Executive Summary

• This is the Brightwork Research & Analysis software rating series.
• We rate both the software and estimate the risk of implementing each application.

MUFI Rating & Risk for Birst

MUFI: Maintainability, Usability, Functionality, Implement ability

Vendor: Birst (Select For Vendor Profile)

Introduction

Birst appears at first glance to be a BI Light application in the same vein as QlikView and Tableau, however, it is actually in the BI Heavy category. However, for a young and new application with such positive press, Birst has a surprisingly low buyer satisfaction level.

Application Detail

Many BI applications claim a strong ability to connect to data sources, however, Birst is our highest rated application in terms of doing this efficiently. Connecting to a data sources is one thing, but validating that the data source is correct, and if not trouble shooting the data is something else. And Birst is excellent at all three of these activities.

Birst also gets very good marks in how quickly it is to deploy, which is in great part due to Birst’s SaaS/cloud approach (in all of the software categories we cover, SaaS implements not a little but significantly faster than on premises applications). Birst has been important in demonstrating how much faster SaaS BI is if only buyers will pay attention to the lesson.

In this demo, Birst does a nice job of explaining how a report can be created which can be used to perform inventory balancing, where inventory is re-positioned from some regions that are overstock to regions that are in need of stock. Dark blue states are over stock, and the light blue are under stock. 

This demo can be viewed at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBfIYteE7aE

Birst has a designer that is quite easy to use. It allows the report creator to quickly switch between different report types.  

Birst also grades well for how well their implementations are performed in terms of also being flexible. This is actually one of the major areas of complaint with most BI software vendors historically. A major issue with the development of many BI structures has been while they perform well, they are inflexible. This is not the first time we have run into a software vendor having flexible data structures, while other software vendors struggle. Another vendor is actually in demand planning, and not BI, but the same principle applies. When we want to make changes to Demand Works, we simply make the adjustments and upload the data, and quickly a star schema is created for us. Bringing such a fast implementing time to an area, which is filled with low productivity applications, has been an important innovation on the part of Birst.

Birst offers a full data warehouse in addition to all its other BI tools. Birst is an easy decision for companies looking for a Heavy BI product. Birst has attempted to impress customers with its front end, but in fact, the real strength of Birst is in the backend, where it leads in several categories. Birst and even analysts present Birst as an all in one solution for BI, however, we do not think that it is, and this is not necessarily a criticism of Birst, but the weight of history in the BI space leads us to conclude that no BI software vendor an all in one solution.

MUFI Scores

All scores out of a possible 10.

Vendor and Application Risk

Birst offers a very good combination of a highly rated product along with a highly rated consulting service. Consulting is typically a bit of a secondary consideration when it comes to software selection, but it really should not be. Birst has one of the best-rated consulting entities in enterprise software.

Likelihood of Implementation Success

This accounts for both the application and vendor-specific risk. In our formula the total implementation risk is application + vendor + buyer risk. The buyer specific risk could increase or decrease this overall likelihood and adjust the values that you see below.

Risk Definition

See this link for more on our categorizations of risk. We also offer a Buyer Specific Risk Estimation as a service for those that want a comprehensive analysis.

Risk Management Approach

In terms of implementation risk management, Birst is about as straightforward as it gets. No special considerations are necessary when implementing Birst, and a number of issues are greatly reduced as risks.

Finished With Your Analysis?

To go back to the Software Selection Package page for the BI Heavy software category. Or goto this link to see other analytical products for Birst.