Overview
What is Infor Birst?
Infor Birst offers multi-tenant cloud BI for deployment in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. It provides an in-memory columnar data store and a BI layer comprising a reporting engine, predictive analytics tools, mobile native apps, dashboards, discovery tools,…
A simple to use and effective business intelligence solution
End to end BI solution for not complex scenarios
We adopted BIRST to be used as the enterprise BI solution so all departments with enterprise BI needs would use BIRST.
We use BIRST Cloud …
Birst Review
Solid tool with opportunites to become even better.
Birst used to meet an analytics requirement for our clients
Data Capture
Birst almost live access
Birst Review from Advertising Point of View
Birst - 9 years after we met
Birst is the best tool we found to meet our needs, but has some significant issues
Birst, a data visualization tool
Birst review
Birst in eLearning Sales and Ops
BIRSTed ahead of the competition during the vetting process!
BIrst - meeting challenges head on.
Our SaaS offering is a mobile application that allows users to fill out …
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Drill-down analysis (78)8.080%
- Customizable dashboards (77)8.080%
- Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.) (72)8.080%
- Formatting capabilities (77)7.070%
Pricing
Basic License
$30,000
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Extending Analytics in CloudSuite Distribution - Demo
Analytics Anytime, Anywhere - Birst Mobile Demo
Automated Data Refinement in Infor Birst - Demo
Best Practices For Increasing Adoption of Analytics - Demo
Infor Birst How-To Series – Connecting to Databases
Features
BI Standard Reporting
Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
- 7Pixel Perfect reports(68) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
- 8Customizable dashboards(77) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
- 7.1Report Formatting Templates(59) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
- 8Drill-down analysis(78) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
- 7Formatting capabilities(77) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
- 6.1Integration with R or other statistical packages(27) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
- 7Report sharing and collaboration(68) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
- 8Publish to Web(52) Ratings
- 8Publish to PDF(67) Ratings
- 7.2Report Versioning(8) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
- 9Report Delivery Scheduling(66) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
Data Discovery and Visualization
Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.
- 8Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)(72) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
- 7Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization(58) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
- 5.8Predictive Analytics(33) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
Access Control and Security
Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.
- 9Multi-User Support (named login)(70) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
- 8Role-Based Security Model(68) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
- 8Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)(69) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
Mobile Capabilities
Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
- 7Responsive Design for Web Access(52) Ratings
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
- 3Mobile Application(34) Ratings
A dedicated app for iOS and/or Android.
- 3Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile(42) Ratings
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Infor Birst?
Infor Birst is a BI product that enables a single view of data and eliminate data silos. Additionally, decentralized teams and individual users can augment this shared analytic fabric with their own local data, without compromising data governance. This consistency comes from a unified semantic layer, which maintains common definitions and key metrics, no matter where users sit.
Birst achieves Networked BI through a 2-tier architecture that aligns back-end enterprise data with line-of-business or local, edge data. Birst’s Automated Data Refinement extracts data from any source (data stores, applications, warehouses, big data, and unstructured external sources) into a unified semantic layer. The result is a consistent view that enables users with self-service analytics through dashboards, reporting, visual discovery, mobile tools, and predictive analytics. Birst Open Client Interface also offers integration with Tableau, Excel and R.
Birst goes to market in two primary ways:
- Direct, for enterprises using Birst for analytics on internal data to drive improved business outcomes
- Embedded, for all size companies who offer data (analytics) products, by embedding and white-labeling Birst capabilities into their products
Birst’s product is packaged in 3 available formats:
- Platform and per-user fee
- By Department or Business Unit
- By end-customer (for embedded scenarios)
Infor Birst Features
BI Platform Features
- Supported: Administration via Windows App
- Supported: Administration via MacOS App
- Supported: Administration via Web Interface
- Supported: Live Connection to External Data
- Supported: Snapshot of External Data
- Supported: In-memory data model
- Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
- Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
- Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
- Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer
- Supported: ETL Capability
- Supported: ETL Scheduler
Supported Data Sources Features
- Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
- Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
- Supported: Oracle
- Supported: MS SQL Server
- Supported: IBM DB2
- Supported: Postgres
- Supported: MySQL
- Supported: ODBC
- Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
- Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
- Supported: EMC Greenplum
- Supported: IBM Netezza
- Supported: HP Vertica
- Supported: ParAccel
- Supported: SAP Hana
- Supported: Teradata
- Supported: Salesforce
- Supported: SAP
- Supported: Google Analytics
BI Standard Reporting Features
- Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
- Supported: Customizable dashboards
- Supported: Report Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
- Supported: Drill-down analysis
- Supported: Formatting capabilities
- Supported: Predictive modeling
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
- Supported: Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
- Supported: Publish to Web
- Supported: Publish to PDF
- Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
- Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
- Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
- Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
- Supported: Predictive Analytics
- Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
Access Control and Security Features
- Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
- Supported: Role-Based Security Model
- Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- Supported: Report-Level Access Control
- Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
Mobile Capabilities Features
- Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
- Supported: Mobile Application
- Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Infor Birst Screenshots
Infor Birst Videos
Infor Birst Competitors
Infor Birst Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
Supported Countries | All |
Supported Languages | Arabic, English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, Spanish |
Infor Birst Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(186)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Birst is a versatile business intelligence tool that caters to multiple departments across organizations. Users from Sales, Finance, Accounting, and HR departments rely on Birst to establish a single source of truth and move away from individual definitions of data. Zalora, for example, utilizes Birst as their primary tool for self-service data needs, including data extraction for operational purposes and simple ad-hoc analysis. The fulfillment center employs Birst to track item or product level KPIs, while the marketing teams make use of Birst Live data and dashboards to monitor campaign sales and discounts. Birst integrates with various data sources like Google Analytics, event tracking, operational data, and sales data through a separate data warehouse. By distributing reports and dashboards across the company for viewing, Birst serves as an enterprise-wide BI visualization and distribution platform that supports different revenue models while providing reporting automation, visualization, and distribution capabilities. Furthermore, Birst is embedded into cloud-based software provided to customers, enabling the monitoring of software utilization and tracking of marketing campaigns. Salesforce users benefit from BIRST Dashboards integrated into Salesforce pages as it provides sales analytics and pipeline tracking. The time-to-delivery advantage offered by Birst was one of the reasons it was chosen by many organizations. It allows for simple gathering of company-wide data streams without the need for manual data warehouse construction or report building. With Birst's robust features, it is used across various industries and departments such as SCM & Operations teams, Sales teams, partners, finance, marketing, product management, clinical data analysis in hospitals, education institutions for measuring performance effectiveness and much more. Overall, Birst fulfills a wide range of use cases and enables businesses to analyze data effectively and gain valuable insights to drive informed decision-making throughout the organization.
Highly versatile and user-friendly: Users have found Birst to be a highly versatile and user-friendly business intelligence tool. They appreciate the intuitive user interface, which makes tasks easy to perform. Many reviewers have mentioned that even users with limited technical skills can quickly navigate the platform and start using its features effectively.
Knowledgeable and proactive support: Many users highly value the knowledgeable and proactive support provided by Birst. The support team is responsive and helpful in providing excellent guidance. Reviewers have expressed satisfaction with their interactions with the support team, highlighting their expertise in resolving issues promptly.
Customizable user interface: Users appreciate the customizable user interface of Birst, which allows them to tailor the platform to their changing business needs. The flexibility of the interface is seen as a major advantage by several reviewers who mention being able to personalize dashboards, reports, and visualizations according to their specific requirements.
Confusing User Interface: Users have found the user interface of Birst to be perplexing and not user-friendly. Some reviewers have mentioned that it has a steep learning curve and lacks proper organization and categorization of custom expressions.
Lack of Support from Technical Team: Several users expressed frustration with the lack of support from Birst's technical team. They reported difficulties in reaching them over the phone and dissatisfaction with their insistence on scheduling calls even after submitting detailed tickets.
Difficult Data Modeling Process: Users encountered challenges with data modeling in Birst, especially for those who were new to the platform. The ETL tools were described as inadequate, leading some users to rely on alternative platforms for data warehousing.
Users commonly recommend Birst for its intuitive and effective business intelligence and data analysis capabilities. They attribute Birst as a comprehensive solution with a low total cost of ownership. Additionally, users suggest Birst for its cloud-based central BI solutions, emphasizing their focus on security and scalability. Another frequently mentioned recommendation is Birst's top-notch visualization capabilities, making it an ideal choice for organizations seeking advanced data visualization tools. Users also find Birst to be highly capable and user-friendly, highlighting its excellent analytics and AI capabilities.
Attribute Ratings
- 9Likelihood to Renew35 ratings
- 4.1Availability6 ratings
- 7.5Performance6 ratings
- 9Usability12 ratings
- 6Support Rating19 ratings
- 8Online Training2 ratings
- 9.1In-Person Training4 ratings
- 5.3Implementation Rating6 ratings
- 7Configurability2 ratings
- 6Product Scalability2 ratings
- 5Ease of integration2 ratings
- 7Vendor pre-sale2 ratings
- 5Vendor post-sale2 ratings
- 10Data Visualization1 rating
- 7.6Data Sources76 ratings
- 6Data Sharing and Collaboration24 ratings
Reviews
(1-3 of 3)Birst almost live access
- Connects directly to many types of external data sources, enabling us to plug into data where it already exists
- Visualiser provides a user friendly interface for non-tech users to build their own databases
- HTML dashboards look far better now than the original Flash versions
- Connectivity between the live sources frequently drops and does not reconnect automatically
- Cannot add dynamic titles to reports - so although can create a dynamic text box, this title cannot be exported along with the report
- Designer runs query as soon as an attribute is dropped on screen - would be useful if you know you need to add another 4, to be able to disable the query execution until all items have been added
- sql analysis services, Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop
Power BI is the tool of choice internally, but is limited by security settings that we need to enable to suport client access.
