SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews and Pricing

reviewer1311126

Managing Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 8, 2022

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Can cover any business need, but SAP needs to focus on customers and quality first instead of money

Pros and Cons

"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."

"The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers. There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies. We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money."

What is our primary use case?

SAP BusinessObjects can be used for operational reporting. It is an enterprise solution and a suite of products.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers.

There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies.

As far as additional features, SAP needs a BI analytics solution. I mean, a fully integrated BI analytics suite.

We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects for 20 years.

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What other advice do I have?

I rate SAP BusinessObjects a six out of ten.

To those looking into implementing this solution, in the SAP side, there are modules. You should focus on one of the modules. There's HR, FI, SDMM, et cetera. Also, there are BI modules, and there are lots of products on the BI side: BW, Hana, SAP BusinessObjects. There is also a cloud side of SAP. So, they are time consuming. You should focus on one of them before jumping to the second one.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

it_user7434

VP of Data Analytics at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Jul 1, 2013

Mixed response of success

Been using BO since 2010 - mixed response of success

High level points from our experience:
Ad-hoc reporting capabilities are hit and miss:
For lite needs such as simple quires, summary level, what happened last month- it's pretty good.
For transactional level data we see universes that spin up for 3-10 minutes and then time out.
Robustness of the universe doesn't allow us to do the types of detailed analysis that we would like to be able to perform.
Static reporting works really well. We have reports that are scheduled and reports that are distributed via email. We also have a self service que- works well, well tested, great for our customers

Dashboarding- we have leveraged the Excelisus product- we have 25 dashboards- includes simple graphs, more detailed analysis with limited drill through (can do drill throigh back in the BO report). What's really missing is the ability to do any clickthrough in the dashboard itself. It's parameter driven and a little clunky (unlike products such as Tableau). It doesn't give users (at least the way we implemented it) the flexibilty to interact with all the graphs around the dashboard
Overall: It's great if you have a static customer base that has standard expectations who knows what they want and need to perform, but if they're trying to do self guided analysis, it's not a robust enough environment

We're upgrading to 4.x and also moving from a unix platform to a linux one. We're looking to see some savings and performance improvement. We're also looking to take advantage of the new dashboarding capabilities in 4.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

April 2025

Free Report: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

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it_user181065

Business Objects Developer at a aerospace/defense firm with 51-200 employees

Jan 13, 2015

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The product works well, but is only as good as the servers it uses.

What is most valuable?

Being able to utilize a connection to the database with a semantic layer, so it can be modified if needed to fit a particular need. The Universe does this quite well and allows for business names to be used in place of the cryptic database name.

How has it helped my organization?

Instead of downloading the information into a spreadsheet or something similar, you can now develop the graphs and drilldown, drillup needs for the different departments in an easy to use and functional method.

What needs improvement?

The development of the Design Studio to be ready for prime time. It is pretty well ready now just needs a few points finished to make it completely ready.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution in different areas for about 17 years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

A few, these were related mainly to the development team not realizing how much data they actually had.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not really, there have been a few hiccups but that was mainly due to bandwidth since we have a centralized location for the servers now.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

For SAP it's not too bad, would always like to have it better of course.

Technical Support:

Very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Cognos however the price was getting too prohibitive, and it was time for a change.

How was the initial setup?

Fairly straightforward but, not as easy as the vendor made it sound. As with most things it was not just a flip of the switch.

What about the implementation team?

We used a mix of both in-house and vendor teams.

What other advice do I have?

Take time to realize how much data you will be processing and how many users you will have, this will help you to scale the needs to the product. The product works well, but is only as good as the servers it uses.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1470402

Strategic Account Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 31, 2022

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Useful for development, reliable, and scalable

Pros and Cons

"The development using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is very good."

"The solution can improve by having more analytical features."

What is our primary use case?

The solution can be deployed on-premise and in cloud environments. We are using Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS for cloud services.

Our main use case for the use of this solution is for reporting.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has given us multi-systems and databases that have been very good for us.

What is most valuable?

The development using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is very good.

What needs improvement?

The solution can improve by having more analytical features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for approximately nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution has been good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have found the scalability to be good.

What other advice do I have?

I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user591984

Manager at a consumer goods company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 15, 2018

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It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards. It still needs development from a visualization standpoint.

Pros and Cons

"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."

