SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

Business Object is truly a scalable and complete business intelligence solution for larger organizations. We have made use of the following components: Live Office, Xcelsius, Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence. We extensively use the publication features of Crystal Reports and scheduling features of Web Intelligence. For an organization that uses Excel extensively, the Live Office direct connect is fast, accurate and user friendly. Be sure to have some super users in the business who can develop Crystal Reports and well as Web Intelligence ad hoc queries. This will make the life of the IT developers and administrative employees much easier. Overall, with past experiences, I would have to rate our opinion of BOBJ very highly.

On the downside, we have had some challenges with upgrades. Be sure to fully test every aspect in your development environment before applying any patches or service packs to Business Objects production servers. SAP was quick to respond to issues, but this still caused problems for users. The bugs we found were deep into software features (displaying column headings, formula logic, etc) and weren’t something we found in our extensive testing. I do admit we pushed the limits and had a lot of custom coding, but we expected these features to work and not break in future releases.

We primarily use the product for reporting and dashboards. We only have those two use cases, although there are other ways to use them.

I have a 24-hour company, and the business layer on top of the database can translate database data into business language so that people can easily understand what's happening. It allows us to quickly create reports without IT or programming skills.

The stability is quite good.

According to our experience, SAP BO is too heavy and very difficult for customers with medium, or smaller-sized businesses to install and maintain. It is such a heavy reporting tool.

Even though they provide the business layer, it's difficult for the programmer to create their own business layer. It's too complex for them. They need to simplify this.

The user interface should be easier to use and navigate.

The initial setup is difficult. 

Technical support could be more responsive. 

I've been using the solution for five years already. I've used it for quite a while. 

The stability is pretty good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is good. 

We only have three or four people who are using the solution at our company at this time. They are the admins and the ones who generate the reports for us. 

We haven't really looked into scaling as the data volume is very limited. I can't speak to how easy it is to expand or how well it handles extremely large data sets.

Technical support could be better. We tried to get them to help us with the implementation, and they were not quick to respond.

We currently also work with Crystal Reports, which is dated, and Jasper, which is also not that great of a product.

When we began to switch to SAP, we really wanted customization capabilities and we wanted the business layer. We needed something to provide a middle layer or translation layer so that people can generate reports much quicker, and, at the time, SAP was a good option.

The initial setup is not easy. We need a very experienced developer and they need to get enough training from SAP in order to be able to do anything effectively. It's not like other reporting tools that are really easy to use or easy to install and maintain. This one is complex and takes work and inside knowledge. 

There isn't too much maintenance required. You just need to update it every once in a while. 

We needed some help implementing the solution, however, in the end, we weren't completely satisfied as the level of response time was slow. 

I cannot speak to the exact cost of the product, as it's not an aspect of the solution I handle. 

We're currently looking at Power BI and Splunk among other options.

We are SAP partners. 

I use the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend the product to others. Even now, for ourselves, we are looking into an alternative option. 

I would rate the solution at a six out of ten.

On-premises

We use the solution to manage our databases.

The solution is more difficult to use than other products. 

We have been using the solution for five years.

I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution. I rate the solution as a seven out of ten.

I have several use cases, generally in more complex environments. These are typically corporate, requiring functionality such as strong data security, bursting, metadata-based support, scalability, fault tolerance, load balancing, support for high volume, breadth of functionality in one set of products, etc. 

It has been used in Retail, Construction, Banks, and Insurance organisations.

It works well for organisations where a structured, common, and more disciplined view of larger, more complex information is required. This is generally with more complex and multiple source systems with larger volumes of information.

This solution provides much greater and faster access to information for a wide mixture of users. It supports and promotes a common view of information across the organisation. It also removes dependence on spreadsheets and technical resource for report generation.

It supports a wide range of types of users. It is particularly effective for information consumers. Ad Hoc information access and simpler self-service are well supported. Once we had the foundation in place, we also found we could provide most reports in under an hour for smaller company environments. Because of change control, the latter rarely happens in corporate environments but the effort involved was reduced.

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 also provides a structured data security model whereby a single report provides dedicated results to a given usage, such as a branch or department-based. For instance, the same report will provide a branch-specific result depending on the user's branch and can be common to multiple branches.

Similarly, bursting enables provision of tailored static reporting to specific users or user groups that also includes data security.

This solution is complex to configure and administer. It is even more so, I believe, than it should be, even with such a complex product. As an example it has many server processes (typically 15+). In Windows these are not services rather they are individual processes managed via a single service called the SIA. Each server process can be separately configured and performs a specific set of functions

It uses Java constructions for specific customisations such as default reporting formats and using SSL for burst email reports. This requires a broad set of skills to set-up.

