There are lots of powerful data integration tools on the market like: Informatica, Apache Hop, Alterxy, Pentaho PDI and Talend. These are all general purpose tools designed for software developers. They all take time to learn, need skilled staff and money to support. Sheetloom is different, it's a flexible regulatory dedicated reporting tool...designed first and foremost for business users who already know excel.
Sheetloom hides all the data integration complexity behind our library of reusable data patterns that users reference via Excel named ranges. Sheetloom templates are easy to maintain and easy to populate being 100% native in excel with no bespoke plugins.
Sheetloom is simply more secure, purpose built and enterprise ready out the box. Below is a feature by feature comparison between Sheetloom and the data integration tools:
| Feature | Sheetloom | Data Integration Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Web based | Desktop |
| Scale | Enterprise Wide | Individual User |
| Auditing | Every move | ✍ |
| Productive | Day One | Six Months |
| Version Control | Built in | Complex with Git |
| User Type | Business User with Excel experience | Software Developer |
| Problem Domain | Regulatory Reporting | General Purpose |
| Templates | BYO or from Solasta | ✍ |
| Time travel | ✅ | ❌ |
| Automatic Spreadsheet Evaluation | ✅ | ❌ |
| Workflow | ✅ | ❌ |
| PDF Generation | ✅ | ❌ |
| PDF Ingestion | ✅ | ❌ |
| Security | Role Based + MFA | ❌ |
| Database Access Required | Admin Only | Always |
| Parametrised Spreadsheets | ✅ | ✍ |
| Pivot Table Support | ✅ | ✍ |
| Bulk Data Load | ✅ | ❌ |
| Decision Lineage | ✅ | ❌ |
| URL addressable | ✅ | ❌ |
| On demand spreadsheets | ✅ | ❌ |
| System passwords needed | ✅ | ❌ |
| External access | ✅ | ❌ |
| Mobile accessible | ✅ | ❌ |
| Reuse business logic | ✅ | ✍ |
| CSV Management | ✅ | ❌ |
| CSV Sharing | ✅ | ✍ |
| Excel Write-back | ✅ | ❌ |
| Compare different spreadsheet positions | ✅ | ❌ |
✍ = manual code