SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Reviews

That is only for reporting and dashboard, which is the purpose for which I'm mainly using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

The most valuable function of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is the universe, so customers can build their own reports without programming skills.

The main benefits that SAP solutions provide include saving time and visualizing data more easily.

Functional wise, I'm satisfied with interactive dashboards and visualizations from SAP. It's okay. It's also helpful with interactive dashboards.

The platform is totally separated; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not easy to integrate with third parties or inside the SAP environment.

The initial setup for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is too complex from my perspective.

SAP can make SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform better by simplifying the installation and configuration.

In the functionality part, it would be great to see some new functions, maybe some AI or something similar, but I'm not sure whether this should be done by such a reporting platform; perhaps other tools or technologies would be more suitable.

I've been working with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for ten years.

It's quite stable; I would rate it an eight or nine for stability.

That's also good regarding scalability, the ability to scale and expand.

I have experience with SAP technical support and have contacted them.

That's one thing I've complained quite a lot about, and recently I saw some improvement, but I would rate them a number five.

We are evaluating some other alternatives, for example, open source software; that's my experience with competitors.

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform serves as a BI tool. I am not working with predictive analytics capabilities from SAP. I am an SAP real user, not a partner. I would rate this solution a 7 out of 10.

We primarily used it for BI reporting and analytics, preparing dashboards, reports, and everything related to data analysis.

Dashboard and analytics are good features. Visualization is better than other tools. First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are much more mature. The tool is fully compatible. Visualization is tremendous or various, colorful, or objects. So, as per my recommendation,  visualization is a strong point.

Another thing is SAP is putting in the planning, or their features, so that it is very useful for each and every organization.

Ad hoc reporting is very good.

The workflow is easy to get with SAP. In terms of SAP, some other, in other domains, just like other than SAP tools, maybe some technical skills are required for the integration parts.  

As per my opinion, because SAP is a very worldwide product or very useful product, I'm not talking about improvement, because I just think that SAP can focus on the pricing factor. 

The cost of this product, so every company is not suitable to use it. Because of the very huge amount of integrations, every organization can not use it. So, it is a very costly product. 

Secondly, from an educational point of view, So, it is not easy to adapt to each and every IT person because some, most, in India, most cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, or Chennai, only metro support the educational platform for that. 

So, just my suggestion is SAP should focus on every user; it should be easy to pick the product and, easy to carry, easy to use in every life. So, SAP must try to improve in this part.

I have been using it for three to four years. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It is a pretty scalable product. 

I would recommend it for enterprise level companies. 

We used various SAP products in my previous company, including SAP SuccessFactors, SAP BusinessObjects, and others. Currently, we use SuccessFactor and are moving towards the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

The initial setup is very simple. It's just functional. The installation part is very easy to use.

Our vendor, Accenture, or PwC, and other valuable vendors support me. So, for most of the integration part, they are looking at it.  

I just handle the front end or user support.

Comparing just for the price segment, it is very high, so that is why not each and every company uses SAP.  

As a competitor for Power BI, it's easy to use. Power BI click or Tableau are use it more mature than SAP BI. Because SAP BI is basically properly guided, if fields are required. So, not each and every person can use this. 

As per my suggestion, SAP should be easy to use, maybe easier than Power BI. An old user can pick up and adopt.  

It is a very good and reliable product from SAP's perspective, especially compared to other products. It offers a comprehensive set of BI reporting features, and SAP regularly improves the product. Before I left my previous company, they were transitioning to the SAC platform for analytics due to its capabilities in planning, predictive analytics, and forecasting.

Overall, I highly recommend this tool as it is very helpful and improves productivity.

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. 

Currently, I work for an organization in the insurance sector. So we do a lot of detailed reporting using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. We provide the specific KPIs that investors want us to report on. So one of the use cases is that we build reports for our external customers, such as investors, partners, vendors, and the department’s internal employees. Since SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile tool, it can be used to distribute the reports to the downstream system. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform gives us a lot of flexibility to model the data and control what we deliver. At the same time, we are also using the platform for dashboarding solutions.

First, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an enterprise tool in a real sense. For comparison, we have to use Power Automate or Power Apps while using Power BI to refresh or schedule the dashboard. But SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has that functionality within itself. While GitHub has repository tools for versioning, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has versioning capabilities in its 4.1 and 4.2 versions. The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding. I think SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is already working on that, and they have improved a lot from where they were, but there's still a long way to go.

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for more than ten years now.

If your environment is very big, and you have frequent changes coming, you will see that SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not a hundred percent. But for relatively small environments that follow the life cycle or process with fewer changes, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has one of the most stable systems.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is scalable vertically and horizontally.

I have used the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform’s tech support, which has lately improved a lot.

The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult.

For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation.

Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated.

You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders.

I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.

You need a consultant to set up your SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform environment because if you are making a cluster of business object servers, you need to know how clustering works and how to scale your environments. You need to do a lot of benchmarking and know about the number of reports and users.

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost. While Power BI costs eight or ten dollars per user license, the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform costs around $80-90. Since the cost makes a huge difference at the organizational level, SAP must be more competitive with its licensing cost.

Overall, I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an 8.5 out of 10.

We use the solution for reporting, including ad hoc reporting. The source is our own IDT Universal, an alarm product. We are a PR gate responsible for revenue accounting for different addresses. Customers mainly receive reports.

There are many valuable features. First, we can create ad hoc reports on a priority basis and deliver them to users quickly. The source is you can write a free end screen. Secondly, We can create reports with dynamic input controls, which is handy for showing data trends to users. Lastly, the sections and breaks features are handly and can merge multiple data providers.

The solution is pushing too much into the cloud, which is difficult. Reporting is powerful but could be more dynamic, like in Tableau or other front-end tools.

Visualization could be strengthened.

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for over ten years. We are using v4.2 of the solution.

The product is stable. No product comes close to the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. It is both user-friendly and easy to build for end users. It has good features, but the visualization part is entirely redundant. The visualization capabilities are not as good as Tableau's. We are using Tableau for visualization.

We have managed 500 users and five administrators, and scalability has not been a problem. I haven’t faced any issues in adding new users.

The free version has a time limitation, even for version 4.2. After a certain period, the first level of technical support is no longer available. The full version of the platform does not have this limitation. When you ask them any questions, they do reply, of course. However, they often come up with additional suggestions, such as "Why don't you buy this?" or "Why don't you do that?”. Every time they have a marketing pitch, it makes it more detachable.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I have been using it since 2005. I have migrated from Duo 6.5 to XAR2, then to 3.1, and finally to 4.5 and 4.2. The deployment has never been that difficult. The migration is still easier in 4.2 and 4.3 than in previous versions. In earlier versions, you have the same folders and structures. However, this limitation is no longer there when migrating from 4.2 to 4.3.

The solution’s pricing is very high.

The features are pretty good, but there are also problems. The security rights can be confusing because security rights are universal.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

My company's solution is mostly used for operational reporting, like SAP Plant Maintenance, logistics, HR, finance, etc. SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards get used in my company whenever there is a need for detailed reporting. If you use some dashboard solutions, it will provide you with a concise KPI, but if you want to drill down further, then SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can help you.

The most valuable features of the solution are its stability and user-friendliness, making it easy to manage. SAP offers stable products, so BusinessObjects Dashboards is a very good solution.

The product lacks the ability to manage universal connectivity, so it needs to be made better for users.

I know that everything that is coming nowadays is based on SAP Fiori. Many haven't been exposed to the world of SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4HANA, especially when considering the changes made by SAP. It would be great if SAP came with regular updates to ensure reporting and browser compatibility.

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards for ten years. My company consists of developers who are involved with the company's customers. My company is a customer of SAP.

It is a very stable solution.

It is an easily scalable solution. 

There are more than 1,000 users of the solution in my company.

The solution's technical support is good, but they are currently not providing support for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.2. The support team asks the customers to move to SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.3. I feel the customer support is ok based on the product agreement. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

It is an on-premises solution, so you just need to install it and continuously keep clicking on the next option until the installation is done, making it not so tough. Things work out pretty well as long as the various connections needed for the installation are managed properly.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

For deployment, it takes two to three hours maximum for any kind of new upgrade version.

Two or three engineers are required for the employment process because sometimes you need to take the backup, for which you might have to involve the infra team. In terms of application, we are the only ones who can handle the deployments.

The product's pricing falls on the spectrum's cheaper side, excluding its licensing cost. The product's pricing is good compared to other tools in the market. My company makes payments towards the licensing costs of the product on a yearly basis.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can be easily maintained, but it becomes difficult if you don't have governance and other related stuff. In general, the product is easy to maintain with governance in place.

Those planning to use the solution can go for it, but nowadays, many people are more inclined toward SAP Analytics Cloud. I feel SAP has come up with a new road map for BusinessObjects Dashboards because they might not plan to decommission the product, making it one of the stable and best products for customers who use it for detailed reporting purposes.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

The primary use case for BusinessObjects today is for comprehensive Business Intelligence reporting. Most organizations using BusinessObjects today primarily use Web Intelligence or Crystal Reports or both for critical enterprise reporting and ad-hoc query and analysis. 

We managed multiple BO deployments for multiple organizations, from the local and federal government to healthcare providers and from insurance to manufacturing. 

