Cheap MIS / BI package
Discussion
Could you not use an Excel Pivot Table for starters - I think it'll be the cheapest thing you'll find out there.
Thing we use is very good but it's about £2,500 a seat and that's generally considered cheap (compared to some of the big players out there) ... Mind you they make all their money from consulting time too which it doesn't sound like you're too interested.
Thing we use is very good but it's about £2,500 a seat and that's generally considered cheap (compared to some of the big players out there) ... Mind you they make all their money from consulting time too which it doesn't sound like you're too interested.
TJMurphy said:
Could you not use an Excel Pivot Table for starters - I think it'll be the cheapest thing you'll find out there.
Thing we use is very good but it's about £2,500 a seat and that's generally considered cheap (compared to some of the big players out there) ... Mind you they make all their money from consulting time too which it doesn't sound like you're too interested.
Sorry for being ignorant here (non techie), but I'm assuming from your post that I can import data from the Dbase using this Pivot table and then manipulate it in Excel?
Out of interest what do you use?
I suppose what I'm looking for is something my in-house guy can configure without having to pay a fortune to an external consultancy.
I guess I shouldn't have skipped over the word "proprietary" in your first post. Here's also where I get hit for using lots of wrong terms and generalisations by others more techy than me 
I reckon you've got too main initial approaches before going the external consultant route. It's also worth having a play even if you do end up going to them anyway.
If the database package came with an ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) driver then it should be possible using standard Windows functionality to build a connection to the database. This connection can then be used by Excel to pull in the data and you can build a Pivot Table off of that.
Alternatively, most database packages can export data into a text file and these can be read into Access relatively easily (and you can use Excel to pull in the data from Access). Even if you can't get a raw text file, there are programs out there (Monarch is one I recall) that can take a printed report and "suck" the data out of it.
Depending on your database you may come up against (at least two things) - firstly, some database systems are very complex and it can be difficult to interpret what you see, and secondly, if this is a live system there might be a lot of data in there - which will bring something like Access to it's knees very quickly.
To be honest, unless this is a one-off task, you're almost certainly going to find it better to get a consultant in - chances are they'll give you a "free" half day in the hopes of getting your business.
We use a program called TM1, from a company called Applix (www.applix.com). This is normally a full client server program but the price I quoted you is the last one I remember for a single seat - they don't actually sell too many of these. In that version though it wouldn't be able to query your database package directly. TM1 is also more of a toolset than an end-user program - you do a lot of VBA and model building to get something you can give the boss!
Hope that's of some help to you, if not post some more details of the system you're working with and there might be others on the board with more helpful suggestions.
Tony
I reckon you've got too main initial approaches before going the external consultant route. It's also worth having a play even if you do end up going to them anyway.
If the database package came with an ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) driver then it should be possible using standard Windows functionality to build a connection to the database. This connection can then be used by Excel to pull in the data and you can build a Pivot Table off of that.
Alternatively, most database packages can export data into a text file and these can be read into Access relatively easily (and you can use Excel to pull in the data from Access). Even if you can't get a raw text file, there are programs out there (Monarch is one I recall) that can take a printed report and "suck" the data out of it.
Depending on your database you may come up against (at least two things) - firstly, some database systems are very complex and it can be difficult to interpret what you see, and secondly, if this is a live system there might be a lot of data in there - which will bring something like Access to it's knees very quickly.
To be honest, unless this is a one-off task, you're almost certainly going to find it better to get a consultant in - chances are they'll give you a "free" half day in the hopes of getting your business.
We use a program called TM1, from a company called Applix (www.applix.com). This is normally a full client server program but the price I quoted you is the last one I remember for a single seat - they don't actually sell too many of these. In that version though it wouldn't be able to query your database package directly. TM1 is also more of a toolset than an end-user program - you do a lot of VBA and model building to get something you can give the boss!
Hope that's of some help to you, if not post some more details of the system you're working with and there might be others on the board with more helpful suggestions.
