MicroStrategy Overview

3.) From user perspective, its scheduled report email functionality is best. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I led a strategy & analytics team at Dell that provided data-driven and actionable recommendations to senior executives. We needed an agile environment for rapid ad hoc analytics on large data sets that combined data from the warehouse with other data sets (market data, 3rd party lists, data from enterprise systems not yet flowing into the warehouse, prior analytics, etc.). MicroStrategy was selected by IT to address these business needs. Unfortunately, MicroStrategy tured out to not be the right tool for the job due to a combination of capability gaps and the constraints imposed by our own IT governance processes.
Our team of business analysts needed a nimble tool for ad hoc analytics. MicroStrategy required greater technical knowledge than our typical user possessed and the process of creating a new view was extremely cumbersome and time-consuming. We regularly needed to combine data from our warehouse with other data sources. While MicroStrategy has this capability, the level of technical knowledge required was beyond that of a typical business analyst and took too long. Part of the challenge was that our IT department imposed tight governance on the introduction of new data into the warehouse (which is common), so the minimum SLA on this process was 4 hours. This is simply not acceptable when a senior executive needs analysis for a decision right away. While I cannot fault MicroStrategy for our company's IT governance policy, they should add the capability to combine data from the warehouse with data outside the warehouse without requiring that it be added to the warehouse. While MicroStrategy has some light-weight and reasonably priced user licenses, the capabilities we needed for ad hoc analysis required a far more expensive user license.