In all these organizations, timely and accurate reporting is essential, and BusinessObjects is solid, reliable, and versatile. You can produce professional drillable formatted reports quickly and either interact with them or publish and distribute them in commodity formats like PDF and Excel.

They've made it more efficient and able to respond to both report and ad-hoc requests in a timely fashion.

The world still runs on reports. Reports are needed for financial statements, compliance, auditing, and dozens of other areas.

BusinessObjects has proven to be a report engine powerhouse where we can quickly create these reports and get them to the right destination in the right format.

The speed of turning around report requests has really had the most impact on the organizations we manage.

The semantic layer or BusinessObjects universe behind the Web Intelligence report provides the ability to create contexts and calculations that can be easily shared across multiple reports.

The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great.

The new features in BI 4.3 that allow you to use a Web Intelligence report as a data source have helped to create "master" reports that can be delivered to casual users, who can then create their own derived reports from this "master" report.

Shared Elements allow commonly used charts, tables, and graphs to be saved and re-used in other reports.

We would like to see the semantic layer opened up to other popular BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI. This integration makes a lot of sense for most organizations.

We would also like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud.

It would be nice to see some native integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and capabilities to really take Web Intelligence to the next level of Business Intelligence. This could be integrated with existing popular AI tools instead of new development.

I have been using BusinessObjects almost as long as the product has existed - 30 years, believe it or not. The most current version BI 4.3 has been out for just over 18 months and is currently at Service Pack 4 (SP4) which was released in December 2023.

The stability is very good. After 30+ years of development, this is a very solid platform.

BusinessObjects scales all the way from one or two users to global enterprises with hundreds of thousands of users.

Technical support is not bad. Sometimes the responsiveness could be better. Once someone is assigned to the call, it is handled well.

Neutral

The setup is straightforward after you have done it at least once. You would need some hand-holding the first time.

We are the vendor team that helps with implementation.

We saw an ROI within six to 12 months.

Very reasonable compared to other BI solutions/tools

Tableau, PowerBI

The next release BI 2025 became available in March 2025 and has even more features and functionality. Evaluating it now

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process by automating data injection, eliminating manual preparation, and reducing associated costs. The user-friendly interface allows for quick analysis, while robust security ensures controlled access to sensitive information.

While SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform offers powerful reporting features, I believe there is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options. Currently, users might face limitations and complexities in developing specific use cases within SAP. Unlike other business intelligence tools such as Power BI, SAP could enhance flexibility, allowing users to seamlessly integrate data from various sources like CRM systems, providing a more dynamic and adaptable reporting environment for users.

In terms of stability, SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform has been good. It is a reliable solution, especially for injecting and integrating data from sources like SAP, Microsoft Azure, or AWS. The platform's partnerships with major systems like SAP and Oracle contribute to its overall stability.

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is highly scalable. You can easily upgrade the account to accommodate your specific needs. The platform's cloud capabilities allow for seamless integration of advanced analytics like machine learning or AI. Currently, we have over 20 customers using it.

Setting up SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform can vary in complexity depending on the customer's specific use case. For us, the process was generally straightforward. We identified the tables the customer wanted data from and extracted and injected the data accordingly. Visualization and analytics were then tailored to their specific needs. The deployment process, from development completion to implementation, involved collaboration with staff and followed a systematic approach.

The licensing cost for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform can be significant due to its complexity. It is crucial for customers to carefully assess the value they expect to derive from the implementation. Start with a basic version before opting for more advanced options like SAP HANA to manage initial expenses wisely.

My advice for new users is to consider SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, especially if they're dealing with complex organizational structures. It is beneficial for centralizing data from various departments into a unified system, providing a robust solution for analysis and decision-making. Overall, I would rate it as a nine out of ten.

We use this SAP solution for designing reports. This is a purely analytic application for designing reports to cater to higher management and specific business use cases.

There are features within Business Objects that can be leveraged to scale out, and scale up. All SAP products are scalable these days. 

Some configurations related to business objects are a little tricky. Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex. There's not enough documentation available on the net. 

We've been using this solution for almost 10 years. 

Stability can be affected by configurations related to business objects which tend to be somewhat complex. It's not a very widely used product and that in itself is a problem.

The solution is scalable. There are features that can be leveraged to scale. 

The customer support is pretty good. 

The installation can take anywhere from three to five days. The solution has installers that are directly available for download from the SAP download center. There are certain prerequisites that have to be carried out on the server. The host has to be prepared, there's a runtime environment and a database that needs to be pre-installed. We use two to three admin people per deployment. 

The ROI depends on whether there's a significant volume. If there's not enough volume there might not be a return. 

The SAP model for licensing is quite complex and they generally don't deal with service providers.

There are mixed reviews on this product from our customers. You won't find as many companies use it as you'd find with HANA. It's not widely used. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10.