ClicData

I could quickly and easily distribute reports to a number of users

Let's face it: there's hundreds of dashboard solutions out there, all competing for your attention. Take a close look and it's always a trade-off between functionality, ease of use, customisation options and pricing.

You'll find everything from zippy, push-button options that may or may not give you what you want to full-blown high-end tools which combine dashboard reporting with sophisticated data analysis capabilities.

Quick and easy comes with limitations in the data sources you can use, and the degree to which you can manipulate data after import. There's usually a short-list of presentation choices, often a million miles from data visualisation best practice. At the high-end comes complexity, a steep learning curve, and watch out stratospheric pricing.

Here's where ClicData excels: for an exceptionally modest price, you get connections to a long list of data sources that would satisfy all but the most unusual of requirements. You get ample options to segment, merge and manipulate data post import. You also get an ever-increasing number of customisable reporting widgets. Most importantly, in an area where most other solutions fail, you can set up your own customised templates and present your data in such a way that its easily interpreted. Yes, this is one online reporting suite capable of producing results that would even earn approval from Edward Tufte and Stephen Few.

Is there a downside to ClicData? Only if you don't have the time to invest in setting things up properly at the start and learning how to get the most out of this clever program. That time will pay enormous dividend, while not requiring the programming and analytics skills that other platforms do.

Of course, as with any platform, just how long your set up takes will depend on what you are trying to achieve, and how much time you want to spend in getting things perfect. But what's outstanding about ClicData is that you can produce perfect interactive dashboards, and at a price that will get quick approval from your accounting department.

Overall decent, but I moved on to Tableau which is quite powerful.

Combining Data Manipulation AND Dashboards in one solution is great!
Data Manipulation: You need to learn SQL for many of the Data Transformations. I'm okay at VBA and had ZERO SQL experience coming into ClicData. I'm getting better at SQL but could only imagine what I could do if I knew SQL better.

Data Refresh: Our data auto updates with with scheduled refreshes with cloud services (SFDC, Smartsheet) and through scheduled emails with attached data from our LMS (Data by Email).

Dashboards: I had zero experience creating dashboards before ClicData. As with anything I've improved vastly over time. When I need a new dashboard, I just select an existing one that is close to what I want, hit `Duplicate' and change the data source(s). Super simple.

I am able to amaze my coworkers on a regular basis thanks to ClicData.
I cannot recommend it enough.