We performed a comparison between Microsoft BI and SAP Analytics Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft BI is the winner in this comparison. Its users give it higher marks in the customer support category. SAP Analytics users are happier with the pricing, however.
"My favorite feature is the power query editor, where it can do the data transformations."
"When we are introducing Microsoft BI to our clients, if they're familiar with Excel, the transition phase will be much easier for them. They can easily switch from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft BI. The core foundation or the base technology is the same in both tools. There are a few limitations in Microsoft Excel, and this is where Microsoft BI comes in."
"Easy to use and the visualization is valuable."
"Everything that's in M Query and DAX is the heart of Power BI because with these tools you can make up for a lot of other missing features."
"Management reporting solution that's very stable and scalable."
"Good CS and administration."
"In contrast to what we were using before I think that Power BI has given us more extensive results."
"The stability is good."
"The reporting, dashboards, KPIs, and visualization are the most valuable."
"The most valuable features are the analytical application and the user story."
"I like the connectivity the solution provides with other products."
"The most useful feature of SAP Analytics Cloud is planning because it helps users with making predictions and forecasts. Clients can forecast, make data allocations, and other actions. The solution is useful for planning."
"The ability to collaborate and plan together is great."
"The visualization feature is the most valuable. SAP Analytics Cloud is also very easy to use."
"SAP Analytics Cloud is easy to create charts with, and is a stable business intelligence platform. Easy to set up solution."
"Planning and integration are the most valuable features. It is useful for planning, and it is useful for integrating with on-prem or cloud SAP solutions."
"It is kept very current, and there is an update literally every month. However, the interface changes quite randomly with no documentation, which is difficult at the domain and architectural level where you're planning things and engaging the business. Things change frequently, and you wonder where has the button for the new report gone. They should provide better documentation on interface changes. It should be better optimized. It is supposed to be a data integration tool, but it is doing relatively simple queries. It has its limitations. For example, you can only pull a number of columns. So, there is room for optimization on its ability to integrate multiple data sources. The desktop tool is very memory-intensive, and again, this is not documented clearly. It requires a heavy CPU and memory use, and it causes your operating systems to become unstable. I would like to see the ability to create datasets within Power BI. Microsoft is promoting Azure as a cloud solution, but it is dependent upon a desktop component, which seems a little bit deceptive. Data set is the basic element that you report from, but it has to be created on the desktop and then published to the cloud. So, you're in the cloud, and you create a data structure or the data flow, but you can't report from that. You have to leave the cloud, go to your desktop, create the data set on your desktop, and publish it to the cloud. You go back to the cloud and create your report by using that published data set, which is very non-intuitive. If you go to the Microsoft Power BI community, this is a common complaint across the entire community."
"The maps in Power BI could be improved. You deal with many maps over the years, like maps of America and Saudi Arabia. The maps aren't detailed enough, and there aren't enough visualization tools. Whenever I want to use a map, I struggle with choosing the right visualization."
"Microsoft BI's visualization could be better. Though Power BI's visualization has steadily improved over the years, it's not on the level tools like Tableau and SAS or some of the more expensive products on the market."
"The interface could be improved."
"Integrating it with the physics build model or the engineering model should be included."
"My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated."
"The budget management could be better."
"SAP Analytics Cloud requires a lot of coding and I would like the coding to be somewhat minimal."
"SAC, which is the cloud version, lost some good features from the previous planning product, like BPC or BPS."
"I would also like to have more advanced features for predictive analytics."
"An additional feature that needs to be added to SAP Analytics Cloud is exporting because right now, you can only export to PDF and PowerPoint. It would be good to have multiple export options, for example, to Excel and other apps. Pricing is an area for improvement in SAP Analytics Cloud, apart from exporting."
"It should have the flexibility for scoping the story and models. When you use it in a three-layer architecture, you struggle with the fact that you usually have just one SAP Analytics Cloud tenant, and you have to switch the connections, which might be an issue for bigger developments. For the development role, there should be an option to switch between development and production scenarios."
"Could have more tabular reporting capabilities."
"Technical support could be more helpful and responsive."
Microsoft BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 187 reviews while SAP Analytics Cloud is ranked 5th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 29 reviews. Microsoft BI is rated 8.0, while SAP Analytics Cloud is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP Analytics Cloud writes "Enables us to allocate, spread, and distribute actual figures". Microsoft BI is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, MicroStrategy, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and SAP Crystal Reports, whereas SAP Analytics Cloud is most compared with Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, IBM Planning Analytics, Oracle Analytics Cloud and SAP Analytics Hub. See our Microsoft BI vs. SAP Analytics Cloud report.
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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.
