SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

The SAP BusinessObjects product suite is made of different products. This review refers to the Web Intelligence product.

The user friendliness of the interface enables non-IT-literate persons to create their own queries without need SQL knowledge, and that has been the case a very long time. (I started to use BO in 1990.)

It gives power to the user, who can create his/her own queries without needing IT services, therefore leading to savings. However, it must be noted that the semantic layer (Universe) must be built carefully by IT staff with the full collaboration from beginning to end of future key users in order to be intuitive and user friendly. The training given to the user community and the documentation is also extremely important, so that the users know what objects they can combine together.

Since I started using BO, the desktop version gave way to the web version. The beginning of the web version (Web Intelligence) was a little bit chaotic, with some key functionalities present in the desktop version forgotten in the web version (like custom groupings, double scaling...) However, these functionalities are finally back. I think SAP should listen more and better to its customers.

I have 25+ years experience of working with SAP BusinessObjects, combining SAP and non-SAP data in BO and I also have started to use QlikView and roll it out in our organization. I hold the function of BI director now and develop an entire reporting strategy for a multinational organization.

I encountered stability issues. The beginning of the web version was very chaotic. It look a long time for Web Intelligence to open, refresh and so on. We regret that versions that are initially released do not seem to be well finished (a lot of bugs), and that a lot of patching is necessary to get to a stable version (our experience for BOXIR3, BI4 and so on).

I did not encounter any scalability issues. It is easy to deploy (weblink). But in order to be able to use the query panel, users must ensure that the Java component is installed.

Technical support is quite OK.

Initial setup is straightforward.

I cannot give any advice on this, as I am not involved at all in this issue, but depending on the licensing model used, this product can be quite expensive.

We considered Oracle Discoverer, MS BI, but BO was chosen for its flexibility of usage.

The reporting tool is easy to use and implement. Overall, you should consider how this tool is going to be implemented in your organization, and what added value it will bring to your organisation (e.g., do you have a lot of people doing a lot of reports in Excel). Finally, a decision whether or not to use BusinessObjects Web Intelligence should not be taken on its own but rather as a part of how information is managed in the organization.

I've used BusinessObjects for projects in finance and healthcare. Also, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies uses it as a reporting tool. We had the data source and ad hoc requirements, so we created semantic layer data modeling for the database and reporting system. Then we used BusinessObjects as a tool for reporting and dashboards.

BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting.

I want BusinessObjects to have more flexibility like Tableau or Power BI. The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly. SAP could add more ability to design and customize the dashboards.

BusinessObjects is not that user-friendly. They have different tools for designing dashboards like Discovery— previously called Lumira. That isn't as user-friendly as Tableau. 

I've been using BusinessObjects for four to five years.

BusinessObjects is stable.

BusinessObject's main advantage is the ad hoc capability.

I've contacted SAP support once or twice. We raised a support request, and they responded promptly. They organized a call and helped us resolve the issue. 

BusinessObjects' installation is comparable to Tableau, but BusinessObjects requires a skilled administrator for management and maintenance because it's a little more complex than Tableau.  

In terms of flexibility and user-friendliness, Tableau is better than BusinessObjects, but if you have ad hoc requirements, then BusinessObjects is better.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects eight out of 10. I would recommend BusinessObjects, but it depends on the requirements. SAP is a better choice if you are doing daily reporting where you need to drag and drop objects and create ad hoc reporting then export to Excel or CSV. 

On-premises

Ease of report development is a key feature. Also, installation is largely automated. The nicest part of BOE remains the semantic layer (Designer), giving developers a powerful way to encapsulate business logic and push it out to users through Webi or WRC.

Because I am primarily an installation and configuration architect working independently through a separate company, the product itself doesn't necessarily affect us in a BI sense. That's really the big-picture issue within our community; that companies often misunderstand how BI is supposed to work and that in order for the business to really participate, there needs to be sufficient training and the cultivation of a "culture of BI".

I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement. Most of the other parts of the tool are fairly easy to get going and it would help getting user buy-in if they could extend that across the entire platform.

Like we always say, the tool is only as good as the person using it. 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.

We started with Crystal Enterprise 10 eleven years ago, transitioning through BOBJ R2, XI and now 4.x.

BOE 4.2 is currently pretty stable in our experience and we already know that it can scale to any level. The only downside to that is cost.

My personal experience with the SAP engineers is that they are very supportive and develop personal connections easily.

Depending on whether you are doing a simple, one-machine install (single-stack) or clustering according to the sizing recommendations from SAP, it can go from easy to more difficult. But the process is thoroughly documented.

We are more or less the vendor team for our clients.

Always determine your prerequisites before you kick off remotely or onsite. It can save a lot of grief. Have a detailed SOW and project plan that you adhere to as much as possible, but be flexible.

We are operating in the Electronic Health Record space using Epic and BOE for reporting. Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard.

I've evaluated other visualization tools, but BOE still has the best out-of-the-box enterprise security.

Planning is critical.

