ibi WebFOCUS Reviews

We provide disability data MI to our agency. Our environment setup with version 8 is under one server for all environments (DEV, VAL, Analysis & Production). We are currently converting our applications from 7.6.02 to 8.2

Our BI Tools group have determined that we will be using WebFOCUS for most of our MI. So, now we have uniformed most of the applications into WebFOCUS.

We like using Report Caster with our applications. We just started using Report Library, which will help the users look into one product.

We will be using the conversion process soon. I hope this will be an easy process converting from 7.6 to 8.02.

I have no issues.

The folks in my branch also use Focal Point and consistently look at the IBI site.

We are getting good support from my end of the picture.

We switched from EPM to WebFOCUS.

For WebFOCUS 8, it has been very trying to get used to new version.

We are using IBI. I was not part of the install team.

They did but I do not know the products.

Report developer, Correction and Rehabilitation, Business Analysis, monthly report, Average Daily Population of Offenders.

Report rewriting is easy, use like the format. Offenders court data is easy to write and analyze data.

Web App Studio, and write a report via SQL or using report writer. I can write SQL using developer and export the state to app studio.

The interface can be more user-friendly, learning the product via a classroom format. App studio needs to copy report without issue renaming.

Good.

Great.

Have not used them much, however my coworker has used them and had great results.

Crystal Reports, switch to make the report writing more easy for the user.

Complex, the DB configured the system.

Both vendor and in-house.

Yes, still learning.

Yes, upgrade Crystal Reports to 2016.

I like the product.

Learning WebFOCUS because I am new to this MDE. I want to add a few more reports to WebFOCUS so end users can run customized reports.

Yes, now end users can run more customize reports and can see these reports in graphical form to get more understanding of the data.

All features are very helpful and easy to use. End users can see their data in more meaningful ways.

More charts, because I like to see more graphs and get more understanding of data by seeing it as a graph.

No.

No.

We use production to develop reports and portals for the Department of Police - Montgomery County, Maryland. 

It's a wonderful product. Our users like it very much. It is very flexible to developer reports/portal.

There are many ways to build custom reports. We also like the data quality to profile our data to get quality data for reports.

We found some minor flaws like password encryption. The Information Builders tech support provided us workarounds.

WebFOCUS is the most scalable product I've used.

WebFOCUS updates, the training, as I am working on a project that will be for each program. Portal for each program.

It improved our reporting system a lot. The availability, presentation, and timeliness are way better.

The WebFOCUS info assists and Excel base quick data, it provides information at times when it is needed.

Upgrade and more module training, we are about to do an app studio upgrade and our team is working on getting training for our agency.

It gives better information and reliability.

I believe it's excellent.

Excellent, they are very very helpful.

From mainframe to web-based. It is way more efficient.

With the help of the IB support team, it was easier, any problems encountered, they were there to help.

Both. They are experts in their field.

More than 80%.

Make a budget for it.

Web-based.

We have a BI respository and I use the software from a reporting and analysis perspective.

WebFOCUS has improved reporting and is still a work in progress. We are currently working on converting MS Excel files into a data mart for greater efficiencies.

Learning RSTAT and will be implementing a model hopefully soon. Pull a lot of data for analysis autonomously.

More access via end users without using reporting objects. Easy way to create charts and graphs for reporting to executive staff.

So far it is stable.

Thus far our Dashboard and data downloads work efficiently.

The support with our Exec has been awesome.

Since working for the State of MD, WebFOCUS is what I was introduced to. From the private sector, I used proprietary software that was very user-friendly providing analysis to our customers.

I did not work with development. So I'm not sure. But from what I hear, it was okay because we had help from the WebFOCUS techs.

Not sure if management has performed any analysis for  ROI.

Upper Management makes the determination and IT. 

I enjoy WebFOCUS, but would like to be able to export Excel files on my own.

The simply intuitive end user experience, as well as the data animation/visualization features of Information Builders Incorporated’s (IBI's) Business Intelligence (BI) system (a la Hans Rosling, of TED Talks) are a high priority for us.

Additionally, the drag and drop functionality that IBI does better than any of its competition takes away a lot of the custom graph and report work previously delegated to the folks in IT or in Finance. Leaders using IBI can quite easily do it themselves. This is a big win for both IT and it's end users because better graphs and more well thought out reports are the result, along with more time for the IT leaders to focus on their primary area of expertise, IT systems.