It is rather cryptic in its error handling when there are issues that require trawling through a number of voluminous log files that are accessed from the server.

I have been using this solution for more than ten years.

Reliability dropped in 2017-2018 with a major release but indications are that this has been addressed.

Very scalable across thousands (if not 10,000+) users and large data volumes.

Average. Technical support from SAP is mediocre. The local support is decent.

I've used many different BI solutions. The choice was the customer's. 

See earlier comments but a vanilla install is not too complex.  The moment it is not vanilla it becomes quite complex. The SAP website for software management, downloads, licenses etc makes the Da Vinci Code look simple.

Mix of contractors and vendor. The vendor is skillful though overworked resources.

No Idea

Cost to setup and run is high as it is complex but then again one also gets a highly functional product. SAP do have a small business pricing so, at least, the licensing is not too expensive.

The most comparable product is MicroStrategy, which is frankly a better technical product but has not been as commercially successful outside of large sites.

I am a great believe in choosing a commercially successful product rather than technical best of breed as there is nothing worse than having an 'orphan' product. That being a product that is poorly supported, does not have a development path and limited availability of expertise. Business Objects is a commercially successful product and despite SAP's poor management of the product is likely to continue to be so.

Private Cloud

Other

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.

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.

• Universe Designer
• Web Intelligence
• InfoView

Able to quickly create and publish reports using WebI. Eliminated most printed reports, they are now emailed or consumed online via InfoView. Has given users the ability to run reports on their own and get the information they need without having to ask IS.

Compatibility of Crystal Reports within BOE, especially when using universes and prompts – the prompts are turned into static values, not generated on-the-fly.

Scheduling functions. We have to maintain separate lists and custom apps of report schedules so that we know what’s scheduled when, and who is getting what reports. If a person leaves and is on distribution lists, we have to manually go through and remove/replace them. There is also no easy way to bulk re-schedule reports.

Report documentation must be manually maintained. Can’t EASILY find all reports using field X.

WebI needs a report template function so that basic re-used elements and formatting don’t have to be re-created with every report. Also need to be able to do more with custom SQL and merged dimensions.

SAP patch methodology is horrific, it was much better pre-SAP. As it is now, if you are on 6.1 and report a bug and it gets fixed in 6.2 you update and confirm it’s fixed. Then, a new release comes out and you update but because its cut-off date was prior to the date 6.2 fix, the fix isn’t included! Imagine trying to manage a system if you are waiting for multiple fixes. You can (we did!) end up with a system where major issues were finally fixed but other major problems not fixed and when the outstanding issues were finally resolved, the other previously addressed problems weren’t included in the newer update! It’s a maintenance and tracking headache.

Approximately nine years -

BusinessObjects Enterprise 3.1 SP6 (CMC, LCM, WebI, CR, Universe Designer, Business View Manager, InfoView)

(previously used XI R2)

Original XI R2 install was done by consultants, the install was a disaster and non-functional and we had to completely start over. Tech support walked us through doing it ourselves and we’ve managed it since. Biggest issue of the upgrade to 3.1 was functionality change in WebI merged dimensions, all reports using them broke and had to be re-written. Looked at upgrading to 4.0 over a year ago and installed in a sandbox, but the product did not function out of the box. It required massive reconfiguration of the default settings to run bare bones and there was no upgrade path to multi-source universes. As a result, we haven’t upgraded yet.

Rarely and was always due to bugs in new SP or FP. Current patch level is very stable.

Customer Service:

In a word, bad. Account reps constantly change and it’s impossible to find out who your current rep is. Phone calls and emails are not returned. At one point we were interested in buying additional licenses, but no one could/would help us. The licensing renewal process is severely lacking. They sent renewal emails to the wrong people, these are non-IS line staff not even on our account, and we have no idea how they even got their contact information. They refused to accept the PO that our accounting system generated, wanting one specially designed for them. Our purchasing agent, literally took a black sharpie and wrote all over the PO to meet their requirements. Who is the customer? Do they really want to make that sale? It doesn’t seem like it. Maybe we are too small for them to bother with?

Technical Support:

First level support is horrible. I avoid opening cases because of the bad experiences. I would typically find myself explaining very basic product functionality to the support personnel and in the end the response is always that they will consult their resources and get back to you. After going around in circles for days or weeks, the stock response is “it’s working as designed,” yet they can’t explain why. If you are lucky enough to get to higher level support (which is rare), they are very knowledgeable and able to quickly help get to the bottom of issues and find real solutions.

No previous solution was used.

Initially a vendor, recommended by BO. They had the product installed multiple times on the server, it was a mess and had to be completely blown away and reinstalled. Since then, we’ve done it in-house.