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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
5.8
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform yields high ROI in large deployments, despite steep costs, through efficiency and decision-making improvements.
Sentiment score
6.3
Organizations saw varied ROI from SAS Visual Analytics, noting improved efficiency and financial tracking despite initial cost challenges.
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.
Associate Software Enginner at Siddaganga Institute of Technology
I have seen a return on investment so far in the form of saved time and resources.
SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc
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.
Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited
The enterprise subscription offers more benefits, ensuring valuable outcomes.
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Customer service for SAP BusinessObjects is mixed, showing both responsiveness and delays, with inconsistent technical support quality.
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.
Sometimes, they forward my ticket to the technical team, especially when my issue involves technical aspects that basis people may not be familiar with.
SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc
The support available for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is accessible 24 hours and seven days a week.
Student at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have experience with SAP technical support and have supported customers, including those in financial services.
Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited
They provide callbacks to ensure clarity and resolution of any queries.
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform efficiently scales for global enterprises, supporting thousands of users with seamless advanced analytics integration.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAS Visual Analytics effectively scales for large datasets and users, though high resource demands and expenses may concern some.
The scalability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is adequate; it is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.
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.
SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is stable and robust with proper configuration, despite occasional bugs and integration challenges.
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.
Senior Consultant at Keyrus
SAS Visual Analytics is stable and manages data effectively without crashing.
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
 

Room For Improvement

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform faces challenges in performance, integration, user experience, setup, flexibility, and costly licensing.
SAS Visual Analytics is complex and costly, with challenges in integration, performance, user-friendliness, and external language support.
If SAP could split the analytics side from financial analytics, it would become more affordable and easier to learn for technicians.
Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited
We need to speed up the performance of our tool because it is slower compared to the SAP Analytics Cloud tool.
SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc
I would appreciate integration with Outlook as an additional feature in the future to make it closer to a perfect score.
IT at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees
In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI.
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
 

Setup Cost

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform's licensing is flexible but costly compared to alternatives, suited for large enterprises, budget-sensitive for smaller businesses.
SAS Visual Analytics is costly for small enterprises, but offers strong analytics and simplicity, though consulting and scaling add expenses.
SAP BTP is an expensive solution.
Associate Software Enginner at Siddaganga Institute of Technology
The price is very competitive and reliable.
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.
SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc
 

Valuable Features

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform offers scalable, user-friendly reporting with robust features, enhancing decision-making and data governance.
SAS Visual Analytics excels in data visualization, advanced analytics, and user-friendly interface with rapid processing and seamless integration.
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.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
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.
SAP Consultant at Sierra Digital Inc
It integrates well with BW and HANA, which demonstrates strong data integration capabilities.
IT at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees
The ability to query information from our Excel data into SAS to view specific data is invaluable.
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (11th)
 

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 2.3%, down 3.8% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 1.8% mindshare, down 4.6% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Other81.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAS Visual Analytics1.8%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Domo5.7%
Other81.5%
Data Visualization
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user178362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Leader at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 13, 2015
 

Featured Reviews

EO
Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited
Solution empowers self-service reporting and delivers comprehensive performance insights
Empowering business users means they should be able to work independently without depending on the developer. One advantage of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is self-service capabilities, allowing users to do drag and drop to build their own reports and perform analyses without needing technical know-how.The platform has many drivers that I can use to connect to virtually all available databases, making it easy to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and many others. With the cloud version, I can fetch data on-premises and to the cloud for analysis easily. It is so flexible that I can make choices for fetching data. For authentication in an SAP environment, I can choose to integrate with SAP logon for SSO or use AD authentication for convenience, along with the flexible integration options.
AN
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
Enables effective data management and reporting with a straightforward setup
SAS Visual Analytics is helpful as it allows us to perform any queries we need. The ability to query information from our Excel data into SAS to view specific data is invaluable. In terms of reporting, it is easy to extract quick reports and provides graphical representations of the data, which is a great feature.
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884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Answers from the Community

it_user178362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Leader at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
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
it_user78834 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
11%
University
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
 

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 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...
 

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.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.