We searched high and low for the above-mentioned functionality in a product that was available to us on-premise (this is a must for us, because we simply can’t afford to use a SaaS/cloud-based solution due to the security/risk factors inherent in the oil industry), and looked at Domo, Qlikview, Tableau, SAP, Birst, SiSense, among many others before we stumbled onto the Information Builders’ BI solution at one of their lunch and learn events, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

IBI has now added the data animation/visualization features mentioned above. This is a must for our company, and we and IBI believe they will revolutionize the BI space.

Here’s the thing …

Wouldn’t anyone agree that a data presentation that shows the relationship between factors in a moving/animated way would be more powerful/convincing than the typically static data presentations we have become accustomed to seeing/victimized by in all of those seemingly endless corporate performance meetings? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the results for an organization simply jumped off the page and it was relatively obvious what was going on/what needs to be done? The cool part is that this future functionality will be free from IBI as part of their regular BI solution offering!

We are a greenfield operation and are designing all of our IT, BPM and BI solutions to be the best available today, working on a collaborative business partnership level with all of our vendors/business partners collectively. As such, no systems have been purchased, tested, implemented and deployed as yet.

As mentioned above, deployment hasn’t occurred as yet. However, we have designed and built into our lab testing, implementation, and deployment processes a healthy professional services component that is designed to accommodate for any bumps and stumbles that may occur.

There were many meetings held at our offices, we also participated in their Customer Summit, in Orlando this summer where we met lots of good, solid professionals and customer-based professionals with whom we were able to learn and grow, as well.

Fabulous so far

We had been positioned to go with Domo, but because of the problems with purchasing Domo as an on-premise solution at the time, we ran across IBI, and the rest is history! Even though Domo has now told us that they would offer their BI solution to us on-premise, we feel that the intuitive, user friendly aspects of IBI far surpass what Domo has to offer, and as such will be going with IBI as a result.

BI is complex. Anyone who imagines otherwise isn’t looking at the entire picture of what’s involved. Although we haven’t as yet deployed (as mentioned above), we believe that IBI’s implementation and testing process will be both thorough and illuminating for our staff in IT and enterprise-wide.

In-house is planned, with IBI professional services directly.

Since we are a high risk environment, we have calculated that any core business down time will cost us ~$18K per minute (or ~$1M per hour, with our core business process’s reset time projected at ~9 hours = ~$9M or more). Similarly, any efficiencies gained will be realized at those same rates (~$18K per minute, etc.). As a result, we are expecting that our select BI solution will pay for itself many times over in both disasters averted and efficiencies gained through our core business’s continuous process improvement efforts.

TBD. We have a cost proposal for both the solution and professional services broken out, but needless to say doing BI the right way can’t reasonably be done on the cheap. I would say that there is an economy of scale where IBI would not be affordable for just any business, as it would be with any IT solution, but for our sized and type of company (~700 staff, revenues projected in the $Bs per year, and both end user experience and continuous process improvement as key business values), we have decided that IBI makes the most sense for us. Guess it all comes down to how much your company has at stake, and how imbedded continuous improvement thinking is within your company’s culture.

Yes, see above. We looked at Domo, Qlikview, Tableau, SAP, Birst, SiSense, among many others before we stumbled onto the Information Builders’ BI solution.

Participate in one of their lunch and learn events as we did, and see for yourself what IBI can do!

• Great connectivity with databases
• Great visualization
• Great to promote personal BI through Infor Assist +
• Ability to run your reports in disconnect/passive mode
• Great location and mobile intelligence.

It's improved the decision making process and information management.

It's too complex to setup the security features.

I've used it for one year.

We had no issues deploying it.

We have had no issues with the stability.

It's scaled well for our needs.

It's great, and very personalized.

We are retiring SAP Business Object Webi and Xcelsius, they will be replaced by IBI Web Focus.

Security set up is a little complex, other than that is OK. We are implementing in the cloud.

The implementation is being done together with the vendor and our BI team. This is the best approach to learn and to avoid big dependency on the vendor.

They offer a very competitive CPU based license.

This is a great BI product and an excellent roadmap and vision.