"The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case for SAP BusinessObjects has been to provide users static dashboards and reports with a fixed trend where the analysis part is predefined in terms of a fixed set of visualizations.

We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management, which automatically get circulated every morning.

How has it helped my organization?

We started receiving benefits from SAP BusinessObjects the first week we used it.

What is most valuable?

It will give you better performance if your warehouse is also on SAP Business Warehouse. It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards. For example, BusinessObjects Design Studio provides custom templates where you can create your own templates. You can also create your own custom charts. There are CSS formats which you can take in, then you can create your own color coding. Thus, a lot is possible.

From a developer's point of view, it has definitely provided a lot of flexibility.

What needs improvement?

The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It depends a lot on how BusinessObjects has been installed and configured, because there are a lot of services which run in the background. For example, if I have not done the proper sizing at implementation in terms of allocating the right resources in terms of memory and RAM for the different services within BO to run, any analytic documents which are built on BO can get impacted in terms of their performance. Therefore, stability is good provided your sizing and configuration has been done properly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is good. Once it is set up in the mid-layer, multiple users can access it. Then, the product can grow into an enterprise-wide deployment.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support for general issues gives us a good response, but for certain critical issues, it can takes four weeks to obtain a response. It will initially go to an SAP support team, and if they are not able to resolve the issues, then they will route the call to SAP in Germany. The German development team usually takes a bit more lead time to come back on those issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were not using a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was not that complex as SAP has all the documentation in place. However, initially, we went for suboptimal sizing, which in the first few months led to performance issues. We had to reconfigure, do the proper sizing, and give the right memory requirements to meet our performance expectations.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user543585

Technical Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 16, 2018

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Allows our users to access reports and make business decisions based on them

Pros and 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."

What is our primary use case?

It's used for business reporting and it performs well.

How has it helped my organization?

It allows hundreds of end-users to be able to access business reports and make business decisions based upon them.

What is most valuable?

It provides good centralized management, and it performs well against our day-to-day solution.

What needs improvement?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We find it's stable, very little down time, good level of performance.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable simply by adding extra servers, application servers, so the scalability is good.

How are customer service and technical support?

Our technical support is through a value added reseller.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We've been using Business Objects for a long time. The last time we did an upgrade from a client version to a browser-based version.

When selecting a vendor, the most important criteria are the features of the product, that it is a good fit with our environment, and price will be a part of the consideration.

How was the initial setup?

It was complex because we were upgrading from a previous version with a different architecture.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it about nine out of 10 because it performs well.

Do a trial. Fully investigate all the ins and outs of the license as well.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8181

Business Development Staff at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Jul 31, 2013

Issues with BO

Here are second thoughts:
- BO development team release patch every two weeks.
- Patchsets are released very often.
- Every new patchset introduces several new bugs,
- including many bugs regression.

In small project I have raised several incidents, including one with high priority.

I've been using BuisnessObjects since early 2000's.
In my ( but not limited) opinion, after SAP took over control of product development, entire software quality gone worst

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user7581

Manager of Development at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 7, 2013

Seven thoughts about SAP BusinessObjects BI Analytics Editions

SAP BusinessObjects BI Analytics Editions provides to you the full spectrum of Analytics technologies and innovations which enables you to design, build and consume business friendly, agile, fast, quality and intelligent Analytics solutions for your business.

Complete – because it provides the full spectrum of powerful, unified and innovative Business Analytics technologies and solutions for all your Analytics needs.

Business friendly – because now your business can easily understand and learn how to prepare, build and consume Analytics.

Agile – because now you can unleash the full potential of your data and get the largest business benefits and value by harvesting agility with the deepest involvement of your business.

Intelligent – because now you can create the most intelligent Analytics that meets all your individual, departmental and Enterprise requirements.

Fast – because now you can design, implement and consume Analytics at the speed of rapidly changing business.

Quality – because now it is easier than ever to build trustworthy and reliable Analytics for your business.

Analytics for all – Analytics should and must be accessible for all and everyone. And now it is…

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Jul 14, 2013

Thank you for the brief yet critical information about SAP Business Objects. Generally, a good program is one that is easy to use and achieves the purpose for which it was developed. Business Objects qualifies as such for its attributes mentioned above by this author. In addition to providing quality analytic results, the analysis process is easy and thus fast. The tool is designed for use by any kind of business that needs data analysis; all that is required is a person with skills and knowledge in utilizing the program. Moreover, every business can use the tool for their specific analysis needs.

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