SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

SAP Business Objects Data Services is user friendly and easy to learn. It is easy to connect to SAP ECC or SAP BW, and does not require any additional plugins like for the other ETL tools.

Our organization uses SAP BI tools, and Qlikview for building reports for our doctors and other teams. It has helped us to build an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). It helps the BI teams to build reports over this warehouse.

It needs some improvement in its performance. It handles our data great as we do not process much data daily, but we are going to process huge amounts of data. I don't think it can handle well when compared to other ETL tools. I would like to see its data handling improved.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

I think this product is best if we are not loading huge data. Also for its easy to use and learn.

• It provides centralized access for business users to all enterprise reporting content. This includes SSO access, reports with content personalization and tools for ad hock data access (Web Intelligence, Lumira)
• Customers highly benefit from Semantic Layer applications – they successfully hide the complexity of the databases and provide possibility to build queries using business vocabulary
• It provides easy administration of content using web based CMC application
• It provides scheduling, publishing capabilities of Business Objects reports

My company creates SAP Business Objects based solutions for many customers in the Middle East. The benefit customers have is easy access to their company’s information, simple ad hoc reporting tools, and the possibility to share created reports by using the portal.

There are a lot of stability related issues with all SAP BI products, especially compared with similar Oracle, Cognos or QlickView tools. This has a huge impact to BI implementation projects and overall customer satisfaction. Especially big issues are coming in SAP BW/BO integration project. Though SAP had acquired BusinessObjects quite long time ago still they did not manage to integrate their older SAP Business Warehouse with Front end BusinessObjects tools.

SAP Support is next to useless in many cases. Out of more than 100 tickets created by a project team in one of my projects, only less than a third was resolved by SAP support personnel. The resolution of tickets usually takes a long time. SAP engineers are mostly working from India, in a different time zone, and seem to be more interested in demonstrating proactivity by asking customers to perform various tests or activities which don't seem to be related with the original issue the customer has. Some of the questions they ask demonstrate that they have little knowledge about the products they are trying to support. In my biggest SAP BI/BW implementation project at British American Tobacco, SAP support asked me to demonstrate issues we were having with the Analysis For OLAP product, however after a call in a meeting, the minutes he had written said that we were having Web Intelligence session issues.

It is definitely useful as an integrated platform for medium or large enterprises which require a modern information management solution. It is definitely not without issues, but looks like SAP has a clear vision about where they want to get and that vision is supported by the customers.

• Web Intelligence reports because they have flexibility for detailed data analysis
• Dashboard designer for managerial reports
• OLAP Analysis reports for ad-hoc analysis.

We were able to combine data from two different sources and compare and identify data discrepancies thereby enabling us to correct the data.

It needs to become more user friendly. Currently, it is very cumbersome to use.

I've been using it for seven years.

We have no issues with the deployment.

Some database issues were encountered, but SAP has vastly improved on technical support for Business Objects over the last three to four years.

We've been able to scale it for our needs.

It's good, and around three to four years ago, SAP’s technical support was not up to the mark. Now SAP it is reliable and fast.

It's complex and has technical challenges.

We achieved the implementation in-house with hard work and technical support.

We went with it because my organization already had SAP deployed as the corporate ERP.

Go ahead with it -- it’s a good product.

The security features and flexibility of the product are the most valuable functions of BO.

BO helps our organization make important business decisions with the data it provides. It has great integration with an ERP solution.

They need to improve the processing of software as it has lag when it initially starts.

I've used it for four and a half years.

We had no issues deploying it.

There are some issues with the stability, but this is improving.

We have had no issues scaling it for our need.

The tech support is pretty good.

I've been using it for a long time.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The implementation is much more fun when you know what kind of requirements you're going to process I think it is the best product on the market as it has good integration with ERP.

Ability for the user to easily schedule the reports and managing them is a big plus. Most of BOBJ tools are also data source agnostic which makes them versatile across all environments.

WebIntelligence, Analysis for Office, and SAP Lumira were designed for businesses. So the adoption rate by the is very high. Quick intuitive analysis of data, and in just a few clicks WebI and Lumira can Merge Dimensions from different sources.

