Performance Analytics vs modern BI tool

[Casey12]

My company is already feeding ServiceNow data to a modern BI tool (Qlik Sense, via ODBC connector).  The dashboards that feed from ServiceNow are only from ServiceNow (i.e., no integration with other data sources).  We have no need for integration in the future.  We are considering purchasing Performance Analytics (PA) and migrating all of our analytics off of Qlik Sense and into PA.  Is there any advantage in using PA over Qlik Sense?

[Tracy Davis]

If you have resources who are already familiar with Qlik Sense then I would continue with that. I don't think you'd need PA in addition to it.

PA is quite complex to learn and pretty limited in the visuals/chart options.

I'm not familiar with Qlik Sense, but PA is definitely not as flexible as BI tools such as Cognos, Tableau, or Microstrategy.

Also, you should have the some PA functionality already - the Incident pieces is free so you can play around with that and see what it looks like before you invest in it.

[Ryan153]

Casey we are using Tableau as our primary delivery tool but are debating PA as well. Not as a replacement but in addition to Tableau.  There are certain things that PA just will not be able to handle due to the complexity of certain queries. That being said we do think we could shift some things into PA instead of Tableau to provide additional value to our customer. Here is why we think PA might be a good addition to our current reporting stack.

1. Shorter time to market. (In our case we are using SSIS to extract and load into a DB, the develop the Tableau report. This development can be time consuming end to end.)

2. Agnostic to changes to infrastructure. (Avoids constraints on DB resources, Tableau server and OS upgrades)

3. Provides for some 'intelligent' prediction.

4. Can navigate to the source records because you are working within the platform.  This is probably the biggest win for our customers. No system hopping!

5. Eliminates a 'failure' point in data transfer and availability.

6. Ability to hire contractors/professional services who are already familiar with the platform.  In our case getting a contractor that is well versed in ServiceNow + our reporting stack can be difficult.  Then there is the whole learning curve that must take place.

7. This Community! Take a look around there is a whole bunch of people willing to answer your questions, provide examples and give you code you can implement. 

8. Can provide reporting customers with the ability to utilize widgets and their own reports they can integrate into personal/group dashboards.

9. PA functionality continues to expand and is immediately available to implement without significant development that would otherwise need to be done in an outside tool.

10. ODBC limitations.

Some of this might be specific to our environment, but I hope this gives you a few things to think about.

[Tom Pacyk]

Hi Casey — I wrote a post awhile back called Performance Analytics is for Everyone that covers most of the differences. I'd suggest giving the article a full read, but in short — it will come down to out-of-the-box content, on-demand answers, real-time visibility, embedding analytics within processes, and security + scale. 

If you have additional questions or want to chat through any of those items in more detail just let me know.

Tom