Altair Monarch

Score8 out of 10

20 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Altair Monarch are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Datawatch Monarch is a versatile tool that caters to the needs of different departments within an organization. Users and data analysts rely on it to extract data from mainframe reports, providing them with a quick and efficient way to render their own data. With its intuitive and easy-to-use interface, users find Monarch to be a preferred solution for downloading mainframe reports.

The finance department benefits greatly from Datawatch Monarch's capabilities, as it allows them to export large, unformatted reports quickly into Excel, extracting only the relevant information. Similarly, individuals across the organization utilize Monarch to extract data from various sources and transform it into Excel spreadsheets for further manipulation.

In addition, Datawatch Monarch RMS is used on the IBM Content Manager On Demand CMOD report distribution platform, allowing users to extract data without running Monarch themselves. This integration streamlines the process and improves efficiency.

Moreover, Datawatch offers an extension called Data Pump, which seamlessly integrates with SQL databases. This feature enhances the software's data management capabilities and enables users to schedule and output numerous processes and reports to support departments across the supply chain.

Departments such as sales and marketing leverage Datawatch Desktop for analyzing marketing data, including website metrics and sales opportunities in the CRM. The visualizations provided by Datawatch Desktop help identify discrepancies between prospect behavior on the website and the likelihood-to-close percentage provided by salespersons. This enables sales managers to intervene promptly and improve lead qualification.

Overall, Datawatch Monarch serves as a powerful tool for extracting, transforming, and analyzing data across various departments within an organization. Its user-friendly interface, seamless integration with other systems, and ability to handle large amounts of unformatted data make it a go-to solution for users seeking efficient data management solutions.

Reviews

6 Reviews

Datawatch Monarch/Modeler and RMS: Very effective for data mining from legacy reports.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

September 12, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Some end users and data analysts in our organization use Datawatch Monarch to extract data from mainframe reports. We also have Datawatch Monarch RMS running on our IBM Content Manager On Demand (CMOD) report distribution platform, which allows users to extract their data without running Monarch themselves.

Pros

Creating a basic model to extract data from a report is very easy.
Advanced features like Calculated Fields and External Lookups allow you to augment the raw data.
You can create a "project" to automate the data extraction. Combined with Datapump (a separate DW app), you can fully automate the process once the raw report is generated.

Cons

Moving fields around in a model can be very cumbersome because you can't overlay them.
Moving models between different versions of Monarch can be a pain.
I'd love to see a utility that would combine the field lists from a collection of models. This would help us standardize our field definitions.

Likelihood to Recommend

* Individual seat licenses are very expensive, which is one reason we are moving to CMOD/RMS. But RMS has less functionality than standalone Monarch (now known as "Modeler"). I would like to know what improvements we can expect in RMS, I would also ask, what is the future of the standalone version?
* In the past there has been a dearth of user discussion and support in the online community, although this seems to be improving with the new "Datawatch Commmunity" (http://community.datawatch.com).

Frank Pappalardo

Senior Deployment Analyst in Information Technology at US Foods (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Datawatch services review

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 21, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It was used by the whole organization.

Pros

Ease of use
Ease of managemet
Proactive monitoring

Cons

Graphical interface

Likelihood to Recommend

It was well suited to large buildings with controlled main access but not to those with an open floor plan.

Javier Icaza

Remote Services Engineer in Information Technology at Optimal Networks, Inc. (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Datawatch Modeler review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 18, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Datawatch is used extensively by our finance department to export large, unformatted reports quickly into Excel while extracting only the relevant info.

Pros

It allows us to quickly dump large non-ALV SAP reports into Excel. Exporting these reports prior to Modeler was cumbersome at best.
Customizable models allow us to easily gather required data from the same report running different dates. This is perfect for month-end reports.
Quick exports.

Cons

Editing the models is not intuitive and takes a fair amount of training. Datawatch should work on their GUI.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need to quickly export large reports that contain superfluous data, regardless of format or software, you should use Modeler.

David O'Reilly

Business Operations Manager in Finance and Accounting at Varian Medical Systems (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Best tool for monitoring real-time data and analyzing time series data

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 14, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used Datawatch Desktop to analyze marketing data in the sales and marketing departments. For example, we used data from our website, including number and frequency of visits, forms completed, time spent on site, and other factors and visually correlated that information with sales opportunities in the CRM. The visualizations made it obvious when a prospect's behavior on the website did not match the likelihood-to-close percentage provided by the salesperson. When there is a discrepancy, the sales manager can intervene and help the salesperson better qualify the lead.

