Qlik Sense Reviews

Qlik Sense is our BI tool that provides decision information for the company at all levels and in many departments. We have dashboards, reports, and portals to give information to different kinds of internal or external users.

Right now, we have 150 extractions, 100 transformations, and 60 dashboards for decision-making in finance, inventory, sales, purchasing, supply chain and social media for the company. Qlik Sense is a mission-critical environment  - the directors can't make their work happen without it.

Qlik Sense changed the way the directors do their work. Most of them only use Qlik in their day to find the information that they need for decision-making. They use this information to negotiate with vendors and clients.

Qlik Sense helps us to consolidate data from different sources in a unified way. We analyze different channels or near real-time information from social media to decide in a short period of time.

Qlik Sense also is a way to understand the information that different sources generate and mix it with personal information.

Qlik sense has a lot of advantages, including:
- For the final user it is a simple tool.
- You can develop a dashboard in hours.
- The changes in a dashboard are very easy. We don't have the common problems that we have using multidimensional cubes.
- The In-Memory engine helps to analyze big sets of that in seconds.
- The storage is small. Qlik compresses the data in QVDs.
- The ROI is very fast. The time of implementation is short and the infrastructure is not too expensive. Qlik uses Windows Servers.

I have used this tool for more than 12 years. I did more than 1,000 Qlik applications (extractions, transformations, and dashboards).

I used this tool to analyze information in a lot of different kinds of companies, retail, laboratories, government, banks, goods, etc.

Qlik can be used in small, medium, and large companies.

I am starting to work with Qlik Sense SaaS these days. This environment has its own reporting service, however, one of the things that could be better for the people that are already using Nprinting, is to have a Nprinting in SaaS.

I'd like to see in SaaS some of the things that are running (best practices) in Qlik Sense. On-premise, if things are not working well I need to rebuild some parts of the dashboard. It would be useful to have some tool to analyze the dashboard before you do a migration.

I've used the solution for more than 12 years.

Qlik Sense's platform is very stable. I didn't have problems with the tool. Also, the upgrades are very easy, and you can't find big bugs.

Right now, I am implementing Qlik SaaS. I had a problem with Qlik Multi-Cloud. The vendor and Qlik gave me support in a few hours and I solved the problem.

Positive

We evaluated Tableau and QlikView before.

We did most of the setup in-house.

The ROI is very fast. You can have results in no time.

Qlik Sense is not the cheapest tool, however, the time to ROI is very fast. You can have results in no time.

In four years I've evaluated Power BI and Tableau. I still work with Qlik since the tool is easier than the others and gives us the results that we need. We have all the connections to the sources of our systems.

With Qlik Sense you can mix information very fast. Your data warehouse consumption of storage is very small and you can build it quickly.

My company uses the solution in 60 municipalities in Norway. In my country, the public authorities mostly use the product for municipal planning.

The most valuable features of the solution in terms of data analysis need to revolve around the speed that the tool offers. The product of analytical capabilities and the speed for all the applications are good.

The communication with the solution's sales managers in Europe is not the best, making it an area that requires improvement. My company usually gets no response from the tool's sales managers.

In Qlik Sense, some improvements are required in QMC since it hasn't improved much over the years. QMC is related to the management console, and though it works, it needs improvement.

Some improvements  in the data load editor should be considered. The load manager has different sections, and it should be possible for the user to deactivate/activate code by commenting/uncommenting at a section level. 

I have experience with Qlik Sense since 2017. My company has a partnership with the solution.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company's customers who use the product are medium-sized municipalities, although some municipalities are large.

I have used the community support offered by the product.

Neutral

I rate the setup phase a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one means it was difficult, while ten means it was easy.

I rate the product's deployment phase a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one means it was difficult, while ten means it was easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. We consider to move the product to the cloud.

The product is reasonably priced. You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense.

In terms of ROI, my company's clients in municipalities who use the solution are very satisfied with it.

My company noticed the AI functionalities associated with the product, but we don't use them.

My company's customers use the analytical capabilities offered by the product. The product offers virtualization in the form of line graphs, maps and bar charts.

I would say before using Qlik Sense, consider that its main competitor, Microsoft Power BI, also costs money if you want to deploy it for use outside of the organization. Though Microsoft Power BI pretty tends to be cheap, it is not. If someone wants to deploy Microsoft Power BI the way my company has deployed it, then it can be an expensive affair. Microsoft Power BI pretends to be a free tool, but it is not available for free.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for standard reporting for cost and finance accounting. It creates VAT reports, balance sheets reports, and a lot of cost reports. You can split the company into departments and produce individual reports to deduct or extract, for example, German projects, which have to be brought for tax collection for Germany. Since ELIN is an Austrian company, we have to take out the part that has to be allocated to the German tax authorities.

From what I understand, we have data tables in proALPHA and then we have a kind of intermediate bridge, which is the Microsoft environment where this data is copied, and then from that database it is brought into Qlik Sense.

Some of the valuable areas of this solution include producing individual reports and closing the gap. Within proALPHA, it is not possible to implement a link of information from separate parts. This link can be done by Qlik Sense.

What would help is an Excel sheet that is linked directly to Qlik Sense so that instead of having to produce an Excel file, you would already have an Excel file that is connected to Qlik Sense. I don't know why it is not already set up this way because it would be more convenient. Right now, it is complex and you have to understand the data model prior to analyzing it, so basically I would like to see an integration with Excel in the future.

I have been using this solution for two years.

The solution is stable and reliable. 

The solution is easy to scale and about 20 people work with it in my company.
The rollout should be for the full user amount, which is roughly 200% from 20 to 200. But one main report is missing, and it doesn't make sense to roll it out because if they desperately need this one report and if it is not included or not completely correct in this new tool, then we would have understandable complaints from the users.

Integration was my colleague's responsibility. It wasn't easy, and altogether it took about one year. My colleague used some consultants for support because it wasn't easy to understand, collect, and integrate the data in the correct way, but the rest he did himself. 

As far as I understand, there is a very low level of maintenance because he does as much as possible by himself.

Some reports are not fully translated from the old QlikView version into the modern Qlik Sense, including some basic reports in the construction business. One main report is missing because if it was completely deployed in the new Qlik Sense system, QlikView could be closed forever because QlikView's so old.

QlikView only produces aggregated amounts, so you can never trim down in it. In Qlik Sense, it's the opposite. The results are produced by collecting the specific entries, so you always have to trim down, which is obviously the better approach.

Qlik Sense is a good tool for BI in order to connect in normal circumstances, but not for integrated data tables in big ERP systems. I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten.

Qlik is being used as a Business Intelligence and Data Analytics solution. It currently extracts the data from our database and online sources via a Rest API connector. The data is then transformed in the load script and stored in a .qvd file format.

Once this has been completed, applications use a combination of the .qvd files depending on their functionality to allow reporting on areas of the business. Any area with data can be reported on with graphics tailored to the needs of the business. 

Qlik Sense has allowed us to compile and analyze our data in real-time, thanks to the various and specific applications that have been designed and built. This has allowed the organization to make data-informed decisions and has also removed the need for manual tasks, checks, and calculations.

In turn, this has allowed the organization to better utilize time and resources, improving business efficiency and productivity. However, it is worth noting that this is only as good as your data. You must ensure your organization has clean data!

Qlik has a powerful load script that uses an enhanced SQL language which is excellent for loading and transforming the data. 

Qlik can also store data out into a .qvd file format which is very highly compressed. This file format can then be ready by Qlik extremely quickly, allowing it to rapidly process thousands of rows of data. Qlik also has a range of useful visualizations and also allows for custom visualizations to be created and added as an extension. These can be found online or created by yourself.

Qlik application automation needs additional work and features. However, it is still a fairly new development. It appears it has been brought on to replace many of the Qlik management console's functionality for on-premise Qlik solutions. However, it lacks a lot of the same functionality. It is worth noting that it does have additional functionality in some areas compared to the Qlik Management Console.

An interesting development to Qlik Application Automation would be the addition of functionality that allows writing to .qvd files.

I have been using Qlik sense for three years, however, I have only been using Qlik SaaS for the past year.

The solution is very stable.

The product is easily and effectively scalable.

So far, we have not had an issue that required support.

Neutral

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The setup is straightforward.

We handled the setup in-house.

ROI is hard to quantify, however, it has definitely earned its cost.

I'd advise users to negotiate directly with the sales team for the best deal.

The product was already in use at the organization.

Qlik Sense on-prem may be a better solution currently. However, Qlik Sense SaaS will overtake this product soon.

We are in the affiliate marketing industry. We are using the Qlik Sense Cloud to visualize our marketing-related data. Qlik Sense allows us to visualize the complete funnel from the customer visiting the Google/Bing ads to the product sale. 

We are also using Qlik Sense as a platform where we integrate the data from other data sources and make the insights from it which otherwise would have been quite a difficult task. 

The Qlik Sense cloud insights advisor helps our business users to get the answers to their data questions so that they do not have to rely on IT/BI resources every time they have some data request.

Qlik sense is considered the single source of truth for our organization's operational data. 

Users do not need to switch to different data sources because Qlik Sense has various data connectors that allow us to integrate the data from the various sources into one platform. 

The platform has helped us to analyze our data in a more systematic manner, and make informed decisions from it. 

The solution increased the operational efficiency of our team members and allowed them to leverage the data and get the most out of it.

I found "Qlik application Automation" most interesting. It allows us to create automated analytics and data workflows. This helped us to create an end-to-end pipeline from raw data to Active intelligence. With Qlik Automation, we can reload multiple apps parallel and chain the app together to run one after another. 

Importing/exporting the app script to Github, sending automated emails/reports or chat messages on Teams/Slack based on condition. These are some amazing things we can do with the Qlik application automation feature.

In my opinion, collaborative development of the Qlik Apps is a bit tricky and difficult in the Qlik Sense Cloud. For example, the developer who is not an owner of the app cannot see the app script. The user needs to duplicate the app, and then he should be able to see the app script or make any changes in the app script. 

I see that two developers can not work collaboratively on one app. Moreover, Qlik sense cloud does not provide an option to create a folder on the platform to save the relevant Qvd's/files in one folder. I believe this is something the product should focus on.

I've used the solution for two years.

The solution is highly scalable.

The customer service is good, yet not the best. However, community forums help quite a lot in case of any Qlik-related technical queries.

Neutral

I have used Power BI, however, I did not use this platform intensively. I used it very rarely.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We implemented this solution in-house.

The pricing of the product is very competitive. The licensing and the setup process is super smooth and easy.

We did evaluate Tableau.

I use the solution in my company for dashboard building and reporting purposes. In my company, we have a lot of dashboards that are live, and we also work with quite a lot of reports.

In our company, we found a few requirements in the tool, which we directly shared with Qlik's team through our account manager.

With the May 2024 release, the tool has covered a lot of products, but I feel there is more to come. I am expecting new updates in the tool.

Qlik Sense requires one to have a lot of technical knowledge. It is an area where improvements can be made.

I have been using Qlik Sense for three to four years.

My company gets support from the service vendor team, so we have not contacted Qlik directly.

Earlier, I used to use QlikView. Every tool has its own set of pros and cons. It is not fair to compare a tool with another product.

If you look at Power BI, there are a few things you can do that would take a bit of time in Qlik Sense. On the knowledge side, people might need to know how to handle Qlik Sense technically. Power BI requires relatively less effort for a person to manage, especially given its exposure to Excel, so it is a reason why people might be already aware of Power BI and not Qlik Sense. Power BI borrows many features or examples from Excel or Access, which are long-standing Microsoft products that people are already aware of in the present.

When used manually, the tool has saved our company a lot of time. For certain projects, we have saved a couple of files for each iteration.

Considering the deal that we have acquired, Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price.

The tool's data analysis is useful to help out the teams across the globe and to track their work.

Qlik Sense is linked with our company's SQL servers.

After working with QlikView for a very long time, I felt it did not carry over many of the features to Qlik Sense directly, and it was done over a period of time. Until the tool's MAy 2024 was released, we did not have a hide option for every object, which now they have given, but there is a workaround for it using the layout container. In QlikView, such features were easily available with an expression view. It was much easier in QlikView than it is in Qlik Sense's latest version.

My company is not quite open to AI because of the compliance issues and the data restrictions that we have in place. We are managing AI-related areas in a controlled manner using Python and a few other things, which are being built in-house rather than using open-source platforms.

I rate the tool an eight to nine out of ten.

The primary solution was to provide a centralized way to access siloed cross-functional reports. 

By using Qlik Sense, we were able to combine data from our BI solution, ERP, and other systems, to provide daily reports, plus analytics capabilities with high performance. 

As Qlik Sense is an in-memory solution, the performance is fast and provides real-time insights. 

Also, with their ETL capability, we were able to perform ETL without a true data warehouse. It saved us a lot of money by being able to postpone the DW project and gave us time to think of other solutions, like data lakes.

From siloed reports, we went to a centralized knowledge hub, combining cross-functional data, and helping decision-makers see the data as a whole, therefore making more informed decisions. 

Also, the self-service capability allowed users to create their own reports on the fly. People from different departments were pulling their data from different sources and presenting their own truth. 

With Qlik Sense, and being able to provide a central data hub, we were able to recreate most of the siloed reports, present one truth on the data, and increase the trust of the organization in the data being presented, gaining leadership approval.

