ProClarity to XLCubed:
From Strength To Strength
ProClarity were a US company founded in 1995 who developed client tools for Microsoft Analysis Services products, the most widespread being Desktop Professional, and their Excel add-in. ProClarity were acquired by Microsoft in 2006. Elements of ProClarity were added into Microsoft's PerformancePoint Server, but the core Desktop Professional product was left largely unchanged with support ending in 2013, and the Excel add-in withdrawn.
When developed ProClarity was a strong contender in the space, with good analytic capabilities for the power user. The Excel client was a solution for those wanting to work in Excel, but was not as rich functionally. The core product, Proclarity Desktop, is a proprietary front end where users work within the ProClarity environment. ProClarity's main strengths were as an Analysis tool rather than for dashboards or formal reporting, and we have often seen it used as a way to 'dump' data into Excel for manipulation there, which isn't a great model as it's time consuming and the data can get out of sync.
For clients looking for ProClarity alternatives it's a good opportunity to determine if the business need and usage model is the same today as it was a decade ago when ProClarity was chosen. If there is a lot of export to Excel activity, a better model is to have an active data link to Excel but without losing the key cube manipulation elements, something which XLCubed provides. We have many satisfied customers who have found XLCubed to be a highly effective ProClarity upgrade. See the Marshalls success story for their ProClarity conversion experience.
Dive Deeper Into Data
ProClarity users converting across to XLCubed can quickly find familiar ground. Some of the strengths of ProClarity are dynamic selections within hierarchies (descendants at a level etc), user calculations and groupings, ranking and filtering, linked visualisations, and the ability to quickly get behind any number within a report. Extended versions of these are all key elements within XLCubed, but the key difference is that it's all available tightly integrated into Excel. XLCubed Web provides a way to deliver interactive reports and analysis originally built in the Excel client to a broad base of report consumers either in the native web interface or within SharePoint.While it's straightforward to rebuild existing ProClarity reports in XLCubed, some customers have huge numbers of reports. XLCubed provides a conversion utility for ProClarity briefing books which can significantly reduce the reporting effort required in ProClarity replacement projects.
