QlikView Reviews

Extraction from almost all data sources provides a lot of value to me. Ease of operation, data modelling and creating dashboards with simple objects and the abundance of visualizations are also valuable.

We extract our data from SAP BW as well as Update 7 data source. Extracting and associating these data to form Main Data Model is quite simple. The objects that QlikView provides can be used to make complex KPIs for visualization. Apart from these for visualization, we also implemented many extension objects of Maps with our QlikView applications.

We managed to implement applications combining CRM (Customer Relationship Management) data and sales data from two completely different data sources. It's the first (small) step towards big data. CRM data comes from Update 7 and sales data comes from SAP BW, which made it tricky to combine them and make common navigation possible.

I would like to see JavaScript or jQuery features added to it.

Dynamic changes with respect to page scrolling, responsiveness and actions related to it are what I am expecting in the next version.

Other than these, while adding named CALs in QMC, it would be really great if we could load all of the names from a single file (for example, an Excel sheet) together all at once.

The iPad application lacks some features. For example, container box object functionality does not work properly in iPads.

I have been using this solution for more than 13 onths.

We had issues. After deployment, while extracting data from SAP BW, a timeout error occurred many times. We haven’t found any solution for it. So, we have to keep reloading the job on QMC until it gets successfully reloaded for the day.

Franky speaking, I have never contacted technical support.

I did not use a different solution before Tableau. This is the first tool I have used for BI.

I was not involved in the complete setup. However, its installation using multiple transports and connectors is quite straightforward.

We implemented it with the help of a vendor team. (QlikTech)

Deployment and configuration of this tool is very simple. The tutorials that come with the installation of the product are very helpful with creating dashboards and learning about the product in short time.

QlikView’s associative model is a fantastic design that enabled the Green/White/Grey feature. This feature greatly helped us highlight the relationship between different kinds of data.

To further explain the Green/White/Grey feature, let’s take a sales report of an electronics shop as an example. In this report, it may have dimensions (Product Category, Salesman) and expressions (Sales Qty, Sales Amount).

Green means the values of dimension that you have selected. Under the Product Category dimension, it will have different values e.g. Smartphone, Laptop, Desktop. If we want to see the sales performance of Smartphone, we can click on Smartphone, then it will become green. We can also select multiple values e.g. Smartphone and Laptop in the dimension.

White – shows the values of dimension which are related to the another dimension values that you have selected.

Grey - shows the values of dimension which are NOT related to the another dimension values that you have selected. By following the previous example, we have selected Smartphone in Product Category dimension. In the Salesman dimension, Salesman e.g. Jeremy or Janice who have have sold Smartphone will be shown in white color. Another Salesman, e.g. Roy, who didn’t sell Smartphone will be shown as Grey. This is very useful for us to identify relationship between dimensions

Its “Search Object” function is also very useful for us to search for the information we needed.

“Section Access” is another great feature as we can identify user authority on accessing data in an easy way.

Another feature "Set Analysis" which enabled us to configure different behavior for each dashboard. So that some dashboards (e.g. YTD) can be freezed and not affected by some of the filter selections.

My experience using QlikView was in a F&B chain store with outlets around the world. In such a F&B chain store, there are a lot of dishes and they are changing frequently with a high transaction volume.

In such an environment, a search function is very helpful for us when we want to find out the sales performance and trend of a specific dish.

Qlik’s associative model greatly helped us identify customer purchase behavior and we can define combos according to this information.

By comparing with the latest data discovery tools like Tableau, Qlik Sense and Sisense, the layout and colors are not eye catching enough. It looks like a very powerful excel with a lot of powerful features for analysis. But it may not be good for presentation.

I used it for two years.

Qlik is able to import data directly from a transactional database and create joins between the tables in there. However, I encountered a performance issue with high volumes of data.

Therefore, I suggest designing a data warehouse and use it instead as Qlik’s data source. The performance will be much better.

Actually, I can’t remember any issue that I was required to check with customer service or technical support. For nearly all of my questions, I can get answers in the Qlik community.

I have previous experience with IBM Cognos. It was a very comprehensive solution that can be used for pixel-perfect reports, email schedules and also data analysis. However, there are many more development and implementation steps than with Qlik.

Also, Cognos requires a steep learning curve even for a user with a technical background.

As we wanted an easy and user-friendly self-service BI solution, QlikView is more suitable from this perspective.

On the server side, it is quite straightforward and we didn’t encounter any problem.

On the client side, the user can access it by browser or a desktop application. For the desktop installation, it can be downloaded from internet. And the configuration to connect the server is very easy; even end-users are able to do it. We prepared just one slide and end-users are able to follow it.

We implement it through a collaboration with the vendor. The vendor team is responsible for installation and configuration. And the in-house team is responsible for development.

My advice is to use a data warehouse as the data source, which can greatly reduce Qlik implementation time, as creating too many joins in Qlik is not a best practice.

My advice is to start small with the named license scheme as the price is much cheaper and it will be much easier to gain management approval.

People who have interest on QlikView should also take a look on Qlik’s another product Qlik Sense. They have similar features (e.g. Section Access, Search function, Associative model).

QlikView relies more on the IT side. IT builds the base and a majority of end-users make use of it. Some power users can build dashboards, share with others and create formulas in there.

Qlik Sense is a self-service BI tool. It is easier to use and stronger in visualization. But some advance formulas might not be available.

The ability to provide drill down functionality quickly and easily into large data sets. Anyone working with a large amount of data in Microsoft Excel and then waiting ages for it to subtotal all that information, will certainly appreciate the speed and efficiency with which QlikView handles data. Users can get a lot more done, and a lot more data can be analysed in a shorter period of time.

The fact that QlikView provides its own QVD structure, as well, removes all dependency on having a DBMS in place before implementing QlikView – so it is cost effective.

The fact that QlikView can literally plug in to so many different types of data sources, as well, is a definite benefit.

The facility to auto-reload at scheduled times is great too!

My company was recently bought out by a competitor, now forming one group. The organisations are on different versions of a particular ERP solution, and the need immediately arose, from a regional and management executive level, for a dashboard to measure the sales performance of the group as a whole. Using QlikView, we managed to pull information from two different servers - one running off a QVD file structure, the other using a Microsoft SQL Server - and provide a consolidated sales performance model. This allows our executives to be able to examine the performance of their companies from a central point.

Some improvement to the user interface (for the developers). It could certainly use a re-vamp. The existing tab structure can be confusing sometimes and the controls that you would expect to find on one particular tab are actually on another.

I'm referring to the properties of the various charts that you can create within Qlikview – this brings up a dialogue box with a number of different tabs along the top;

In my opinion, for example, the tabs “Visual Cues” and “Style” could be combined into one. “Caption” for another example could be renamed to “Title Bar config” or “Chart Config” or something like that. Some aspects of the “Layout” tab could be added to “Presentation”.

The dialogue box itself isn’t quite wide enough, so if you end up going all the way to the right you have to click on an arrow a couple of times to see the tabs all the way to the left again, and you can’t resize it either – Why???. The box itself should be wide enough to encompass the number of tabs in a single view. Either that, or have a maximise / minimise buttons on it to give the users the choice.

There are no doubt a few others I can point out if I give more though to it, just my feeling of the product is that it can be a little unwieldy, especially to people initially learning the program.

The company has had the solution for the last five years, I have been involved for the last two.

No issues encountered, the solution is stable, and the users are happy with the solutions provided.

Customer service and support from QlikView South Africa is first rate. They respond quickly, and are always friendly, professional and very efficient.

QlikView was this company’s first foray into making use of an external business intelligence tool.

The setup is fairly simple, but you do have to have a decent level of technical knowledge if you are going to set up a Qlikview Server yourself. Otherwise, I’d suggest the use of a consultant. The client software is very simple to set up.

We implemented through a vendor. The advice I would have is to ensure that you attend all necessary QlikView courses (i.e. designer / developer), to get a very clear idea for yourself exactly how QlikView works. Sometimes sales consultants will over-sell you on the bells and whistles of a product, and when you actually want to make use of it in a particular way, you might not be able to. This has not been the case during our QlikView implementation, but I have experienced other implementations that have been like this.

