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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Tungsten Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tungsten Insight
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
51st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Process Mining (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.7%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tungsten Insight is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Declan Dempsey - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides efficient data reporting while needing easier deployment and improved interface
Users tend to put everything into Excel, though I try to discourage this. The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made. This means you don't have those months that get assigned. You can just get to the point and get a report very quickly. Unfortunately, in some ways, it's a double-edged sword because it becomes more of a self-service ETL, even for the reporting team. If you have a decent universe and you just want to quickly get something together, it's very usable. Compared to Click, you can drop those reports very quickly.
reviewer2005506 - PeerSpot reviewer
Great reporting and customizations with good reliability
A lot of the improvement is not so much the product as it is how it's deployed; it's about mapping against what you need to improve your processes, whether it's the Kofax kind of shows in the IDP. You've got process orchestration, extraction and robotic process automation, process orchestration, and then mobile. Tracking what you need out of those, either all five together or one of those separated out, is usually what's more critical. They do add capabilities to the tool. However, from our perspective as a consulting organization, the real key is whether you are getting the data you need to improve your process or if your reporting is not providing you with the desired information you need to improve your processes. If there's any negative, it's just the different names, the branding names that the product's gone through. It's confusing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis."
"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."
"First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are mature."
"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."
"The solution is stable."
"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."
"I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten."
"The development using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is very good."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"You can easily customize reporting to pull the fields that interest you."
"It provides the ability to design applications directly."
 

Cons

"The admin features for disk space management need work. It's very difficult to manage the disk space by the application; good admin features and not included to allow you to do that. I don't believe that is in the latest version of the product either."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved."
"It needs to be more flexible for the end-user."
"It would be ideal if there were some standard forms that could be customized."
"If there's any negative, it's just the different names, the branding names that the product's gone through. It's confusing."
"The initial setup is complex and would be difficult to carry out without any training."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
"Its price is fair."
"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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.
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Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
Kofax Insight
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Infosys,HMI, krungsri, Cegeka
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. Tungsten Insight and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.