QlikView Reviews

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.)

It is very simple to use. When I use QlikView, I just install it and then connect it to MS SQL Server. After I make a successful connection, I can, for example:

1. Create a simple procedure in MS SQL Server.
2. Execute the procedure to get the information I need in a column.
3. Design a QlikView report that includes the column from the procedure to preview it in QlikView.

It provides sales and other analysis with good visual graphics.

I would like to see the possibility to change the program if the new program is better than last program.

I have used this solution for just three months, because we don’t have enough employees to manage it.

It requires a lot of RAM on the PC.

We will possibly continue using the product.

It is very easy to install.

The associative/relationship engine and fast performance are the most valuable features of the product for me. It is excellent for number crunching with basic visualizations and known questions.

QlikView is used internally for financially-focused groups. It has moved folks out of Excel land into interactive/shared analytics.

I would like to see improved performance/scalability at high data volumes + high user concurrency. Having only in-memory capability for hosting source data is a constraint.

I have been using QlikView for 2.5 years.

No issues with deployments/stability. Departmental-scope in use has it well-positioned here.

Technical support is very good.

Nothing else was reviewed, given the business area lead had previous experience with QlikView and wanted that for his department.

Initial setup is straightforward. It is not a complex system to install.

We used a regional vendor that had experts in the platform to help us install/configure/jumpstart our use, working directly with the business department in need.

ROI is unknown. However, licensing costs continue to increase in QlikView and in Tableau, which we also use, forcing us at some point to consider consolidating to one and/or turning some existing/owned MicroStrategy licensing inward to replace if the the upward pricing trend continues.

Pick the right tool for the job/consumers of the products. There is not a single product that can cover all personas/use cases well or there would be only one product out there commanding the world – and there’s simply not just one. QlikView is great for numbers-focused users who live in Excel today and want a better way to create common metadata and analytics that can be easily distributed/consumed by target users.

• Combination of ETL with powerful scripting options and a fast, flexible front end makes it like a Swiss army knife
• Powerful front end, which allows us to make very user-friendly interfaces
• The associative model, which allows for truly integral reporting

The combination of quick, agile delivery combined with a front end that allows you to easily drill through from high-level dashboards to low level details means that we can deliver according to the business case. Compared to our other tools (e.g. SAP BO), business users are using this tool a lot more.

• Chart types; some look a bit outdated, would love to see Qlik Sense- or Tableau-like visuals
• Central formula/measure repository, can now only be done with variables

I have used this solution for eight years.

Deployment is very easy and quite stable. Only drawback is that the server can stop functioning if not enough memory is available, so that needs active monitoring once you are close to the limit.

Good, quick responses and mostly the support team is very knowledgeable. You don't have to go through multiple layers that delay the resolution, like with some other products we have experience with.

We have everything, but the combination of functions in one tool as well as the good support and quick implementation times make QuickView our preferred tool for most use cases.

Straightforward, easy installation (next-->next-->next). Single sign on was a bit more complex, but way easier than with SAP BO, for example.

We have implemented it with vendor teams and in-house ones (multiple installations). For a simple scenario with one server, just do the training and you can do it yourself. For a more complex scenario (we have a cluster of six servers in the cloud), it is better to let the vendor do it; they have the best connections for the complexities of clustering.

License prices are quite high; it makes the roll-out slow as you first have to convince people of the benefits. When growing, session licenses are the best; we achieve a ratio of 1:30 for the average user.

Perhaps if you start from scratch, it is better to start with Qlik Sense, as it seems that most development effort goes into that product.

QlikView enables fast visualisation, analysis and navigation through data. It is very flexible, and offers easy-to-develop, quick-value tools for navigating and understanding data.

QlikView allows non-technical stakeholders to quickly engage with and navigate through their data as business information.

Data modelling is often a protracted process, with no toolset available apart from scripting. The consequent data models are not very portable at all.

I have used this solution for five years, sometimes more intensively than others.

One of QlikView's greatest strengths is its in-memory handling of large amounts of data. The flipside to this is some ongoing leakage, which makes it sensible to reboot once a week.

Qlik's support model for everyone except large enterprises is through consultant partners, so it depends on the quality of the partner. On the whole, they seem to be good.

It was implemented via a consultant partner. They were technically very good, but one should ensure the consultant delivers comprehensive documentation. A solution is only as good as the ability to navigate through it and enhance it as the business changes.

Although normal advice would be to mandate that the implementation deliver to business-specific requirements, it is strongly recommended to understand the product's great capabilities, and to exploit the competitive advantages of the product. Otherwise, it becomes just another business intelligence tool blindly shoehorned into a business that doesn't gain the best value and ROI from it.

QlikView’s associative ability. The AQL that QlikView uses to associate and ‘bring together’ similar data types (based on name) is extremely powerful and useful. One click causes a whole ripple effect though the whole dashboard, because everything is associated to one another.

We have used code to create a calendar effect. We then loop through that calendar, executing SQL at the end of each month. This is not easy to mimic in normal SQL, and would require an SQL package to perform such a thing.

QlikView allows us to perform these feats with ease.

QlikView does not work very well with very large data sets. I would like to see that improved.

I have used this product since Jan 2013.

Besides the stability issue with large data sets, I have not encountered any other deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Technical support is 3/10.

I have not evaluated any solution similar to QlikView (e.g. Tableau).

We did not previously use a similar solution.

Initial setup was straightforward.

A vendor team implemented it. They knew the tool best and we could get it up & running a lot quicker. Part of the implementation included training.

Not easy to answer. What we use it for, internal to the company, is to track internal costs as we manage quite a number of cost centers. We've successfully managed our budgets and have recovered quite a substantial amount of money for our CC as QV has allowed us to track incorrect CC billing.

QlikView really works well. We have had no complaints from users about its functionality. There has never (or hardly) been a time where a user makes a comment like “Oh, pity that QlikView can't do this…”

The ability to build models that allow business users to do their own what-if analysis on the correct data.

The business was previously using Crystal running on top of hardcoded SQL stored procedures and Qlikview. Qlikview improves development productivity and allows self-help BI.

I would like to see more ‘drag and drop’ functionality as, in my opinion, there is still too much coding required to join tables correctly.

I have been using this solution for 18 months.

As mentioned, we previously used Crystal as well as Oracle OBIEE and both are inflexible and time-consuming.

Initial setup was very straightforward, plus the team had set up Qlikview previously.

We used a vendor team for implementation and that’s probably the way to go first time around, but there must be a skills transfer.

Qlikview are always willing to negotiate pricing, especially if you mention that you are evaluating Tableau as well.

Don’t believe the sales talk that you don’t need a datamart or data warehouse to run Qlikview on top of. It can run against ERP data but then the queries get very complicated and cumbersome.