So you do need to be very clear on:

• What exactly do you want to get out of a business intelligence solution, what data do you want to manipulate and analyse, etc.
• For your own sanity, be very clear on how QlikView works and that you will get the solutions out of it that you want.

One cannot really place a monetary value on the depth of very valuable information that QlikView can help you extract. My advice also would be to be very clear on the licensing model you want to go for. The QlikView licensing model is complicated, so be sure that whoever is selling QlikView to you explains it thoroughly.

I would suggest having someone in-house doing the development of your models for you, be it dedicated to that role or in addition to another duty. Nobody understands your business quite like you or the people working for you, and that is always advantageous when building solutions for the business. Not to put down external consultants, but doing it this way can save you a bundle into the bargain.

Strong visual capabilities, drill down function and data browsing. No need for any other tools, ETL/ scripting and visualisation built right into one tool.

• Ability to monitor progression towards certain deadlines and preset thresholds.
• Ability to browse through the data by selections to quickly answer questions.
• Easily export to excel or print for external use.

While Qlik and their products are very intuitive and a pleasure to use as a developer of the dashboards and poweruser, many of my colleagues and stakeholders of information are used to static (paper) reports. This often leads to producing tables and graphs that are 'pinned down' (set analysis) to reduce the flexibility of the representations and the dashboards as a whole. (Qlik presents this as a core strength of their products.) 

Often this makes the formulas for these expressions and dimensions very complex. Of course you could argue that the users would have to 'mature' to use this new, more flexible, way of information. But it would be a great improvement for the Qlik products if it were able to easily 'lock' graphs without extensive coding.

Over 5 years

Due to in memory technology, when datasets get really huge, rendering of graphs can take some time or even return out of memory.

• In-memory analysis
• Associative database query
• Easy to use
• Easy to install
• Easy to maintain

Amazing fast response to complex business questions due to flexibility and easy to use.

We have increased our revenues by 30% because the rapid and effective insights provided with the analytics we built with Qlik.

I would like to see embedded predictive analytics models or more integration, connectors with advanced analytics platforms.
Qlikview is extremely good with descriptive analitycs. But when you need to predict using advanced predictive models like Logistic Regression or CART or decision trees, R and SAS institute for example are good at it, so if Qlikview would have this capabilities embedded or connectors to integrate with them will be a killer product.

I have used it for nine years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is outstanding.

I did not previously use a different solution.

For the value you can add to your business, the TCO is low. There is a high price perception in the market, but this is relative.

If you do not take advantage of the solution, it definitely will look expensive but if you do, you will be happy.

For three months, we evaluated several solutions with installations provided by vendors such as Oracle BI, IBM Cognos, and SAP BusinessObjects.

The main challenge to prove during that phase was the ease of use without professional services support at that stage!!!

I highly recommend this solution.

• Ease of use for end user
• Analytical reporting
• Easy-to-build dashboards
• Self-service reporting
• Speedy deployment

The PoC for a new business area was not covered by the management reporting platform (controlling of IT processes).

• Built-in monitoring of ETLs (there was no advanced tool for monitoring, planning and evaluation ETLs), I work with SAP BW (i.e. RSMO, RSPCM, ST13 transactions), of course there was an option to have additional expert tool but for a lot of additional money
• Formatted reporting (PDF and export to Excel) - if necessary compile aggregate export to PDF document was not allowed to draw and do parameterized output compile or schedule it as a job with an appropriate distribution to the responsible user group, custom printing to PDF or Excel did not correspond to reality/original

• Built-in monitoring of ETLs
• Formatted reporting
• Print to PDF
• Export to Excel

I have used it for half a year.

I had integration issues with SAP BW.

Technical support is very good.

IBM Cognos was the original MIS platform. Within QV, there are better analytical reporting features.

We implemented it in-house with some external support.

ROI is very long, > 5 year estimation.

Assess the possibilities, advantages and disadvantages of the product as a whole with regard to the general characteristics of MIS systems and considering plans to use a management reporting platform across the enterprise.

Because it provides data discovery along with BI solution design, it has a distinct advantage for data analysts.

