at the start. The visualization is very intuitive but getting to know how to set the platform and getting started with your first project can be a cumbersome task for some. However, once you have used the software for a few days, toggling between sections and getting insightful information out of data models and visualizations becomes relatively easier.