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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
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tungsten Insight
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
42nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Process Mining (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 2.3%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tungsten Insight is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
Tungsten Insight0.6%
Other97.1%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Declan Dempsey - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Keyrus
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
Major Account Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
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

"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."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is definitely scalable."
"The platform uses a lot of Java technologies so the performance and system-level management are tricky because it needs a lot of resources."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that we are able to build all dashboards with self-service BI and are able to provide our business users with self-service BI. We are building a repository on top of our data warehouse and building all the dashboards and KPIs."
"The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly."
"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."
"Through the use of Business Intelligence reporting and scheduling features, reports are generated and automatically sent according to a schedule. This has freed up countless hours spent performing the same tasks, month over month."
"The solution is stable."
"You can easily customize reporting to pull the fields that interest you."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It provides the ability to design applications directly."
 

Cons

"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
"SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that."
"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."
"The UI could be updated a bit."
"The cost of this product, so every company is not suitable to use it. Because of the very huge amount of integrations, every organization can not use it."
"The initial setup is complex and would be difficult to carry out without any training."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"Its price is fair."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise67
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...
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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: December 2025.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.