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What is Infor Birst?

Industry Specialties: Serves all industries

Infor Birst is a cloud-based analytics software tool that aims to help users discover insights without the need for analyst input. It unifies IT-managed enterprise data with user-owned data, supporting the blending of both in a top-down and bottom-up manner. It uses consistent business metrics to structure raw data into organized sets and visualizations. It helps users identify patterns and better understand their organization’s KPIs.

It offers a seamless, integrated UI that allows users to perform every step of the data analysis process in a single interface, enabling a smooth experience. It can be deployed either from the cloud or self-hosted on-premise.

Users can purchase it in three available formats: per-user fee, by department or business unit or by end-customer in embedded scenarios.

To explore other popular solutions that Infor offers, visit our Infor company page.
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#23

Infor Birst is ranked #23 in the Data Integration Tools product directory based on the latest available data collected by SelectHub. Compare the leaders with our In-Depth Report.

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Infor Birst Pricing

Based on our most recent analysis, Infor Birst pricing starts at $2,500 (Monthly, Quote-based).

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Starting From
$2,500
Pricing Model
Monthly, Quote-based
Free Trial
Yes, Request for Free

Training Resources

Infor Birst is supported with the following types of training:

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars

Support

The following support services are available for Infor Birst:

Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Help Desk
Knowledge Base
Tickets
Training
24/7 Live Support

Infor Birst Benefits and Insights

Why use Infor Birst?

Key differentiators & advantages of Infor Birst

  • Scalability on Demand: Prevents data bottlenecks caused by data loads that exceed capacity as business grows by scaling as needed through a multi-tenant architecture across a multi-node environment.
  • Faster Results: Delivers faster analytics across the entire organization by utilizing automated data analysis technology, cloud architecture and reusable metadata.
  • Data Clarity: Promote data clarity and reduce ambiguity by offering unique views into data to help everyone, regardless of technical expertise. Better understand the meaning of individual KPIs via the semantic layer, a set of shared business definitions.
  • Self-Service: Gives employees at all levels of technical skill self-service tools, such as drag-and-drop, to explore, analyze and visualize data through the user-oriented UX.
  • Informed Decisions: Make more data-driven business decisions by better understanding operations. Identify trends in business data by collecting, organizing, exploring and visualizing data.
  • Predict Future Outcomes: Generate actionable insights by leveraging AI to analyze historical data and improve business moving forward.
  • Intuitive Visualizations: Easily interpret trends by cleaning data and building understandable visualizations through machine learning.
  • Networked BI: Builds collective intelligence. Combines IT-managed enterprise data with user-generated data and eliminates data silos, unifying data from every part of an organization.
  • Certified Security: Secures data at every degree of detail, down to the row and column level. Employs strict data security protocols and procedures to protect data in  processes and data centers, which are certified for ISO27001 and SOC II, TYPE II standards and compliant with EU Safe Harbor laws.
  • Free Trial: Try it hands-on via a free trial.

Industry Expertise

Infor Birst serves all industries that need to collect and interpret business data to make more informed decisions. It specializes in food and beverage, financial services, healthcare, government, HR services, technology, telecommunications, media and entertainment, sales and more.

Infor Birst Reviews

Average customer reviews & user sentiment summary for Infor Birst:

User satisfaction level icon: great

560 reviews

82%

of users would recommend this product

Infor Birst has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 82% when considering 560 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Based on an aggregate of Infor Birst reviews taken from the sources above, the following pros & cons have been curated by a SelectHub Market Analyst.

Pros

  • Data Integration: About 80% of users who mentioned its data integration capabilities said that the platform, powered by built-in connectivity tools, connected well to many types of data sources.
  • Data Visualization: Approximately 81% of users who reviewed visualization said that the tool provided attractive and intuitive data presentation options for at-a-glance data analysis and trend charting.
  • Ease of Use: The platform was user-friendly and intuitive, according to around 77% of users who reviewed the interface.
  • Functionality: Approximately 68% of users who reviewed functionality said that the platform provided strong capabilities to streamline preparation and consumption of data for developers and end users alike.
  • Data Management: Automated data warehouse creation made data modeling a breeze, around 65% of users who reviewed the platform’s data management system said.
  • Setup: Around 69% of users who mentioned implementation said that the solution being cloud-based, coupled with excellent onboarding support from the vendor, made deployment easy.

