SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs. SAS Visual Analytics

June 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

5.8

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform offers varying ROI, with potential savings and positive returns, depending on usage and implementation scale.

Sentiment score

6.0

SAS Visual Analytics offers efficient analytics and revenue generation, though costs and ROI vary due to operational components.

The initial investment will be more, but the ROI is also good, so they can consider it if they're looking for something in the long run.

Yashwanth H R

Associate Software Enginner at Siddaganga Institute of Technology

For most of my clients using the on-premises version of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, the return on investment is positive due to its affordability and ability to handle diverse reporting needs while automating information distribution.

EmmanuelOladinrin

Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited

I have seen a return on investment so far in the form of saved time and resources.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc

The enterprise subscription offers more benefits, ensuring valuable outcomes.

Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

I have seen a return on investment with SAS Visual Analytics, as it includes AI capabilities and automatic functions with scheduling, allowing reports to be made from live data, which contributes to a new vertical for revenue generation.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Biostatistician at Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd.

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.5

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform support is mixed, with some praising reliability and others noting slow, complex issue handling.

Sentiment score

6.6

Customer service experiences for SAS Visual Analytics vary widely, with strong technical support but mixed business query satisfaction levels.

I would rate their technical support as excellent.

reviewer2706471

IT at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees

I have experience with SAP technical support and have supported customers, including those in financial services.

EmmanuelOladinrin

Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited

Sometimes, they forward my ticket to the technical team, especially when my issue involves technical aspects that basis people may not be familiar with.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc

They provide callbacks to ensure clarity and resolution of any queries.

Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

They assist us when we encounter issues and provide help while we complete tasks.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Biostatistician at Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd.

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.6

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is scalable and adaptable, though some report complexity issues in specific scalability scenarios.

Sentiment score

7.6

SAS Visual Analytics excels in scalability and handling data, though high costs and resource needs are noted.

The scalability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is adequate; it is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.

TarunKumar7

Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech

I rate the scalability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as a nine due to performance issues related to optimizing parts.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc

SAS Visual Analytics scalability is very good and positive.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Biostatistician at Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd.

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.9

SAP BusinessObjects is generally stable, dependable, but performance can vary with configuration, sizing, and resource management challenges.

Sentiment score

7.2

SAS Visual Analytics is generally stable, though performance can vary with data volume, hardware, and user expertise.

When they tried upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3, they found it buggy in some reports, which was quite problematic.

Declan Dempsey

Senior Consultant at Keyrus

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

SAS Visual Analytics is stable and manages data effectively without crashing.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

Room For Improvement

SAP BusinessObjects needs better integration, improved UI, enhanced scalability, reduced licensing complexity, and improved self-service BI for broader adoption.

SAS Visual Analytics struggles with performance, integration, user-friendliness, high costs, and lacks robust API, visualization, and support resources.

I've worked with other tools, for example, Microsoft Power BI, which is visualization-wise very strong.

Declan Dempsey

Senior Consultant at Keyrus

SAP BusinessObjects is expected to be phased out by 2027 as reports are moving to SAP Analytics Cloud.

Mo Sayed

Sap Enterpise Cloud Architect at ECC Experienced Certified Consulting

I would appreciate integration with Outlook as an additional feature in the future to make it closer to a perfect score.

reviewer2706471

IT at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

Training on SAS Visual Analytics is required to help overcome these issues.

Biostatistician at Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd.

In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

Setup Cost

SAP BusinessObjects BI is costly and complex, best for large enterprises with significant data needs, compared to cheaper alternatives.

SAS Visual Analytics is costly, deterring smaller companies, with licenses and additional costs potentially exceeding $114,000 annually.

SAP BTP is an expensive solution.

Yashwanth H R

Associate Software Enginner at Siddaganga Institute of Technology

The price is very competitive and reliable.

reviewer2706471

IT at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees

I rate the pricing for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as a seven or eight.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Valuable Features

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform offers dynamic scheduling, robust security, and seamless data integration, enhancing reporting efficiency and decision-making.

SAS Visual Analytics offers a user-friendly interface with no-code features, enabling intuitive insights through advanced visualization and AI integration.

For calculations, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform outperforms all other tools such as Power BI and Tableau, showing more accuracy, reliability, and flexibility compared to all other BI tools worldwide.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc

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.

TarunKumar7

Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech

The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made.

Declan Dempsey

Senior Consultant at Keyrus

After implementing SAS Visual Analytics, we have generated a new way to generate revenue by providing live data visuals to our clients and making our team aware of data in real time, which has had a significant positive impact.

Biostatistician at Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd.

The ability to query information from our Excel data into SAS to view specific data is invaluable.

For more quotes and insights, download the SAS Visual Analytics report

Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

Categories and Ranking

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Ranking in Data Visualization

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

114

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (5th)

SAS Visual Analytics

Ranking in Data Visualization

15th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 3.3%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Visual Analytics is 1.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence	3.3%
SAS Visual Analytics	1.6%
Other	95.1%

Data Visualization

Q&A Highlights

it_user178362

Project Leader at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 13, 2015

I'm comparing SAS VA vs. SAP BOBJ -- main differentiating factor?

