SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Zoho Analytics compete in the business analytics and intelligence category. Zoho Analytics seems to have the upper hand in user-friendliness and cost-effectiveness.
Features: SAP BusinessObjects excels with its tools like Live Office, Xcelsius, Crystal Reports, and Web Intelligence, offering enterprise scalability and a robust semantic layer that ensures consistent business logic. It provides flexibility to create detailed reports and merge data from multiple databases. Zoho Analytics focuses on simplicity, offering intuitive dashboards, excellent connectivity with other Zoho tools, and a user-friendly report builder with SQL capability.
Room for Improvement: SAP BusinessObjects struggles with product integration, stability, and a complex user interface, alongside challenges in patch management and a modern integrated suite. Dashboard setup can be cumbersome, with a lack of self-service analytics. Zoho Analytics requires enhancements in advanced reporting features, graphical representation diversity, customer support, and formula accuracy.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP BusinessObjects offers various deployment models, including private, public, and hybrid clouds, but customer service can be inconsistent with reported delays in support. Zoho Analytics is praised for easier deployment and higher customer satisfaction, aided by its simpler setup and supportive service.
Pricing and ROI: SAP BusinessObjects targets large enterprises with a complex and often expensive pricing model, justified by its comprehensive feature set but less feasible for smaller businesses due to high licensing costs. Zoho Analytics provides a more affordable model, attracting small and medium-sized businesses with straightforward pricing and a favorable ROI, although high-tier features may incur additional costs.
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.
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.
I have seen a return on investment so far in the form of saved time and resources.
The integration with Zoho People is particularly important because I can access real-time data at any time, including what's happening in the last minute.
After incorporating Zoho Analytics, now all our decisions come from its reviews.
Any time I've integrated customer data using Zoho, I've received great feedback and referrals, and Zoho has gotten me referrals and more customers.
I would rate their technical support as excellent.
I have experience with SAP technical support and have supported customers, including those in financial services.
Sometimes, they forward my ticket to the technical team, especially when my issue involves technical aspects that basis people may not be familiar with.
The support team doesn't have full awareness of the system capabilities.
Zoho support provides assistance through live chat to guide us.
If you need help with any issue you face, you can directly call them.
I rate the scalability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as a nine due to performance issues related to optimizing parts.
Zoho Analytics can easily adapt to our needs when they grow, and you don't need much knowledge to adapt it; even basic Excel knowledge is sufficient.
You can utilize URL features to redirect users to their records in Zoho CRM or Zoho Desk with just a click.
Zoho Analytics is scalable.
When they tried upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3, they found it buggy in some reports, which was quite problematic.
A major missing feature compared to Power BI is the ability to create multiple DAX measures or row-level context, which would be useful for showing custom profit and loss statements.
The stability and reliability of Zoho Analytics have been good over time.
The stability and reliability of the product is crucial for optimal performance.
I've worked with other tools, for example, Microsoft Power BI, which is visualization-wise very strong.
SAP BusinessObjects is expected to be phased out by 2027 as reports are moving to SAP Analytics Cloud.
I would appreciate integration with Outlook as an additional feature in the future to make it closer to a perfect score.
The collaborative features of Zoho Analytics have faced one issue: they have tried to reduce the sync time with most Zoho applications, but even with CRM, the sync still takes one hour.
While Power BI uses Power Query, an intuitive and powerful tool that allows data manipulation in any way, Zoho Analytics has limitations.
Having to pay for 25 users when only 11 are needed creates an issue with the pricing structure.
SAP BTP is an expensive solution.
The price is very competitive and reliable.
I rate the pricing for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as a seven or eight.
The annual subscription cost of Zoho Analytics is equivalent to about half of the monthly cost of tools such as Tableau or Power BI.
The pricing for Zoho Analytics is actually cheaper than the competitors for the kind of service they provide.
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.
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 AI called Zia in Zoho Analytics is extremely useful. Whenever I build a chart or dashboard, I can generate a summary of insights using this AI tool, which is very convenient for both leadership and manager level teams to understand the data concepts.
The best feature is that in the same tool, we can use SQL and business intelligence capabilities.
Regarding integration capabilities, I have found Zoho Analytics' 100+ integrations very effective in consolidating data from various sources.
Product | Market Share (%) |
---|---|
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform | 2.9% |
Zoho Analytics | 0.8% |
Other | 96.3% |
Company Size | Count |
---|---|
Small Business | 32 |
Midsize Enterprise | 18 |
Large Enterprise | 65 |
Company Size | Count |
---|---|
Small Business | 29 |
Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
Large Enterprise | 4 |
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.
The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features
Reviews from Real Users
SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.
A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."
An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."
A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization.
Zoho Reports is a powerful, easy-to-use and highly scalable cloud-based reporting and business intelligence platform for small to medium-sized businesses. Its flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model and scope for customization allow businesses to tailor it to their unique needs.
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