Associative Experience is also valuable.

The solution can be implemented quickly (normally within three months) with a low implementation cost.

I have been using QlikView for the last four years & am currently working on version 11.2 SR14.

Deployment of the QlikView solution is more or less smooth & simple compared to other BI solutions.

Scalability is directly proportional to RAM size & the number of concurrent users accessing the solutions. We didn't see major stability-related issues post-deployment.

The Qlik support team is very active & responsive. Issues are mostly resolved on time.

I hadn’t used any other BI tool, but our organization migrated to QlikView from SAP BO because of its associative experience & quick deployment time.

Initial setup was complex with respect to building the same project environment for a different business domain.

Implementation was done directly by Qlik, which made sure the best design methodologies were kept in place.

ROI is much better compared to BO because deployment time & cost are both reduced.

Qlik’s pricing / licensing policy is fair enough.

The server load, the QVD load, ease of variable declaration, and the different dynamic charts are very valuable to me.

Our complete BI transformation and production was done through QlikView instead of basic Excel reporting and analysis, reducing manual input, ease of automation and more reliability in numbers, thanks to fewer human input errors.

Currently we are building a pane to use filters and select options. For a dashboard, if they would add a "Column value" filter option like what you see in Amazon on the left hand side, that would be useful.

It could also have an autosave feature, which it direly lacks.

A direct feature to export views to PowerPoint, instead of external plugins, could be useful.

Sometimes large files are difficult to read and QlikView crashes midway. So you need to start from scratch. Instead, if it could support reading and processing large files with a lot of records (4 million +), that would be useful. This was one such issue we faced while doing a BI transformation as the data generated was huge.

I have used QlikView for 3-4 years now.

We did not seek technical support. I simply researched answers in forums and through Google searches, blogs etc.

With the help of IT teams, the QlikView online servers were set up (one for production, one for testing). So, implementation was done completely in-house.

ROI can't be measured directly, but the power of BI can be visualized through QlikView.

I personally feel the QlikView server license is extremely expensive and might not be affordable for most organizations. However, all clients felt QlikView was so easy to operate, see results live and visualize in great charts, easily copied to PowerPoint. They were able to easily log in, select their regions, time period and view the results in a single shot instead of viewing multiple Excel reports and looking up, etc.
They used bookmarks for their filters and that made it even easier, rather than entering the inputs every single time.

We evaluated Spotfire, Tableau and finally chose QlikView to be deployed for all dashboards in the organizations.

QlikView can be a powerful tool in your organization if you are serious about a complete BI transformation and moving away from standard Excel reporting.

Given standard training and experience, migrating to QlikView is a very good choice.

The ability to capture data from multiple sources, quickly link by key fields and quickly analyse in a dashboard proved to be such powerful features that we reduced the use of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access almost entirely for any kind of reconciliations.

I worked in a financial institution having most data in mainframes but also having extracts and datasets put into various places from highest quality Oracle and MS SQL server objects right down to MS Access/Excel and continuing to Text File output.

Sometimes for either quality control purposes daily or some other kind of reconciliation or verification, QlikView was great for a basic end user with minimal skill to bring that data in and map it as necessary to achieve the desired result. (Often the datasets easily map via a couple of primary fields that the business users understand and outside developers may not understand without a business analyst specification)

Most times making that ad hoc effort a template of some sort and making mundane roles like daily recons be easily achievable.

Doing this same work in MS Excel or MS Access can be tricky and dangerous and not be as intuitive for non-technical people. Doing it other ways can end up being too much effort with hiring developers and building systems and paying for a lot of developer man-hours when a quick QV dashboard does the trick by the business end user.

This product improved how my organization conducted repeatable analyses, such as a user access internal audit review for 500 users over 100,000 user ID and system access across 50-100 systems. My first project before we had QlikView took about a month, but after we rewrote the procedure using QlikView, it was much better and took about a week. We pretty much used the same raw data, but the report and analysis was so much quicker.

