Hex vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

Hex and SAP are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Hex is ranked #35, while SAP is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3. Hex holds a 0.8% mindshare in BIT, compared to SAP’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Hex users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Hex

Read 2 Hex reviews

1,553 Views
1,553 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Read 114 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence reviews

11,850 Views
8,295 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Hex

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

SAP BusinessObjects and Hex compete in the business intelligence domain. Hex is considered to have an edge due to its innovative and cutting-edge features.

Features: SAP BusinessObjects provides comprehensive reporting, analytics tools, and a broad range of integration options. Hex offers advanced data exploration, collaboration tools, and a modern interface, making it ideal for decision-making and teamwork.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP BusinessObjects requires a traditional on-premise deployment, needing dedicated IT resources for setup and maintenance. Hex benefits from a cloud-based deployment model, offering quick setup and responsive customer service, particularly advantageous for agile teams.

Pricing and ROI: SAP BusinessObjects involves higher initial setup costs, suitable for organizations with larger budgets focused on detailed analytics, achieving ROI over a longer period. Hex offers a cost-effective entry with rapid ROI through its user-friendly approach and collaborative tools, making it attractive for organizations needing quick insights.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 906,887 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Hex

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

35th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

114

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Hex is 0.8%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence	2.7%
Hex	0.8%
Other	96.5%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

SuperSonic

Experience Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Daily transcription has boosted my productivity and made spoken input replace manual typing

The best features Hex offers are simplicity and being really lightweight. Simplicity and being lightweight are valuable for me because it just works, making my day easier. I would also add that Hex is free, which is a nice feature. Hex has positively impacted my organization by improving my productivity. My productivity improved because before I started using Hex, I was typing everything and it was taking longer than just saying the same things. I have cut my working day by a few minutes every day because of that.

Read full review

TarunKumar7

Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech

Data insights have driven faster financial forecasts and improved role-based decision making

The best features SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform offers include cross-enterprise sharing, where sharing insights is easier and seamless across my organization, and creating role-based dashboards. The role-based dashboards help my team and organization by providing information to specific users, allowing them to make decisions more easily, anytime, anywhere, across any device. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to perform financial reporting to make decisions faster. Since we started using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, we have been able to make faster, data-driven business decisions based on actual data insights and data analysis, which has accelerated our ability to make better decisions for our business productivity.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Hex offers excellent features that make it fast and easy to use."

"Hex has positively impacted my organization by improving my productivity."

"There are many tools that help the organization like SAP Lumira, SAP Business Explorer, SAP Design Studio and Dashboard to give you the summary and detailed analysis."

"The solution can scale."

"I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten."

"The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement."

"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful."

"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."

"Web Intelligence for its ad-hoc ability and user interface for allowing business users to create reports without depending on the IT department."

"I like the fact that we can integrate it seamlessly within our Epic environment, but probably the best thing that Crystal Reports offers is the ability to do visualizations. They're simple to do, and they're catchy. So, it is a really great tool."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pros

Cons

"Hex can be improved if they could implement new models because there are new LLMs appearing on a weekly basis, and they are still using the same one."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved."

"There are areas of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform that need improvement, particularly in licensing, which can make it complex and expensive for users."

"It should have a better integration with Excel."

"It needs to be more flexible for the end-user."

"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."

"However, because SAP lacks a professional services offering, we had issues with deployment, stability, and scalability."

"I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools. Web Intelligence is good for reporting and all kinds of stuff, but I would rather have one product. All the reporting features of Web Intelligence should be developed within Lumira. A lot of predictive abilities have been brought into the cloud version of SAP Analytics. It would be nice to see a lot of newer technologies and AI. Predictive capabilities are becoming a little more standard. Instead of having to get another model, we are just looking for one solution to deal with analytics including predictive."

"We have encountered so many issues when the architecture and design was fragile."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."

"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user."

"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."

"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."

"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."

"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."

"The product's pricing falls on the spectrum's cheaper side, excluding its licensing cost. The product's pricing is good compared to other tools in the market. My company makes payments towards the licensing costs of the product on a yearly basis."

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

906,887 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user6663

BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

May 25, 2013

SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI

A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	67

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

SAP BTP is an expensive solution.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sigma vs Hex

Compared 26% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Hex

Compared 11% of the time

ThoughtSpot vs Hex

Compared 10% of the time

Mode Enterprise vs Hex

Compared 8% of the time

Zoho Analytics vs Hex

Compared 2% of the time

More Hex Competitors

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 21% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Cognos vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 3% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

June 2026

Download Hex product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

July 2026

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence product report

Also Known As

No data available

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio

Overview

Hex is a modern platform designed for data professionals to collaborate and share insights efficiently, improving teamwork and decision-making processes through a focus on analytics and data management.

Hex offers a comprehensive suite of tools that cater to the analytical needs of data teams. It is built to support collaborative workflows, enabling users to seamlessly share insights and conduct data-driven storytelling. Its versatility allows for integration with diverse data sources, making it a valuable asset in any data-driven organization. The platform continuously evolves by incorporating user feedback, though there is room for improvement in areas such as integration capabilities and user experience to enhance overall functionality.

What are Hex's valuable features?

Collaboration: Facilitates teamwork by allowing multiple users to work on projects simultaneously.
Data Integration: Supports seamless connectivity with numerous data sources.
Interactive Visualizations: Enables the creation of dynamic charts and graphs for better data storytelling.
Version Control: Ensures data integrity and facilitates project tracking with version history.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Efficiency: Saves time through streamlined data workflows and enhanced collaboration features.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing data needs, supporting both small teams and larger enterprises.
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces expenses by integrating multiple analytics tools into one platform.
Innovation: Maintains competitive edge by regularly updating features based on user feedback.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Hex is applied to improve data analytics and reporting. It allows professionals to draw meaningful insights from large datasets, streamline analytical processes, and enhance cross-functional collaboration, leading to data-driven decision-making and strategic growth.

Hex

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform offers powerful tools for enterprise reporting and data visualization, enhancing strategic decision-making through robust integration and secure analytics capabilities.

Designed for comprehensive enterprise reporting, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP, supporting organizations in creating detailed financial, operational, and academic reports. The platform allows data manipulation across multiple sources using a semantic layer and provides intuitive tools like Web Intelligence and Lumira for user-driven report creation. It features centralized management, versatile connectors, and supports large-scale data analytics critical for business forecasting.

What are the key features of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

Integration Capabilities: Seamless connection with SAP ERP and various data sources.
Dynamic Scheduling: Automate report generation for timely insights.
Robust Security: Protects data with stringent security measures.
Semantic Layer: Simplifies data manipulation across sources.
Intuitive Tools: Facilitates user-driven report creation with Web Intelligence and Lumira.

What benefits should be considered in reviews?

Comprehensive Reporting: Enables detailed and accurate enterprise reports.
Decision-Making Support: Enhances strategic decisions with reliable data.
Scalability: Efficiently manages large-scale and complex data analytics.
Versatility in Analysis: Offers flexibility for ad hoc analysis and KPI monitoring.

Organizations across sectors like healthcare, education, insurance, and retail leverage SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for its capability in facilitating detailed reports and integrating dashboards for key performance indicators. Its extensive reporting features support in-depth analytics vital for business prediction and decision-making processes.

SAP

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

June 2026

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

906,887 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.

We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.