• Lot of Automation of routine reports. Analysts can now focus on analysis rather than pulling in reports from multiple places.
• Scheduling of the reports makes sure we are not duplicating work across all regions for the same report.
• Brings in standardization.
• Self-Service BI or DIY-BI
• Reports are easily available on Mobile devices

• Reusability of the reports and tables from between the different tools
• Improvements needed in charting
• Direct and easy integrations to easily bring in data from other applications across all the tools like Salesforce, reading RSS streams etc. and not just other databases
• Big data source support across all tools.
• Bringing Predictive Analysis to the main stream

I've been using it for 12+ years, and all the other products since their inception.

We had no major issues.

We had no major issues.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

First level support is generally is good for basic issues. Second level support is informative when it comes to bigger issues.

The BOBJ solution was so ingrained within the organization, and powerful that there was no necessity to change.

It was smooth.

Did both cases. Even if you have an external vendor, make sure you who have an experienced lead in-house who knows how the organization works to guide the implementation team.

ROI is absolute.

SAP has flexible licensing when negotiated correctly.

When deploying SAP BW and BOBJ together, get an experienced practitioner who can educate and implement keeping the business users in mind, not just the deadline and processes of IT.

There are a lot of limitation in SAP BW especially for scheduling, which can limit the full utilization of BOBJ, but there is a solution for it all if you think out of the box.

• Easy interface for business users
• Advanced functionality in BI
• It connects any data sources with SAP Business Objects tool

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. With some of these tools, the technical dependency is much lower.

The Events feature needs to be improved, and I have already suggested this in the SAP Ideas portal. It is related to BOBJ.

I've been using it for the last seven years.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

The stability is again dependent on your sizing activity. If you don't have enough hardware and use it a lot, the tool will crash.

We have had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

10/10 - technical support is brilliant.

It's dependent to the client requirement. As I said earlier if sizing is done properly then you will not face any issues. If not, you may face issues if your utilization is high and resources are low.

I performed multiple implementations and upgrade projects for the BOBJ and BODS tool.

It depends how the customer is utilising the solution.

Business users can learn it very fast because it is easy to operate.

It has got a broad range of options for SMBs and enterprise level companies.

1. Dashboard Design (xcelcius) - this feature is a great tool to visualize information especially for enterprise dashboards in a board room and it can do what if analyses simply. The possibility of creating a specific dashboard format is unlimited.
2. Web Intelligence - this feature is the most mature feature of Business Objects, and it has the capabilities of ad hoc reporting, pixel perfect reporting, formatted style, as well as complex and advanced calculations. It can also publicize reports to help with distribution
3. Explorer - the best of breed for self service and visualization before SAP Lumira came in. The ease of use is unrivalled by the other features of Business Objects.

My company uses this to monitor revenue and its achievement for every product, salesman, period and department. We also implement for financial statement purpose such as profit loss statement, balance sheet statement and opex report.

Our sister company also use SAP Business Objects to monitor all the sales activities, stock, aging stock, and forecast.

At the end of the day, Business Objects reduces the manual process of gathering and creating reports into a much simpler and easier ways via self-service and dashboard management.

1. Annotation in the BI Launch pad. Previously there was the Discussion board function, but it was not good and no one used it. If SAP could create a functionality like annotation just like when we open in SAP BI Mobile application, it would be a great boost of functionality and collaboration feature.
2. Clear roadmap, they need to simplify the tools and features
3. Speedometer/Gauge in SAP Lumira
4. Integration of Lumira with SAP BI Platform on a non-Windows OS
5. Ability to Visualize in a browser SAP Lumira when it is uploaded into BI Platform

It was straightforward.

In-house development since I’m in a consulting company

The dynamic scheduling and the user interactive features (input controls, drill down and drill up features) as well as the ability to export the reports to Excel or PDF are some of the best features.

Web Intelligence has allowed our company to move to a self-service delivery model by allowing our internal clients to access, run and schedule reports dynamically without intervention of the BI team.

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. The BW safety belt severely limits the performance of data through the DSL Bridge which makes Web Intelligence appear slow and unable to handle large data sets.

I have used SAP Business Objects for 4 years. I have used both the BICS direct connection to a SAP BW warehouse, as well as connecting to a Universe.

No issues with deployment that I, as a functional user, was aware of.

Stability seems to be an ongoing issue with the tool and as much as that could be attributed to the tool, it can also be attributed to the configuration including the BICS connection, the DSL Bridge, and the tomcat server that it is installed on.

I joined after it was implemented.