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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Workday Prism Analytics 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
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Workday Prism Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday Prism Analytics is 1.9%, up from 1.2% 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.
Sarvesh Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides great flexibility in terms of data transformation
I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation. Workday introduced Prism Analytics mainly because many clients wanted to merge data from different systems and then work with it to get some insights out of it. For that, they previously used tools like Power BI. Workday Prism Analytics gives you the power to do all the data transformations within Workday itself without taking out crucial data to a third system. I really like the way Workday has enabled Prism Analytics to be that one solution where you can bring everything. It also provides you the flexibility that things like the security model of Workday are still in place. You don't have to redo your security configuration if you do the data transformation outside Workday.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process."
"I like the fact that we can integrate it seamlessly within our Epic environment, but probably the best thing that Crystal Reports offers is the ability to do visualizations. They're simple to do, and they're catchy. So, it is a really great tool."
"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."
"The return on investment from this solution is high, with the highest ROI observed."
"The common metadata environment means that the entire organisation has the same definition of core measures rather than these being derived in spreadsheets or specific reports."
"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."
"It integrates well with BW and HANA, which demonstrates strong data integration capabilities."
"The solution is stable."
"The product is easier to use compared to other applications."
"The customer service and support are pretty good."
"The solution is stable and reliable, with minimal issues affecting its performance."
"I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation."
"Feature-wise, I feel that the solution's stability is good."
 

Cons

"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features."
"We would like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud."
"The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."
"Technical support may not always be timely or effective."
"We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products."
"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 biggest area for improvement would be the dashboarding capabilities due to the recent change from Xcelsius to Dashboard Designer. This has created a gigantic ripple in many companies because the skill sets required are drastically different."
"When you create certain objects, a lot of the time, the fields are text. They’re not numeric, date, or any other field type"
"There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics."
"It is not a very scalable product."
"One area for improvement in the solution is the ability to manually update individual rows or columns of data once it has been uploaded."
"The visualization techniques must be upgraded."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"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."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"The solution is very expensive."
"I do not know of the licensing cost, but there are additional costs like 5,00,000 for recruitment modules."
"Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool."
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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%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday Prism Analytics?
Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool. In fact, that has been one of the hindrance factors for Workday in making Prism Analytics more sellable.
What needs improvement with Workday Prism Analytics?
I think there are still some gaps in the solution. There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics. For now, Workday has enabled the SFTP server and Am...
What is your primary use case for Workday Prism Analytics?
As a consultant, I use Prism Analytics to implement my client systems. I first have design sessions with them, where we discuss their business gaps and then understand how Workday Prism Analytics c...
 

Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
Prism Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Denny's
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. Workday Prism Analytics and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,331 professionals have used our research since 2012.