Tableau is unfortunately beyond our budget to provide the solution we would like to deliver.
- Pixel Perfect reports
- N/AN/A
- Customizable dashboards
- 70%7.0
- Report Formatting Templates
- N/AN/A
- Drill-down analysis
- 60%6.0
- Formatting capabilities
- 50%5.0
- Integration with R or other statistical packages
- N/AN/A
- Report sharing and collaboration
- 30%3.0
- Publish to Web
- N/AN/A
- Publish to PDF
- 60%6.0
- Report Versioning
- N/AN/A
- Report Delivery Scheduling
- N/AN/A
- Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
- 50%5.0
- Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
- 60%6.0
- Predictive Analytics
- N/AN/A
- Multi-User Support (named login)
- 80%8.0
- Role-Based Security Model
- 80%8.0
- Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- 60%6.0
- Responsive Design for Web Access
- N/AN/A
- Mobile Application
- N/AN/A
- Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
- N/AN/A
Benefits from input by BI designers, and data modellers / designers
- Visualisation of data analysis
- Presentation of data in visual format for clients, delivered via internet
- Analysis tool for data held in SQL Analysis Services
- Live access connections to SQL Analysis services cubes in MDX and Tabular format
- using prompts to enable custom searches of data
- Basic dashboarding of KPI's
- Client facing data access
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Implemented in-house
- VM that is provided is restricted to Windows 2008 - no support for 2012 or higher
- Cannot integrate with our own host providers as there is no real "install"
- Permissions didn't seem to integrate with our AD
- Self-taught
- Creating dynamic charts
- Click through functionality
- changing page layouts
- re-sizing charts
- dynamic text
- changing data connections
- working with external data sources via live connection
- SQL SSAS
- Corporate website
Integrating via our website simply required permissions and SSO tokens from users
- none planned
- File import/export
- ETL tools
- Better stability of the Live Access connection
- unknown
At the time it was only a couple of people who chose the product based on one of their specific requirements, and other users / products were then crow-barred into that solution.
Birsting with BI Success
- Single solution, integrated end to end [ETL, database, Administration, Design, Dashboards presentation].
- Very stable application - uptime is great, software upgrades seamless.
- Administration Tools: users, groups, security, customization very intuitive.
- Quick start.
- Pace of introduction of new features.
- Community sharing portal is an excellent resource of Knowledge Base documentation, and discussions of challenges/resolutions by other customers.
- Community is also used to submit ideas and enhancement requests, so that voting raises top recommendations, Birst listens and responds.
- Birst defines their success as achieved by our success.
- Ability to find things in Think Tank Community, need a better way to keep similar topics grouped, inconsistent tags.
- Community: assumption that this is the first place for answers to issues; which causes time extension for resolution of business challenge.
- Training: need some freebee's like single topic Lunch & Learn webinars
When we compared Birst to other BI tools we had these questions:
- Infrastructure - what is required for hardware/software/connectivity, data storage and ability to handle data growth?
- Security - how do they handle the risk areas?
- Staffing - how many roles are required to support the application, can a non-programmer administer the application and design data visualization?
No comparison, as they were more programmatic centered and also involved independent modules, so would require multiple components for a total solution.
In the first hour of testing Birst, we knew it was the one, very intuitive!
- Pixel Perfect reports
- 100%10.0
- Customizable dashboards
- 100%10.0
- Report Formatting Templates
- 100%10.0
- Drill-down analysis
- 100%10.0
- Formatting capabilities
- 100%10.0
- Integration with R or other statistical packages
- N/AN/A
- Report sharing and collaboration
- 100%10.0
- Publish to Web
- N/AN/A
- Publish to PDF
- 100%10.0
- Report Versioning
- N/AN/A
- Report Delivery Scheduling
- 100%10.0
- Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
- 100%10.0
- Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
- 100%10.0
- Predictive Analytics
- 100%10.0
- Multi-User Support (named login)
- 100%10.0
- Role-Based Security Model
- 100%10.0
- Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- 100%10.0
- Responsive Design for Web Access
- 100%10.0
- Mobile Application
- 100%10.0
- Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
- 100%10.0
Support of the Birst infrastructure is random, once established it is pretty stable.
Support of the Design deliverables is dependent upon your company objectives for BI.