Web Intelligence for its ad-hoc ability and user interface for allowing business users to create reports without depending on the IT department. The ability to merge data from multiple databases also allows more flexibility and business solutions.

Since SAP purchased Business Objects, they have made some nice improvements, but have still not managed to seamlessly integrate and harmonize the many products they offer.

Life Cycle manager needs to be more stable and easier to use. The Information Design tool could be improved when creating a multi-source universe for improved memory usage and SQL functions available.

? I have worked with the Business Objects tools since 1999, SAP BW since 2006 and SAP Business Objects since 2011 with XI3

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

Customer service for the most part is good and a part of that may be due to the size of the investment the company has with SAP. We were provided a customer advocate on site to escalate issues within SAP as necessary.

Technical Support:

The technical support has been a challenge when it comes to finding the correct support analyst who is familiar with how the various product components integrate. Many times we would get someone familiar with Crystal Reports but not with BW or Xcelsius etc.

Business Objects XI 3 was implemented in house with assistance from various outside consultants. The upgrade to 4.0 was done the same way.

I don’t know the exact cost but one of the reasons the business chose to use Business Objects was that they could reduce licensing costs since it was already an SAP R/3 and BW customer.

Microstrategy and Web Focus were also considered back in 2010 when SAP bought and promoted the product for use with BW (replacing Web application designer). At the time none of the products were determined robust enough to use with BW as an enterprise level reporting tool.

Do not undersize the system hardware. Turn on all functionality for a product when installing – even if not anticipating using immediately. Spend ample time up front planning the security set up and only go with one option whether SAP, Enterprise, Windows AD or LDAP.

If I were to compare it with Power BI and I wanted to build proper well-formatted reports, BusinessObjects Business Intelligence does that much better. Power BI is just getting into that space. They've concentrated more on visualization, which is what the SAP Lumira does. With Web Intelligence, you are able to build reports that users can interact with. They can also do a lot of querying themselves.

It is robust in terms of security and integration. It is also quite scalable.

I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools. Web Intelligence is good for reporting and all kinds of stuff, but I would rather have one product. All the reporting features of Web Intelligence should be developed within Lumira.

A lot of predictive abilities have been brought into the cloud version of SAP Analytics. It would be nice to see a lot of newer technologies and AI. Predictive capabilities are becoming a little more standard. Instead of having to get another model, we are just looking for one solution to deal with analytics including predictive.

My first engagement with SAP BI was in 1998, so it has been more than 20 years.

Its environment is quite robust, especially when it is on-premise.

SAP BI is quite scalable. It supports multiple servers and multiple combinations of landscapes. It is quite good. You can add more servers to get better performance. You can also separate services. You can separate the application server from the webserver. If you want to deploy a large on-premise setup, it would be the way to go.

I work for an SAP partner company. We were the first SAP BusinessObjects partners in Nigeria, which is where I'm based. We've been partners since '98. Our goal as consultants is to be as self-sufficient as possible. We hardly need to get in touch with tech support because we are self-sufficient.

The installation of SAP BI is an extensive function. Typically with an SAP installation, you need a combination of on-premise and cloud. The cloud functionality is still evolving and maturing. As compared to Power BI, it would take a lot more work. However, if I went the way of Lumira, I could use Lumira Desktop standalone, and I get to use the features.

We have our own team for maintenance within our company. We used to have five people, but we have scaled down to just two full-time employees. We also have a number of people who are available on request.

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.

I will be a bit biased, and I would definitely recommend SAP BI. It is a bit more robust and mature as compared to Power BI. Power BI keeps changing every day, which is not a bad thing considering how old it is. For a serious setup, I would rather use SAP BI, but I look forward to having one tool rather than two.

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

On-premises

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 are using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for a lot of things, such as simple reports and business dashboards, and in all the business areas, for example, finance, sales, and purchasing.

The most valuable feature we have found to be the SAP BW, which is a warehouse tool. Additionally, it is an easy tool to use.

The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future.

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

The stability is good. However, the performance could be better.

We have several hundred end-users using this solution and we use the solution on a daily basis.

The solution is scalable. We feel comfortable with the infrastructure that we have, but we can expand if we want to. 

The technical support is good, I am satisfied.

I previously use Oracle BI. I think the Oracle BI is stronger and has more functionality than SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. However, it does not connect to SAP ERP which is a disadvantage.

The initial setup is simple, it took us two days to complete.

The implementation, maintenance, and updates can be done by staff within the company. There are times we have used local support or integrators in our area.

This solution is not meant to be very complicated, solutions that are complicated require other tools.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.

On-premises

• Way of creating reports
• Ease of use
• Can connect to any database
• Create models with ease.

In our organization, they chose this product mainly due to its ease of use. They were also able to generate high revenue by identifying their backlog areas.

The calculation engine requires some improvement.

For eight years.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

A 10 out of 10.

I would say it's mostly straightforward, because it has a wide range of compatible operating systems and also it was easy to install. The whole software is bundled and provided to the consumer.

It's the best product in the market when it comes to reporting technology.