Tony
You really need something that allows you do do pivot tables though - crystal afaik doesn't have this functionality. In fact every business I've worked at we ahve replaced crystal as the reporting solution as it is inflexible and incalble of providing the reports we requrie.
I work in a large financial institution = we looked at the following products :
Cognos, PRoclarity, microstrategy (Anda few others but these were the front runners).
Proclarity is IMHO the best solution and is also heavily backed by Microsoft which is always a sign they'll, be around for a while.
The one nobody has mentioned - is SQL server - put analysis services on SQL (it's just a service pack) and bobs your uncle - you'll be creating Cubes in no time - seriously look at that as it's probably the cheapest option beyond excel...
I work in a large financial institution = we looked at the following products :
Cognos, PRoclarity, microstrategy (Anda few others but these were the front runners).
Proclarity is IMHO the best solution and is also heavily backed by Microsoft which is always a sign they'll, be around for a while.
The one nobody has mentioned - is SQL server - put analysis services on SQL (it's just a service pack) and bobs your uncle - you'll be creating Cubes in no time - seriously look at that as it's probably the cheapest option beyond excel...
plasticpig said:
You could also look at Crystal Reports. You can do quite a bit of querying and formating in this and its relativley easy to use.
I'll second that, crystal reports was taken over by business objects who have kept the brand. There are many 'lite' packages that could suit your requirements, they tend to sell through resellers so probably best google.
mr_tony said:
You really need something that allows you do do pivot tables though - crystal afaik doesn't have this functionality. In fact every business I've worked at we ahve replaced crystal as the reporting solution as it is inflexible and incalble of providing the reports we requrie.
Crystal does do pivot tables/cross tabs.
my mistake! I just have a pathalogical hatred of it from having to use it about 6 years ago - it was then - (and still is in the eyes of my colleagues) a thouroughly useless piece of junk. I guess for what we need to do on a large scale in this industry it's just not designed to cope - probably ok if you're a small business with small reporting requirements though. Still in that case I'd stick to excel and save a lot of cash..
Is it a proper OLAP solutions these days - willit interface to a M/S cube? Wasn't aware of it if it was. (I'm no longer on the tech side and don't keep up with this kind of stuff...)
>> Edited by mr_tony on Wednesday 15th February 13:36
Is it a proper OLAP solutions these days - willit interface to a M/S cube? Wasn't aware of it if it was. (I'm no longer on the tech side and don't keep up with this kind of stuff...)
>> Edited by mr_tony on Wednesday 15th February 13:36
mr_tony said:
my mistake! I just ahve a pathalogical hatred of it from having to use it about 6 years ago - it was then - (and still is in the eyes of my colleagues) a thouroughly useless piece of junk. I guess for what we need to do on a large scale in this industry it's just not designed to cope - probably ok if you're a small business with small reporting requirements though...
Is it a proper OLAP solutions these days? Wasn't aware of it if it was. (I'm no longer on the tech side and don't keep up with this kind of stuff...)
Yes it has OLAP support. Never used the OLAP functionallity though so cant comment on how good it is. We generally preprocess data before it gets to Crystal. Crystal is a good end user reporting tool and I would reckon more user freindly than microsoft query/ Excel.
flyingjase said:
How easy is it to use Crystal? ie. would I need to gire an external developer to set up the reports?
Would I need to buy the developer licence as well as a standard licence to use it properly?
You could probably do it yourself we have users who have picked up the basics and got decent results out without any training. Do you know what database your app uses?
You dont need the developer licence as this is to distribute Crystal runtime files.
We have a proprietry database that can link to third party packages in 2 ways (so the vendor tells me):-
1. via CSV exports that the vendor pre-determines
2. via ODBC, which I believe is driven by the third party product? ie I could use Crystal Reports to pull out the data that I need??
1. via CSV exports that the vendor pre-determines
2. via ODBC, which I believe is driven by the third party product? ie I could use Crystal Reports to pull out the data that I need??
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