Support of any technical cases requires ability to clarify issue, offer hypothesis based on what has been tried, specifics about where failure occurred.
I believe it is more important to have the knowledge of business objectives and root data. Aptitude for self discovery, and continuous presentation of the "Five Why's" until the root cause is reached. The BQL used to define custom advanced expressions is very logical, so if you can understand the structure of the expression, you will do okay.
- Interactive standardized view for a Sales Managers dashboard: specific for their Region, focusing in on right data, right format, right timing so that they can take action and effect the future results rather than just dealing with static reports of what has happened
- Cross functional analysis
- Mobile, dependent upon organizational objectives
- Comparison of Actuals to Plan, is the variance increasing or decreasing
- Historical Trends: what does history tell us about a specific element or in comparison to other elements
- Projections: what's on the books scheduled for when
- Efficiencies of reporting, Automatiion of report distribution: having the ability to create it once but view it via many parameters, auto distributing of reports to those not directly on Birst
- Not unexpected nor innovative, but valuable to us - ability to support a fact driven sales planning cycle [sales rep specifics, Region overview, Total Sales Plans]
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Vendor Reputation
- Analyst Reports
- Third-party Reviews
Product Usability was probably our most important factor of our decision: how easy was it to use and could the work be handled by a single Administrator/Designer or were multiple staff positions required?
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
We have also used a Birst Partner, Cervello to help us with our Team space implementation.
- Internal data cleanzing! This is a huge component that tends to get overlooked. Data visualization can uncover a lot of junk data.
Birst flexibility allows - Start small, then introduce functionality and complexity along the way. If you try to present all the functionality [bells and whistles] and wow them, but bad data is uncovered, the end user blames the new application and turns away.
In response to first question: Blackhole of issues - Birst needs to improve upon closing issues that resolution was dependent upon code fixes or enhancements, perhaps someone to add a comment on all case tickets at least every 60 days.
Escalation - I always have the ability to electronically or via phone escalate a ticket. I also have my Customer Success Manager through whom I can escalate topics.
Yes, resolution occurs timely, as we can count on maintenance releases between major releases.
- Dashboard designs, especially with Dashboards 2.0, exceptionally easy
- Data refresh, whether manual upload or automatic with BirstConnect, easy to understand
- Love the toggle between chart and data, allows us to present data as data visualization form, but allows end user comfort of quick access to rows/columns view too
- When building custom expressions - error alerts don't guide you understanding or discovering corrective actions [e.g. missing punctuation settings]
First product ever purchased where promise was fully delivered.
- Birst is best at implementing and validating data warehouse models. I have been able to prototype multiple models in under 4 hours of effort - this is really amazing. As a past user of a big-3 reporting stack, these same tasks would have taken days. It is also extremely easy to publish dashboard of reports for users to view and interact with.
- Birst supports both our internal analytics needs related to usage as well as external partner metrics utilized by our customers to determine efficiency of our products within their websites.
- Birst's interface can be slow at times. On dashboards, I regularly see 3-5 second load times BEFORE the data begins being loaded (interface load time for the Adobe Flex framework). In addition, I have had numerous occurrences where I have to back out of the report designer and come back in due to failed refresh of the design palette.
- Reporting and Analytics
- Interactive Dashboards integrated within our applications
- Publishing Interactive Analyses for consumption by our client base.
- I am not sure if we have been that innovative vis a vis capabilities of a BI/Analytics package. I think we do some pretty amazing things joining big data sets to our standard BI model. We allow comparison of a particular manufacturers product reach vs an anonymized set of competitive information. In an interactive dashboard you can change the comparison from the general set to a named set of top competitors as well as filter and slice by many different attributes.
- We are looking into Birst's predictive analytics capabilities and sampling structures to provide prescriptive services to our syndication network. Items like suggesting the best price for an item, or inventory demand planning, or which channel to spend marketing $. Basically utilizing our data and Birsts platform to create an e-commerce optimization info-store.
- Utilizing the new Birst Visualizer, we will be opening up a limited set of our standard model for ad-hoc visualization (we have a large amount of data and need to limit the scope of what can be completed ad-hoc to live within very strict performance guidelines).
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
- esoteric functions that were not well documented - having to go to Birsts client solutions team for answers
- report functions that were not well documented, leading to some unanticipated results in reports - having to go to support to gain understanding of why.
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
- creating dashboards with interactive functions
- adding sources and data fields
- administration of the system
- user setup
- modfying fields related to a "delete-key" source used to control ensuring duplicate data is not ingested for sources with only "natural" keys
- Internal and customer facing portals. Salesforce.com
- Zuora, a subscription billing system.
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
- ETL tools
- enhancements to HTML5 dashboard
- Birst Visualizer
- Backend data processing enhancements