Pros

Ability to access and visualize real-time streams of data coming in from message buses, real-time Excel, or CEP engines
Ability to visualize true time series data stored in column-oriented, in-memory databases
Ability to support SAP HANA databases

Cons

Setting up visualizations with time series data requires a good understanding of how the software works. I would like it to be more intuitive. Having said that, time series data is inherently complicated and I don't see any obvious ways to make it simpler. But I'm not a software designer myself; they could put more resources into the user experience.
Their video training is really helpful and they have a big library of videos, but the videos get out of date as they come out with new versions. I can imagine that it's difficult to keep all the videos updated, but it would be great if the videos were always using the latest major version of the product.
They need more visualizations. They have a pretty big collection now but it seems like there is often some other way to present and visually analyze data that would be a better/tighter fit with requirements than the visualizations available in the standard product. I understand it is possible to add more visualizations - custom visualizations - but that's beyond my expertise.

Likelihood to Recommend

The product is especially useful when you have real-time and/or time series data to analyze. If you have more mundane, simpler requirements, other products might do the job you need for less money (there are even some decent open source visualization tools you can find.) I know the product is very widely used in capital markets applications to monitor and analyze risk and price and volume changes; if you're working in that area, I don't think there's a better tool to use.

Verified User

Executive in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Datawatch - Monarch Pro 8.0

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 11, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Monarch is being used by certain individuals at the company I now work for. It helps extract data from different sources and puts the data into an Excel spreadsheet which is easy to manipulate into anything we need.

Pros

Reduces multiple lines of data into one. This allows for a more across the page reference rather than a hunt and peck for the data.

Cons

Field definition needs to include more options to retrieve the data.

Likelihood to Recommend

This is a great tool for creating "batch" files as well.

Lisa Glassman

Revenue Cycle Operations Analyst in Professional Services at Lakeland Regional Medical Center (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

12 years of experience

View profile

Datawatch - Great Product, New (ouch) Pricing!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 2, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Datawatch Monarch text editing software is utilized by hundreds of users across our organization. It is the best text editing solution for downloaded mainframe reports, and allows end users to quickly render their own data. The Monarch software is intuitive, flexible, and easy to use. Datawatch Data Pump solution was implemented over 8 years ago by our regional IT department as a logical extension of how we use Monarch. Data Pump is used to schedule and output hundreds of processes and reports we have created over the years to support departments across our supply chain, and links extremely well to data we maintain in SQL.

Pros

Monarch is very flexible, easy to use, and intuitive. It links well with other data sources, and has a wide array of calcs available for power users.
Data Pump is a logical conclusion for those who are familiar with Monarch xprj's. Once a project's model, data source, and data destination are established, it makes sense to want to automatically schedule it. Data Pump makes it easy to group, organize, schedule, track and trouble-shoot multiple projects in one place.

Cons

Recently, we had some major sticker-shock when we wanted to upgrade Data Pump. It is an exceptional product, but when the price jumped from $6,000 to over $60,000, it was impossible to get the funds approved internally for the upgrade.
We also paid for yearly maintenance contracts which included Professional Services, but rarely found those services beneficial. However, we did receive all software upgrades for Datapump as part of the contract which we found to be very beneficial. However, with the new pricing, that is not longer the case.

Likelihood to Recommend

If an organization's primary source of data is available in a report format, Monarch is an excellent solution. It works extremely well for parsing out data from downloaded text files, and can even be used to parse data out of scanned pdf documents. For power users, it works very well with databases and SQL. For soft users who just want to glean data out of a downloaded report, it's very easy to see how it works. For anyone who has ever tried to use Excel to open and parse a text file, Monarch is sure to provide lasting relief!

Should you find Monarch beneficial, the next logical step towards creating a great BI environment is Data Pump.

Kim Shada

IT - Business Systems Analyst II in Information Technology at SUPERVALU, Inc. (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

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Best tool for monitoring real-time data and analyzing time series data

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 14, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Ability to access and visualize real-time streams of data coming in from message buses, real-time Excel, or CEP engines
Ability to visualize true time series data stored in column-oriented, in-memory databases
Ability to support SAP HANA databases

Cons

Setting up visualizations with time series data requires a good understanding of how the software works. I would like it to be more intuitive. Having said that, time series data is inherently complicated and I don't see any obvious ways to make it simpler. But I'm not a software designer myself; they could put more resources into the user experience.
Their video training is really helpful and they have a big library of videos, but the videos get out of date as they come out with new versions. I can imagine that it's difficult to keep all the videos updated, but it would be great if the videos were always using the latest major version of the product.
They need more visualizations. They have a pretty big collection now but it seems like there is often some other way to present and visually analyze data that would be a better/tighter fit with requirements than the visualizations available in the standard product. I understand it is possible to add more visualizations - custom visualizations - but that's beyond my expertise.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Executive in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience