We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, and SAP Crystal Reports based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."You can learn a lot of things quickly using resources like ChatGPT or Microsoft's own solutions, which are very helpful within the Microsoft ecosystem."
"Microsoft BI is scalable."
"The amount of customization that you can do is good, and it's relatively straightforward to do."
"There is continual improvement year-over-year."
"It's a pretty scalable product."
"It is quite easy to use and it helps me to achieve the projects that I've been assigned."
"Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use."
"The most valuable feature of Power BI is its ability to provide customized visualizations and insights tailored to specific business needs."
"We find that we can scale it as needed."
"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 drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
"Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports."
"It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly-complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."
"The solution's user security is extremely effective. You can profile very well. All the users and all the functionality is protected and that includes information and data segregation."
"BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
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"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."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"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."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel."
"They can improve the user interface a little bit to make it more user-friendly. When creating a dashboard, it is not very user-friendly. You have to click on a certain style and use your keyboard keys to move it. You cannot drag and drop it."
"A few features available in Tableau are not available in Power BI. For example. Tableau has the ability to make up the physical layer and all other stuff at runtime. In Power BI, we have to develop a proper physical layer to connect it. The limitation that we normally face is related to the direct query mode. When it comes to the direct query mode, most of the functionality is not working, which is an issue for us. We have to use the direct query mode frequently because the client needs real-time data. They should work on this limitation. There are a lot of other technical things that need to be improved. I am also following the Power BI platform and Microsoft Support Center platform on the web where users have put their requirements. Microsoft is also working on improving this solution. In every update, they add new features to this solution."
"It should be more user-friendly. There are very small or tiny icons that you need to move very carefully. If you go a little bit up and down, some of the values change. Its user interface should be improved. It should be like Tableau. Its performance is also slow and should be improved. I definitely feel some sort of speed issues with Power BI. The integration of Excel with Power BI would also be good."
"I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect."
"We did have some issues building the Microsoft blog."
"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."
"Not having to login again after a mobile app upgrade. A simple login on mobile would be great."
"The calculation engine requires some improvement."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."
"More thorough testing of Service Packs before release."
"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."
"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."
"There is still a lot to be done on the mobile side to make Web Intelligence truly seamless between the desktop and mobile versions and I would like to see SAP pay a lot more attention to this."
"We would like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud."
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"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"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."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
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