The ETL capability is great. It facilitated the integration of data from different sources without a true data warehouse. Being able to pull data directly from the ERP system and apply the business rules in Qlik, and combine it with the BI data, decreased the business process time. We had to send every request over to our overseas BI team. Being able to have at least one BI resource in-house who is an expert in Qlik, we decrease the development time and started delivering solutions in a much more timely manner. 

The ease of use, providing a self-service environment, and high performance when interacting with the dashboards and reports are all great.

Ad-hoc reporting capabilities would be ideal. Despite the solution being a self-service solution, many users still struggle to create their reports. With an easy drag-and-drop style report, it would make a huge difference. There are extensions for that, however, you have to pay them separately. 

Having a report publication feature is also very important, and it is not native to the on-prem version. However, Qlik has made huge advancements on the cloud version, and adding the hybrid capabilities, in which we can maintain the data in-house and just publish the dashboards to the cloud, will allow us to soon go to the cloud and have access to all those extra features we are missing on-prem. 

I've used the solution for seven years.

The product is very stable. They release three to four updates every year. That way, if bugs come up, they are fixing them in a timely manner. They always listen to the user community and tend to develop what is being requested.

The solution is very scalable, especially the cloud version. Their licensing agreement works really well for large organizations.

The initial support has to come from the vendors, which is something I don't like much, as it can be costly. However, I believe they are starting to provide direct support in certain cases. The use of the Qlik Community is fantastic, as they have experts providing solutions and fixes in a timely manner as well.

Positive

SAP Business Objects. They were very expensive and lacked the dashboard capability side of it. It was also very complex and needed more internal resources. Every request would take longer for it to be developed as well.

The setup was very straightforward. The setup is done through 3rd-party vendors, so you just need to make sure you spend a little more and hire an experienced consulting company for the work.

We implemented it via a vendor. Having the knowledge of experienced consultants doing the work is worth it and can prevent huge delays and problems.

I am not really sure about the full ROI numbers, however, compared to what we would have spent with the DW development, and increased headcount, we would have spent a lot more money. As I said, their licensing plan makes it very simple and cost-effective when we need to add more users.

I'd advise users to go to the cloud. If you can, go directly to the SaaS version. From a cost perspective, it was cheaper than other solutions - and better. Now it might seem more expensive, however, with all the features available, and being able to create a full data pipeline, it makes more sense using Qlik Sense.

We also looked into Power BI and Tableau.

Definitely go to the cloud. Use the SaaS solution as it offers more capabilities and you don't need to be concerned about the back-end management. If fully going to the cloud is not possible, think of a hybrid solution. 

Dashboards and reporting: we host a dashboard and reporting system for the whole company with a full set of rules of governances. Mashup pages or embedded iframe are good choices to manipulate Qlik Sense dashboards to any formats.

Ad hoc data analytics: with strong data load engine and in-memory processing, we could use Qlik Sense to do most of the statistical tasks or data minings task, or even export processed data to do further advanced analytics by another platform.

Self-service BI: in-memory processing make self-service data analytics become a joyful activity. 

Data collection, cleaning, transforming, and visualization become convenient, easy, and quick. Consequently, business users can make use of data by the fastest way and transform into better data-centric mindsets. 

Installing and deploying Qlik Sense is quite simple. With Qlik Sense Enterprise (multi-cloud) or Qlik Sense Business (SaaS on cloud), we even don’t need an IT guy to set up anything, deploying a dashboard and reporting system becomes simple and done in a few minutes with some simple steps. 

Data load engine of Qlik Sense is the most valuable, it supports a strong script language which could support complex data transform and processing tasks, it could be used to replace an ETL framework, we can use Qlik Data Load Engine to get data from many kinds of data sources , then process, clean, transform and store to datamart by QVD file (an optimized file type of Qlik), finally visualize data effectively with in-memory technology which make the self-service analytics become a interesting activities.

The cost of the Qlik ecosystem is higher than other competitors.

The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ for a token / 1 user. 2018: they change to 2 kinds of licenses: professional 1500$ / user, analyzer 800$ / user. 2019: they support subscription with 70$ Monthly for professional, 40$ monthly for analyzers, but for those you’re using perpetual licenses, they don't support acquiring more subscription licenses. The maintenance fee yearly are also high, 20% of the perpetual license.

Qlik dashboards are not friendly with end-users, but they have been enhancing this shorted in some recent releases and next releases hopefully.

More than thee years.

Good. But sometimes recently, very slow response .

Setup is simple and straightforward.

In-house.

Higher cost comparing to other solutions