Cons

  • Performance: Approximately 87% of users who reviewed the platform’s performance said that it was slow and inconsistent in data processing and data refresh.
  • Learning Curve: About 81% of users who mentioned the learning curve said that documentation was often insufficient and incorrect, and that the platform’s use of proprietary language made the learning curve quite steep.
  • Service and Support: About 46% of users who reviewed this feature said that support was poor and turnaround times were painfully long, extending up to several months.

Researcher's Summary:

Infor Birst is an integrated cloud-based end-to-end solution for sourcing raw data, and extracting, warehousing and reporting for enterprise data analysis. With built-in tools for data integration and strong embedded analytics capabilities, users leverage its data visualization capabilities to create and share metric-specific dashboards and reports. Users who reviewed data management said that automated data warehouse creation was a strong feature of the platform, as well as its user-friendly interface. Many users who reviewed its functionality said that, equipped with a powerful ETL and efficient ODBC drivers for integration, the platform was flexible and scalable with a multitude of features for data discovery and analysis. Around 69% of users who reviewed ease of implementation said that deployment was easy with the integrated cloud platform, though some users said that the setup processes were unclear and they required in-house IT support for onboarding.
On the flip side, users who mentioned performance said that the speed of data processing and data refresh was slow and this impacted report generation capabilities. Documentation was inconsistent and often incorrect, and the use of proprietary query language made the learning curve quite steep, many users who reviewed this feature said. Support turnaround times were woefully long, even extending up to several months as reported by a number of users. Some users who reviewed functionality said that the code was buggy and the platform stalled often when processing data for ad-hoc reporting. Many users complained that these bugs were not addressed for years, and new releases often impacted pre-existing features. Possibly because of its performance issues with large amounts of data, quite a few users rate it as a good BI tool for small and midsize companies that require less complex data analysis, rather than larger enterprises.
In summary, Infor Birst is a BI ecosystem with a networked approach to data visualization and predictive analytics that eliminates data silos and serves as a single source of truth for enterprise data.

Key Features

  • Automated Data Refinement: Automatically merge data from different sources into one user-ready data storage and optimize it for analysis. 
  • Semantic Layer: Boosts trustworthiness of data and reduces data anarchy by adding an agile semantic layer between the user and data. Work with data privately while staying connected to the network via a virtual tenant space.
  • Real-time Access: Directly query on-premise data sources in real-time, eliminating the need to first extract and then upload data to the cloud.
  • Adaptive UX: Create reports and dashboards without coding knowledge via intuitive drag-and-drop tools. Supports different analytic styles, such as visual discovery, and mobile, and third-party tools such as Excel, R and Tableau. 
  • Reusable Rules: Automatically generates a common architecture based on a reusable set of business definitions without manual intervention.
  • Interactive Dashboards: Explore data even further via interactive dashboards that have drill-down capabilities such as lasso filters.
  • Multi-Tenant Cloud Architecture: Scales vertically and horizontally with a multi-tenant architecture built on a multi-node environment. Speeds insight generation by reducing the overall time spent on repetitive on-premise tasks. 
  • One-Click Data Connectivity: Access existing data with one click via its extensive library of pre-built connectors.
  • Embedded Analytics: Scale with clients’ businesses via flexible deployment options including embedding, APIs and localization capabilities.
  • Machine Learning: Recognizes patterns in data via Smart Analytics and automatically builds visualizations based on predictive analytics. Learns over time, and remembers previous search queries, past visualizations and more.
  • Deployment Options: Deploy as a SaaS through the cloud or go hybrid, keeping data in-house but running analytics through cloud-based servers. Or, deploy through a virtual appliance that delivers all the benefits of a traditional cloud-hosted SaaS while being locally hosted on-premise or in a private-cloud.
  • Mobile App: Access reports and dashboards via its native mobile application for iOS and Android.