Hi, I suppose the effectiveness of the comparison also depends on the objective of it. As far as the tools the Sas VA is not in the same category as SAP/BO, which is more of a query and reporting OLap tool and although VA has some of such capabilities it has embedded additionally models with predictive intelligence. Both have space in the same organization as User profiles are different and call for different tools. SAS is known for tis statistics capabilities and lately is pursuing some interisting partnership, sap is one of them for the optimal power of both. In my company we have BO and just acquired Hana and SAS VA. Best regards, Maria Mota

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

Featured Reviews

TarunKumar7

Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech

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

Interactive dashboards have transformed clinical reporting and now support real time decisions

Biostatistician at Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd.

The best features of SAS Visual Analytics include performing data manipulation. I would characterize this as making data ready, transforming data, and making new variables through code while utilizing low-code and no-code facilities. In my experience, low-code features in SAS Visual Analytics help when I need to create a new variable. For instance, I can extract a date through the data roll step, and with no-code features, I can perform report creation by simply using drag and drop functionality. After implementing SAS Visual Analytics, we have generated a new way to generate revenue by providing live data visuals to our clients and making our team aware of data in real time, which has had a significant positive impact.

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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

Answers from the Community

it_user178362

Project Leader at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 13, 2015

I'm comparing SAS VA vs. SAP BOBJ -- main differentiating factor?

2 out of 17 answers

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 6, 2015

Hi, SAS VA (visual analytics) is primarily a data exploration and data discovery tool. Since it is from the SAS family of products so yes it has good integration with the predictive and statistical analysis engine of SAS. In my opinion if you are a big SAP and BOBJ shop then lot of this functionality is possible using SAP Lumira (it has integration with R). Personally if your company is already invested in SAP, it does not make a lot of sense to go with another enterprise class software. Having said that if it is already decided that it needs to be bought then the key differentiator (as I know) in addition to predictive and statistical analysis is the visual analysis which is far superior than SAP and also the in-memory feature of the SAS LASR analytic server. That is probably the only difference (assuming you do not have HANA in your landscape). Hope this helps, Amit

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it_user78834

Director of Information Manager Unit at BCI with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 6, 2015

in my opinion, SAS offers a much richer set of features that Business Objects offers. SAS requires advanced knowledge of SAS programming and domain of the tool, while BOBJ is more oriented to users less experts in IT. SAS allows, with its various modules, all ETL processes, advanced data analysis and reporting, while BOBJ is more oriented to reporting only, as far as I know. Elisabete

Read full answer

See all 17 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

10%

Construction Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	19

Questions from the Community

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...

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...

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

SAP BTP is an expensive solution.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?

It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.

What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?

In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI. It may be that our current subscription does not include AI-enabled features, but I wo...

What is your primary use case for SAS Visual Analytics?

I started to work with SAS Visual Analytics ( /products/sas-visual-analytics-reviews ) in 2015. We use it for analysis on ICT expenditure information and ICT personnel information. The analytics ar...

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Comparisons

Compared 22% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 1% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

Qlik Sense vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

Advizor Analyst vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

More SAS Visual Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

May 2026

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence product report

Download SAS Visual Analytics product report

SAS Visual Analytics

May 2026

Also Known As

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

SAS BI

Overview

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

SAS Visual Analytics offers rapid data processing and advanced forecasting with interactive reporting and visualization. It integrates with diverse data sources, enhancing scalability and automation, enabling data-driven decisions and extensive insight generation.

SAS Visual Analytics provides comprehensive data handling through its advanced reporting and visualization features. Businesses benefit from its ability to process data quickly and deliver insights via interactive dashboards and well-structured reports. Although it faces performance challenges with large datasets and has a complex installation process, it supports both cloud and on-premises deployments. Users can leverage its capabilities in data extraction, transformation, and loading, making it a valuable tool for finance, statistical analysis, and enterprise reporting. Despite some gaps in machine learning and integration with newer data stores, its scalability and flexibility in data management remain key advantages.

What are the most significant features of SAS Visual Analytics?

Rapid Data Processing: Efficiently handles large volumes of data for swift insights.
Interactive Reporting: Allows exploration of data through dynamic visuals.
Advanced Forecasting: Offers sophisticated prediction and analysis capabilities.
Scalable Integration: Seamlessly connects with diverse data sources.
Automation: Streamlines processes for enhanced productivity.

What benefits should users consider when evaluating?

Scalability: Ability to grow and adapt to expanding data needs.
Enhanced Insights: Delivers comprehensive report generation and visualization.
Data-driven Decisions: Empowers analytical decision-making with structured data presentation.
Flexibility: Supports integration beyond standard BI tools for broader functionality.

SAS Visual Analytics is implemented across sectors such as insurance and education for tasks like building dashboards and performing business intelligence. It is extensively used in finance and statistical analysis, turning complex data sets into actionable insights, supporting both cloud and on-premises environments.

SAS

Sample Customers

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

Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.