SAP BusinessObjects EPM [EOL] Reviews

It's very user-friendly, easy for development, and faster learning, so when I implement solutions using BO, BusinessObjects, I found the user adapts with the solution very fast rather than other tools.

It's very user-friendly and very rich in graphical analytics.

1. I noticed many improvement in SAP BusinessObject Functionality. Comparing it to the older releases of BO and always using one data source for analytics. One database or one data source only, but other releases have improved, adding new features for building the analytics. It builds on multiple data sources, not only one.
2. I found that Business Objects enriches their solution by adding more graphs and more report styles. The look and the feel has many improved features.
3. There are some functions added to the solutions to add more functionality to the product to enable the customer to do forecasting. For example, based on the circuit data, new functions for forecasting are included. So, this is a very powerful feature.

Add more functionality compared to Hyperion Essbase. When comparing BusinessObjects with Hyperion Essbase, I can see that Hyperion Essbase contains more functionalities, such as two parts calculation, aliases, grouping, and a toolbox calculation. If SAP makes some improvements to add these features in the universal design, to be competitive with Hyperion Essbase, it will be the most powerful tool in the next ten years.

The main issue is that we need to adapt to the changes. So we need to add some functions inside the product for it to be scalable enough.

I have seven years of experience in BusinessObjects.

The stability for the product is very powerful. All the surfaces for Business Object have been improved, for the product's stability.

Regarding old releases, some services were down suddenly without any reason, or after a normal transaction would take place. The stability of the product is much better now, rather than the old releases. We can use it, and we can install the product in a stable environment. So, the stability in both our environments are very good.

It needs to add more functions which enable solutions to be scalable if the business requirements are changing. So, we used to have a product that could adapt to the change very easily.

A seven out of 10, because support engineers for BO should be coming from technical background. The consultants for this tool should be able to investigate the technical issues within and provide different solutions for the customer.

I did use different solutions. I used Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Business Intelligence, Hyperion Oracle BI Cloud Services, and Tableau.

Comparing it with other BI tools, BusinessObjects is a straightforward installation, not a complex one.

I have always used BO.

Its ability to provide deep insights on our business, market players and competitors. Also, we derive value from the application's ability to help us grow our small-to-medium-enterprise. The most valuable features include:

• Users can have self-service access to business intelligence
• Ability to integrate data from different sources
• Capacity to use location-specific data within a country or globally
• Availability of data cleansing functionality

It makes it easy to access information from disparate sources, analyse it, and then present it in different graphical formats. We can see trends, do what-if analyses, and create management dashboards. This assists us to make quick, informed decisions that impact on our growth.

The key one for us is to improve the ability to run BusinessObjects on earlier versions of Windows that are still being supported by Microsoft. This would be useful for our small clients who operate from home offices.

In all it has been two years since we embarked on the journey of using the SAP Analytics products that this product is a part of. We started with the lower end product called SAP Lumira that does virtualization. We then scaled up to SAP Crystal Reports and then to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Edge product.

• Some of the custom settings might have been overwritten by the latest installation
• Some missing Windows Active Directory parameters as they were not documented

The challenge was with getting proper integration with cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, and Hadoop. The issue was creating a true big data capabilities, and was more from our lack of expertise on these particular platforms than anything else.

There were no challenges on scalability because we have not reached the maximum number of users of BusinessObjects Edge edition. We know that there is a BusinessObjects BI Suite product for large enterprises that has a different licensing model.

The level of service has been satisfactory for now, since we can access information from both SAP and experienced partners in different ways.

SAP has a number of good technical support systems that come from different conduits. This starts with the product documentation that comes with the application as well as the different support plans. They have a support portal with a knowledge base and trial applications, and this is where users can log incidents and interact with vast information that is contained therein. There is also a chat, call, and email section that can be used for direct support.

No, we have not used a previous solution before. We have, however, accessed comparative data and reports such as the Gartner Magic Quadrants for similar products.

Success or failure of the system setup depends on the skill level of the technicians who setup the system. Our technicians happen to also double as SAP implementation specialists, who implement this product for our clients and draw from collaboration with the vast amount of other technical people that they interact with.

We implemented it through an in-house team.

The key return has been the ability to connect from anywhere to a cloud-based platform. This has minimised the need to always be office-bound instead of spending time with our clients. We can provide answers to some of the pressing customer queries without having to call someone in the office.

As mentioned earlier, we have reviewed other products and decided to start with a low end product called Lumira and then scaled up from there.

• Start by appointing a SAP implementation partner with a good experience
• Create and confirm your company's business intelligence strategy
• Create a structured project with relevant stakeholders
• Train prospective users and to get them to participate in testing processes if possible. If they see the value before the system goes live they will be keen users once it is up and running

As a consultant I use all the features. But there are some features that are better “set-up”or developed such as security, and the actual report/template building. Data Manager is also very useful.

Well I would like to think, and I believe it is the case, that every client that I’ve assisted with implementing BPC, has better control and more efficient/faster turnaround time with planning and budgeting. Also, it has great audit trail abilities.

There is actually quite a few issues with Excel. Normal Microsoft issues popping up where BPC and Excel are maybe not compatible. and there are cases where the size and speed causes Excel to crash.

I've used it for a total of five years.  I used BPC 7 and 7.5 for three years and BPC 10 for two years.

Sometimes, but it is our job to overcome those issues, and it differs from client to client.

Not with BPC, and only if the server was maybe not up to standard.

I wasn’t part of initial setup but I’ve heard that it can be tricky.

I am usually a part of the vendor team.

Get the correct server, service packs and expertise (Like basis and ABAP) to help with the specific areas related to the experts area of expertise.