Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.2
ROI from SAP BusinessObjects varies; success depends on factors like user volume, setup, and integration with existing systems.
Sentiment score
6.3
Organizations saw varied ROI from SAS Visual Analytics, noting improved efficiency and financial tracking despite initial cost challenges.
The enterprise subscription offers more benefits, ensuring valuable outcomes.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Customer service reviews for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform are mixed, with varied experiences in response time and technical expertise.
Sentiment score
6.8
SAS Visual Analytics customer service is mixed, with praise for technical support but noted gaps in business needs and regional availability.
They provide callbacks to ensure clarity and resolution of any queries.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
SAP BusinessObjects BI is scalable, supports high user volume, and allows server additions for performance, despite complexity.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAS Visual Analytics effectively scales for large datasets and users, though high resource demands and expenses may concern some.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform stability varies, influenced by updates, configuration, and resource allocation, affecting performance in large environments.
Sentiment score
7.1
SAS Visual Analytics is generally reliable but can face performance issues with large data, often due to user practices.
When they tried upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3, they found it buggy in some reports, which was quite problematic.
SAS Visual Analytics is stable and manages data effectively without crashing.
 

Room For Improvement

SAP BusinessObjects needs improved user-friendliness, integration, performance, flexibility, and support, with better visualization, administration, and training.
SAS Visual Analytics is complex and costly, with challenges in integration, performance, user-friendliness, and external language support.
SAP BusinessObjects is expected to be phased out by 2027 as reports are moving to SAP Analytics Cloud.
I've worked with other tools, for example, Microsoft Power BI, which is visualization-wise very strong.
In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI.
 

Setup Cost

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform's complex and high-cost licensing hinders suitability for budget-constrained medium-sized enterprises.
SAS Visual Analytics is costly for small enterprises, but offers strong analytics and simplicity, though consulting and scaling add expenses.
 

Valuable Features

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform excels in data integration, user-friendly reporting, and advanced scheduling, enhancing decision-making and data visualization.
SAS Visual Analytics excels in data visualization, advanced analytics, and user-friendly interface with rapid processing and seamless integration.
The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made.
The important features include a dashboard and reporting capabilities through SAP Analytics Cloud, which I consider to be a better version than the initial BusinessObjects platform.
The ability to query information from our Excel data into SAS to view specific data is invaluable.
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (5th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 3.7%, down 5.3% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 4.2% mindshare, down 6.0% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user178362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 13, 2015
 

Featured Reviews

Mo Sayed - PeerSpot reviewer
Dashboarding and reporting become more efficient with robust analytics capabilities
This platform is very important to us because it offers a dashboard and includes SAP Analytics Cloud for reporting. The analytics is a reporting platform with a separate license from the planning platform. We use this primarily for dashboarding The important features include a dashboard and…
Renato Vazamin - PeerSpot reviewer
Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations
We had that solution installed previously in another solution, Selvaya, but I don't think we used it at the time. We are now using SAS Detect Investigation as a complementary solution, in which we have part of the process, use a gene, SAS collects information and identifies some business situations, and the business guys use Visual Analytics to explore the results of the process. We previously used the FICO platform, but we switched because FICO's pricing was not scalable. Bringing more data or workloads to the platform required a significant investment in order to scale. We needed to change because we have a lot of data to process every day. FICO was also a little more complicated than SAS Visual Analytics.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
851,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Answers from the Community

it_user178362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015
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 c...
2 out of 17 answers
it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
it_user78834 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
What do you like most about SAS Visual Analytics?
The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps w...
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...
 

Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
SAS BI
 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. SAS Visual Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2022.
851,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.