We performed a comparison between SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, SAP Crystal Reports, and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.
"Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports."
"Way of creating reports."
"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."
"It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."
"It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. So, it allows you to do server-side joins instead of pulling all the data into Crystal Report to aggregate that data. It has great visualization. For the most part, it operates quite efficiently."
"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."
"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."
"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."
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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."
"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."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"Tableau is an advanced specialized tool. One of the best features I've seen is the lack of an intermediate semantic layer. I think that's an advantage compared to any other tool like BusinessObjects or Power BI, which are Tableau's biggest competitors."
"The solution makes for very productive and really informative decision making. It can lead the whole business and build a strategy across whole working departments."
"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"I have found many of the self-service features valuable."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"Tableau is easy to use. That's the first and most important thing. I not only provide consulting but I also train people to use it, so with its ease-of-use it's not as difficult for me to train executives and management staff, because they don't have the IT background, unlike when I'm using Python."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"It is limited for us because SAP is shifting toward the cloud, and we can't use a cloud solution for SAP BusinessObjects. SAP introduced a product called PlusTimes one or two years ago and another one that I believe was called Automatic BI. This tool is more powerful than BusinessObjects and other tools because it's provided in the cloud."
"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."
"Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using."
"This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"There should be more integration with other platforms."
"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."
"The solution is not good for self-services, they can improve in this area."
"The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers. There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies. We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money."
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"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"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."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"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."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"Lacks machine learning algorithms that you can implement using R, SPSS Modeler, and Python."
"Provide additional enhancements in any business process: Operations, Marketing and Sales, Finance, Human Resources, Logistics, etc."
"In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."
"Whenever it comes to specialized visualization, Tableau is an absolute failure."
"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements."
"A strict security measure is needed. I believe it is weak in terms of security."
"The solution does have scalability issues."
"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner."
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