MS SharePoint / SQL vs. TARGIT

As I mentioned in my previous answers, MS SharePoint is very useful as a shared drive for the organization and is very easy to manage. It also helps us import data from SharePoint directly into PowerBI for creating reports. According to my understanding, only share link features should be improved.

Incentivized

Overall, TARGIT is a valuable tool, and more and more associates are realizing this every day. It's become our standard for sales reporting. I would recommend the software for use at other companies, and I often encourage fellow associates to gain access and basic training.

Incentivized

• Flexible - able to make any changes we would like vs traditional service desk system.
• ROI - We were already using SharePoint for internal intranet, so we are simply getting more use out of licensing we had already committed to.
• Easy to use for end users.

Incentivized

• The in-memory cube in the Targit suite is an excellent tool that can replace SSAS in theMicrosoft BI suite of tools. InMemory aggregations are lightning-fast compared to Microsoft SSAS.
• Targit also has a cool HTML5 reporting tool.
• It is a complete suite of BI tools including ETL, cube and reports.

Incentivized

• It is hard to setup and nightmare
• It requires a of infrastructure, thus it could be costly because of requirement and licensing required for everything to run smoothly
• If it is not setup and organized properly from the beginning it could be maintenance nightmare
• It is hard to have "test" environment to do patches or similar

Incentivized

• I think including the Data Discovery module in the base package instead of charging extra for it would go a long way to making the software better. If you don't have much background with SSIS or SSAS and you do not buy the module, it will be difficult for you to add or modify data sources.
• There are a couple small tweaks to the interface that would be helpful but are far from necessary. For example, unlike an Excel pivot table, you cannot move the measures above the dimensions in a table interface. There are workarounds for this, however.
• I understand the need to make their calculation language as complex as it is, but it still seems like it could be made simpler. It's helpful that it comes with several standard calculations that you can easily add to an object, but if you want to modify a calculation or create your own, it can be more complicated than I would like.

Incentivized

This was a long-term buy-in from a corporate perspective, to remain in the SharePoint space. Migration is certainly possible, which is good for planning and having options further out. At this point, the only planned migration is to eventually move the architecture up to SharePoint/SQL 2013. At that point, we will be able to leverage some greater efficiencies, some enhanced content design and management features, and some more current social features. It is well worth a full consideration in any shop looking at a new implementation of or migration to SharePoint (although you will probably be considering 2013 versions or beyond in those discussions), but the platform should be a strong competitor to any alternatives. Realizing the capability of a fully-branded and customized website was not part of the original choice for the architecture at Lincoln, but seeing it implemented and functioning now with this capacity far beyond original expectations has certainly cemented plans to continue using it.

The use of Targit is widespread throughout our organization. Our users are becoming comfortable with the tool and Targit has allowed our company to truly grasp the concept of Business Intelligence and making better business decisions through the analysis of our data. Our users are not waiting for IT to create reports for them, they have full rich self-service BI with Targit and are able to turn a great analytical idea or ad-hoc query hypothesis into concrete answers with actionable responses within minutes.

I gave this rating due to MS SharePoint being a big help with our userbase. We have a lot of users that are just old enough to not have much technical skills or they have been in this industry long enough to where they haven't really needed to utilize much technology. MS SharePoint helped us move beyond that barrier without too many bumps and bruises.

Incentivized

Everything on the back end needs to be correct, which sometimes it may not be set up or missing some variables. Some of the more difficult parts of Targit require a lot more attention and object creation to work properly

I've only had to call in to support on one occasion but they were able to work though our issue and find a solution that did fully resolve the issue in a timely manner. I can't always say the same about support from other companies so it was a refreshing change to have support that did help.

Incentivized

Everyone I've dealt with at Targit genuinely cares about me and my success, and they respond to questions quickly and accurately. There is literally nothing more I could ask for from their support.

Incentivized

Mo major insight regarding the implementation if very well documented for standard products.

Incentivized

Make sure all of the back end work is done prior to getting Targit set up. Every variable you may need for calculations needs to be correct and every item needs to be uniform so it is read properly.

At the time of the two large projects, SharePoint was the enterprise solution so we were required to use that. We have since lobbied the enterprise teams to review and consider Atlassian Confluence and were successful. Confluence is cheaper than Sharepoint which is why we wanted to bring that in. The enterprise has now made Confluence an enterprise solution as an alternative to SharePoint. After using both I think SharePoint has many more add-ins than Confluence. It has much more customization ability than Confluence. SharePoint is not good for mobile readiness. Confluence is so there is a difference that might lead you to Confluence over SharePoint. I would also say that SharePoint is very document-centric and that Confluence has better KM than SharePoint does. even with the use of SQL Server. We were told that we could not use Google Drive even though it had features we liked.

Incentivized

While their product is top of the line and works very well for us, we ultimately selected Targit because of their team. We love working with them and they are always super helpful. Whenever we have a request or issue, they are there ready to happily help us resolve it and move forward.

• ROI for ms SharePoint/SQL considering that is the best database engine with excellent features that help you to have all information in your hand.
• Something negative could be license format.
• These are the best relational databases in the market with powerful features that complement your system.

Incentivized

• It really has answered questions during decision-making conversations where a task item would have been created with days of turnaround time instead of getting the necessary information within minutes during that same conversation.
• Unified Reporting that maintains in alignment with business needs.

Incentivized