No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs Workday Prism Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 15, 2026

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
114
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (5th)
Workday Prism Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
18th
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 May 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 2.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday Prism Analytics is 1.0%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence2.6%
Workday Prism Analytics1.0%
Other96.4%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Sarvesh Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technology Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers
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

"The solution can scale."
"It is the best product for business analysis and help to grow the business."
"There are many tools that help the organization like SAP Lumira, SAP Business Explorer, SAP Design Studio and Dashboard to give you the summary and detailed analysis."
"BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting."
"Reporting from SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence is amazing, and gives users the ability to quickly access data from existing universes and/or relevant data sources, without the need to involve a functional business analyst or financial analyst."
"The SAP BusinessObjects product suite is made of different products; this review refers to the Web Intelligence product, whose user-friendly interface enables non-IT-literate persons to create their own queries without needing SQL knowledge, and that has been the case for a very long time."
"The web intelligence reporting tool and universe designer are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution; it's a real product where you can create operational reports, publish them to anyone, create schedules, build a Universe and semantic layers, and configure security, making it a huge product that can cover almost any business need."
"The product is easier to use compared to other applications."
"The customer service and support are pretty good."
"I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation."
"Feature-wise, I feel that the solution's stability is good."
"The solution is stable and reliable, with minimal issues affecting its performance."
 

Cons

"We have encountered so many issues when the architecture and design was fragile."
"Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
"The product lacks the ability to manage universal connectivity, so it needs to be made better for users."
"Reports/Dashboards on RDBMS cannot handle or scale the demands of the latest data analytics solutions."
"But SAP sort of dropped the ball with their 4.x release, leaving out features that we had become used to with 3.1, which was stable."
"The dynamic scheduling capabilities, the performance and ability to handle large data sets when connected via BICS to a BW warehouse needs a lot of work."
"It needs some improvement in its performance. I don't think it can handle huge amounts of data well when compared to other ETL tools."
"There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics."
"When you create certain objects, a lot of the time, the fields are text. They’re not numeric, date, or any other field type"
"It is not a very scalable product."
"The visualization techniques must be upgraded."
"One area for improvement in the solution is the ability to manually update individual rows or columns of data once it has been uploaded."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"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."
"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."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"The product's pricing falls on the spectrum's cheaper side, excluding its licensing cost. The product's pricing is good compared to other tools in the market. My company makes payments towards the licensing costs of the product on a yearly basis."
"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.​"
"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."
"Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
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...
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, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
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 vs. Workday Prism Analytics and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.