Limitations

Some of the product limitations include:

  • Does not provide a mapping feature for location analysis
  • Does not support non-English languages
  • Less suitable for complex analysis
  • Complicated, less user-friendly admin module
  • Does not integrate well with Snowflake data warehouse (vs. Looker, Tableau, Power BI and MicroStrategy, which do)
  • Support can be lacking in quality and timeliness
  • Sometimes lacks synchronization between the database and the front-end

Suite Support

Before emailing support, go through the range of material including tutorials, a knowledge base, webinars, videos and blogs, all available on the vendor’s website.

Access to support services depends on the platform subscription — the Professional plan comes with Basic support, while the Enterprise subscription has two tiers of support: Standard and Priority. Standard includes break-fix support for issues arising out of using the Birst platform, whereas Priority involves more proactive support as well as access to a learning management system and a quarterly upgrade readiness consultation.

More information on the differences between the plans is available on the vendor's website.

mail_outlineEmail: Email [email protected] or request support through the “Contact Us” support page.
phonePhone: Call 866-940-1496.
schoolTraining: Access a range of tutorial material, including a hands-on guide, knowledge base, videos, webinars, a blog and a ThinkTank community that creates forums and other resources.
local_offerTickets: Submit tickets through the support portal. Priority support subscribers also get weekend support for high priority cases and have access to individual attention from a consultant during developer support hours.

Cost of Ownership

License/Subscription Cost
  • On-Premise: License fee includes an upfront fee to own the software or other intellectual property for a fixed term
  • Cloud-based/SaaS: Pricing includes upfront cost for customization & integration along with monthly per user or subscription cost
Maintenance Cost
  • On-Premise: An additional cost over and above the upfront cost has to be paid for ongoing support and maintenance
  • Cloud-based/SaaS: There is no maintenance and support cost for the Cloud/Web-based solution
Installation/Implementation Cost
  • On-Premise: Typically charged over and above the license cost
  • Cloud-based/SaaS: Included in the monthly subscription cost
Customization Cost
  • Will vary depending on the functional requirements or services chosen
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost
  • Dependent on your current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system.
Recurring/Renewal Costs
  • On-Premise: Includes cost for updates, maintenance, upgrades, and patches
  • Cloud-based/SaaS: Renewal cost is equivalent to the fees paid monthly or annually, based on number of users

Customers

  • Amex Software Tools
  • Citrix Software Tools
  • Sunny D Software Tools
  • DVF Software Tools
  • Pilot Flying J Software Tools

Relevant Articles

Tableau Competitors

Testimonials

Birst is focused on understanding our direct to consumer business. That means understanding customers' purchase behavior and understanding the inventory we need to sustain the demand we see on our direct channel.

- Felipe Araujo

Senior Director of E-commerce at DVF

Product Case Studies

pdf
Citrix
pdf
SunnyD
pdf
Pilot Flying J
pdf
DVF
pdf
American Express Global Business Travel

Product Publications

pdf
A Platform for Networked Business Analytics
pdf
A Reference Architecture for Next-Generation Big Data and Analytics
pdf
Four Key Selection Criteria When Choosing a Modern BI Platform
pdf
Why Cloud BI
pdf
The Future of BI Is Networked: A Networked Model for Business Intelligence and Analytics
pdf
Infor Birst Vs. Power BI Vs. Looker Comparison Report

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A note from Infor, Inc.

[Infor] Birst is unique amongst BI and analytics platforms in that it was designed from day one to be a full-stack or unified data and analytics platform built for the cloud. Using patented augmented data management and analytics, Birst dramatically speeds up the process of deploying analytics and at the same time reduces the total cost of ownership.

Central to Birst’s core philosophy of supporting both centralized and decentralized BI teams is an agile semantic layer which ensures that everybody in the organization works from the same governed metrics while the unique concept of ‘networked BI’ ensures that users can blend their edge data with the centrally managed, highly-governed data sets for true data-as-a-service.

Finally, because your technology landscape is unique to your organization, Birst supports public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises deployment and on-premises or cloud data sources.

- Infor, Infor

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