Parabola

Excellent and unique data workflow tool. It lets you work with APIs and automate reporting and data processes without using code or spreadsheet formulas.

Love Parabola

We've been using for 3+ months and can not yet recommend, but believe Parabola has created a compelling, if not fully realized reporting and data automation platform. Though it shows great promise, our implementation of the tool (incorporating 3 to 5 "flows" from various data sources) proved maddeningly frustrating, owing to its wobbly integration with Salesforce, the connection to which breaks each time it attempts to run a report. (All of our Parabola "flows" incorporate data from Salesforce; so in fairness, non-Salesforce users' experience may be far rosier.) Reestablishing the connection is simple enough, but takes 3-4 minutes each time. For a daily report, this becomes tiresome pretty quickly, and greatly diminishes the tool's value as an automation solution for sales ops (or at least Salesforce) intensive applications. That said, it does have an engaging interface - and if you enjoy building reports and setting up data flows, you'll enjoy using the product. This is especially true if you enjoy the sheer Groundhog Day repetitiveness of re-architecting a report each time you need it run. The product isn't supposed to work this way, as Parabola has pointed out to us over the course of a multi-month support thread, during which they've been responsive but admittedly stumped in fixing this basic issue: the platform can not sustain a connection to Salesforce. Parabola could have volunteered to adjust our bill after acknowledging the issue, which we think would have been best, but to their credit, did agree with us when we suggested some adjustment would be appropriate. (They offered a $50 reduction of our ~$150 monthly tab on *future* invoices - but not those corresponding to our time of suffering.) Which brings up another point - Parabola isn't cheap. Based on our experience, the price outruns the value; that said, Parabola's pride in their solution isn't misplaced. While we can't yet recommend Parabola to our sales ops audience, we're also not cancelling our account, given how tantalizingly close they seem to putting all the pieces together. Solving for the integration issue might not be trivial (given the troubleshooting time invested in our account alone), but once solved, this otherwise solid platform and knockout UI will turn some heads. Getting Parabola from here to there is a path we wish were less parabolic, but for now, our interest is outstripping our impatience. We'll have a more comprehensive review later this month at salesmanagement.org.