The process of gathering the data and using Microsoft Access used to take a month or so. Certainly, using QlikView as an ad-hoc tool is very powerful, yet easy. Comparing it to development on Microsoft Access, it feels about 10 times quicker. You go from raw data almost directly to reporting. (Skipping the hassle of lots of queries, forms, and slow report creation.)

As they say, "Seeing is Believing”.

While it used to be extremely easy to work with for me, at least the basics, some other folks used to have a bit more trouble using it. I think that it might be useful if the first-time user wizard was a bit better. It might help people get the “Eureka “ moment on their own. I always felt that the wizard was not really worth using, and I started people off with making their own import scripts with my help. Others also seemed to believe that as well.

I think the wizard could take a bit more time and provide training along the way. For example, show the data to be imported, and go over some of the best practices. And maybe continue on with going over the Edit Script and hit some of the basics there as well and so on.

I think all things are covered in the tutorial, but I had very little success having people use the tutorials.

Some aspects are so common, and used so much:

1. Basic import of data, load, review the field names that come in, set your fields as “what you want”
2. Import a different table, review as in step 1, but check for synthetic links, do your “AS” statements to clean up, and get the linkages you want, etc.
3. Then have some wizard to make tables and charts in the same way, etc.

I do these things with new users inside of a couple of hours, including usually helping tham make their first solution.

I used QlikView for five years.

Never has this been a problem, but mostly in our company, we focused on using QlikView standalone.

We had tons of core and server architectures, and QlikView was used to improve reconciliation and quality control.

Ultimately, there is great power in using QlikView to be an enterprise solution (in the right context). But the user base was able to get so much productivity out of our approach.

And to get an enterprise solution in place required a budget and resources, which we did not have.

Technical support is excellent, the user groups are really good, and outside of that, there are excellent web resources via YouTube (e.g. AnswerSharks) that have evolved.

In reference to user training, I sent people to these sources even more than to QlikTech themselves.

I left my firm just before QlikTech was finally given the go-ahead to design some product solutions for us. (Having ad-hoc users design things worked, but it was time to get more polished internal- and customer-facing solutions to take us to the next level.)

As a global firm, we actually looked at many products, even signing a multi-year contract with a QV competitor (Tibco Spotfire, but the enemy of efficiency for analysis is MS Excel).

For SpotFire, it was always my opinion that that deal was done on a golf course, because QlikView over the years was the better product by far (certainly, all users loved it) versus the other product, which very few users understood, and certainly users did not show anywhere near as much affection for it.

We went for standalone licenses in the beginning of about six, and over several years the license count grew to 60. When I left the company in late 2015, we were looking finally getting a server.

I do not know the status now, but the company should have been given serious thought to getting a server, and perhaps converting some of the licenses to QlikSense.

A vendor team implemented it, but it was more like a sales team. We just asked for more licenses and put the server deployment on hold for way too long.

Although users were very happy, the cross-division expansion that I felt was possible never happened.

The biggest problem out there is that most people keep thinking, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I believe that people use MS Excel way too much, and that is a symptom that something is broken.

Also, I used QV to pull data out of core systems often whenever reconciliations were questioned. (Analyzing the source directly is better than another Excel spreadsheet.)

We pretty much measured our success in man-hours saved or efficiency gains:

• We did not aim high, but certainly, I put together a number of solutions that worked flawlessly, and could save between 1-3 hours every day.
• More importantly, we applied this analysis tool, were able to benefit from very high quality analysis and recon, improving employer quality of life.

QlikView requires a little bit of “handholding”, which was provided via a small expert group at my last employer. (Originally, we got to a “Yeah, I get it”, Eureka moment after one or two two-hour, on-site visits from the sales support team. Add a phone call or two.)

I would suggest that while returns on efficiency would be quick, it is worth it to consider expanding the user group sooner, and having a strategy to grow the user bases very early on. I compared this tool to the over-use of MS Excel and MS Access to attempt to do similar things in my organization.

And while we saved lots of time and effort in the areas that QlikView was used, the real target I had was to take PowerPoint off its pedestal for management reporting.

We never quite got there, but I envisioned that dynamic usable reports was a much loftier goal than death by PowerPoint. (But it must be said that lots of executives love their PowerPoint, which has continued to mystify me.)