SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

1. SAP BO/BI

• Enterprise scalability
• Security
• Ease of use
• Semantic layer

2. Tableau

• Visualization
• Data discovery
• Turnaround time

3. IBM Cognos

• Enterprise scalability
• Security
• In-memory feature

4. MS BI - Flexibility

5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade

6. QlikView

• Data visualization
• Turnaround time.

7. OBIEE

• Enterprise security
• Semantic model

1. SAP BO/BI

• Visualization

2. Tableau

• Scalability

3. IBM Cognos

• Ease of use

4. MS BI

• Visualization
• Ease of use

5. Pentaho

• Ease of use
• Semantic layer

6. QlikView

• Scalability

7. OBIEE

• Visualization
• Database connectivities

• I have used SAP for almost 12 years
• Tableau – Rate 6/10 overall but 9/10 for visualization. I have used it for three years
• IBM Cognos - Rate 7/10 and I have used it for three years
• MS BI - Rate 5/10 and I have used it for two years
• Pentaho - Rate 5/10 and I have used it for over five years
• QlikView- Rate 7/10 and I have used it for two years
• OBIEE – Rate 7/10 and I have used it for five years

• SAP BO/BI - Below average
• Tableau - Good
• IBM Cognos - Average
• MS BI - Average
• Pentaho - Average
• QlikView - Above average
• OBIEE - Average

• SAP BO/BI - Below average
• Tableau - Good
• IBM Cognos - Average
• MS BI - Average
• Pentaho - Average
• QlikView - Above average
• OBIEE - Average

There is no perfect solution or one size fits all. Be clear on the requirements that you are trying to meet with the tools and solutions and do a POC and thorough evaluation. Also most of the time a single vendor works better than using best of the breed solution.

The solution has been extremely stable. We haven't had any issues so far.

The setup is pretty easy. It's not hard at all.

Technical support, overall, has been very good and we've been happy with their level of service.

The basic components of the solution could be improved.

The UI could be updated a bit.

I can't think of any features that are currently missing from the product at this time.

We've been using the solution for about seven years at this point. It's been a while. We have a lot of experience with it.

We've found the stability of the solution to be very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

Plenty of users in our organization actually use the solution.

Technical support for the most part has been very good. We've had a positive experience and we are quite satisfied with the level of support they provide to us.

I don't recall the company using a previous solution. As far as I know, the company has only ever really used SAP.

We've found the initial setup to be pretty straightforward. It's not so complex. A company shouldn't have any trouble with the implementation process.

We didn't need any assistance with the integration process. It's a process that I manage as an integration manager.

We pay our licensing fees on a monthly basis. I can't speak to how much they are. I don't recall there being any extra costs above the licensing itself.

We are customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the organization.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it as a perfect ten. It's been great. For the most part, we have been happy with the product.

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.

• The "View where used" option is very useful when looking to see where work flows, data flows etc.. have been used throughout the project
• Migration from one version to another because it's simple
• Being able to query the metadata has been very useful

• The Business Object tool from SAP has provided the business with reports both in graphical and table (spreadsheet) form
• Provided an easy way to send out reports on a schedule
• ETL has been able to be implemented thanks to the many components available in the Data Services tool.

• Better community support
• More support resources should be available
• They need to make it possible to rename data stores once they are created.

I've used Business Objects together with Data Services for 10 months.

No issues encountered.

The amount of resources used has caused the system to fail from time to time. To resolve the issues, it is necessary to perform server and service restarts.

No issues encountered.

5/10.

5/10.

When I came to work for the company they already had this solution. However, we did an upgrade to a more current version.

The wizard is pretty straightforward. The configuration and connections were also aided by a wizard.

A mix of both, before moving forward with the upgrade the vendor gave us suggestions on what we needed to do after looking at our current system. They were helpful in that initial stage of the upgrade, but the actual upgrade was done by an in-house team.

Make sure you understand the needs of the business and to evaluate different products before committing to a specific one.

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

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. 

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. 

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects for 20 years. 

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. 

We use it for reporting.

It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly-complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools.

Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA.

Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau. Currently, for data visualization, you need to spend more money to buy another solution such as Power BI or Tableau. 

It is also very hard to integrate it with other third-party solutions. Its integration with other solutions should be improved.

I have been using this solution for around seven years.

We have around 200 users of this solution.

They are helpful and quite professional. Sometimes, they don't respond faster, and sometimes, they say that it needs to be upgraded to the next version, which is something that I don't like.

Its installation was straightforward.

I did the installation.

Its price is fair.

For data visualization, I would recommend Power BI and Tableau. For the report format, I would recommend SAP BusinessObjects.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Management reporting and also some ad-hoc reporting.

During the first of the 10 years we used it, it was a very valuable reporting product. It really is the only product we have for reporting out of the data warehouse that we have. It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources.

SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that.

In addition, we would definitely like to be able, through the tool, to show more metadata, and access a data dictionary directly from the tool.

Also, a user should see data lineage, because we have found out that the abstraction being done in the Universes is sometimes too much for the more specific kind of users. They want to see the origin of the data.

Stability is perfect.

Scalability is also very good.

We have not used technical support directly. We have a local specialist that we go to. It's easier.

The company implemented BusinessObjects 10 years ago. At that time, it was the best product on the market. A lot of things have changed in 10 years.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor, if we're talking about a reporting tool, is the ease of use for the end-user as well as integration with other tools, like data dictionaries and data catalogs. That would make the underlying data more visible to the end-user. And, of course, price is important.

Look at who will be your end-user group. Who is going to use the tool?

I would rate this solution at seven out of 10. Seen from the administrative and compliance point of view, it's an excellent tool for an enterprise. But I can't give it any more than that because the user interface for the average user is not very intuitive. You need too much training before you're able to use the tool effectively.