We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, Oracle OBIEE, and SAP Crystal Reports based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in Reporting."Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is it's designed for Oracle. It works well in the Oracle environment and can sit on top of any application."
"It has a lot workaround in order to do the report. data blending, and getting information from big data sources."
"I think having the conformed structures makes it a lot easier for end users and pulling reports together."
"Some of the dashboard capabilities are good. The dashboard capabilities that tell you what kind of reports are available and provide you a summary of the reports are valuable. It is easy to navigate and easy to download reports into Excel to utilize them."
"I like the scheduling feature. It has an inbuilt scheduler which is very good, and it allows us to create agents, and those agents can be scheduled. It's quite flexible in that respect and goes into our IT infrastructure. The outputs are sent encrypted to various endpoints. Some are internal, and some are our clients, and it's encrypted at a high level. I do find Oracle OBIEE flexible. If there is stuff that's not in your model or schema, it's very flexible to create SQL scripts and create the data you want. It's quite nice to create a dashboard in OBIEE, and that's pretty straightforward in the way you drag and drop everything. You can create sections, and you can add elements to your page. That bit of the interface is relatively straightforward."
"In terms of features, everything is good. It is also stable and scalable."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"There are some great new features in the latest version."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"The most valuable feature is that from a user's point of view, it is easy to use and requires just a simple click to generate a report."
"SAP Crystal Reports offers a plethora of features, many of which were available much earlier than in the Crystal Reports we previously used. We extensively use its capabilities for generating general reports, working with Kaspersky data, and even incorporating images into our reports. The range of functions available in SAP Crystal Reports is diverse, and we leverage them across various systems for our needs."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Its overall organization as an analytical tool, the layout of OBIEE, is not very good."
"I would like to see enhancements in tracking, debugging, and flexibility."
"There should be more integration in the solution. For example, there should be one solution with multiple functionalities so that other solutions are not needed. Having one solution with all the needed functionality would be helpful."
"Essbase integration needs to be worked on."
"In our organization, we feel that data visualization for APIs is an area in which the solution lacks."
"The complexity of this product means that you need to have a technical team to develop the reports, although this is also true for products like Microsoft BI and Zoho."
"BI Server"
"The pricing model could be improved. Right now, it's quite confusing. Many customers have this feeling that it's a super-expensive option."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."