SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

We are integrators and implementers. It's purely technical instead of functional. I take care of all the servers and do server configuration, capacity planning, sizing, capacity planning, and performance tuning.

Mainly, my work is not in the reporting part. We support the users and the business, and we take care of all the BusinessObjects servers.

We are using version 4.2 right now. In that, we have a reporting tool called Web Intelligence. We haven't explored 4.3 yet.

The reports are most valuable. If it is a single-source universe, based on only one database, the performance, and the reporting tool is user-friendly, and users are very familiar with the tool and are comfortable using it. In the VB, we developed a dashboard in Xcelsius in the same way we can report in the VB.

The dashboard can easily be accessed by users. Right now with version 4.3, SAP is saying that they're coming with a query feature, where they can have a single platform and access all the reports. In 4.2, they have that one from SP4 onwards, but none of the users are using that one, so there needs to be more education with that. 

Also, reporting on the CMS database is a little bit of a headache. That is one problem that we are facing right now. With SP3 onwards, they have provided it. But right now, with version 4.3 onwards, it is very much integrated within that BO suite, so it was very easy. Right now there is a separate driver we need to install and take it further from there. That part is a little bit of a challenge.

This tool has worked with relational databases and others since 2002, when it involved PeopleSoft and an SAP ERP-type of back end. The tool extracts the structural data onto the front end and creates reports for our interactive end-users. So the primary function of BusinessObjects is reporting or BI access.

There is a factor table in the back end and a dimensional table with a tool called IDT. IDT stands for Information Design Tool. You create a file called the "universe," which generates SQL code and sends it back to the back end relational database or another type of back end to draw data from the front end. But the universe file itself doesn't affect any storage of the data. It's only code. So based on the universe, you can do a report or multiple reports. And when you click "refresh," a package of SQL code from the universe file will be sent back to back in the database system based on the particular table in the fields. Then you get the data, package it again, and send it back to report. Crystal Reports is the reporting and intelligence component. It's the dashboard tool.

BusinessObjects is an enterprise reporting system that includes a content management system, security model, and report distribution system. They all merge nicely. These features are all integrated, and BusinessObjects can handle a lot of usage on the front end, and many users can view these reports.  It's a relatively stable and secure tool. 

I worked on a project with around 3,000 users around the globe. People from China, France, South America, and locally here in the United States were reporting on BusinessObjects 24 hours a day. It's a reliable, stable, secure, and mature tool for business intelligence and other functions, like standard reports. BusinessObjects has been around for nearly 30 years. A French person created it in 1994, so they've constantly improved and upgraded this tool ever since.

We use it almost exclusively for our analytics for the Epic environment. So, a lot of healthcare-related reporting and financial reporting is done on it. It is not geared towards the operational world. It is geared towards the analytical world where we're looking at a month of data, a year of data, or a quarter of data.

We try to use its current version.

On the first of the month, when we get ready to close the books, we run a lot of analytics through the BI platform. The analytics are available to our financial team within 10 hours, and we typically run around 21,000 jobs at the beginning of every month. We schedule them, and they get downloaded as CSVs and then people consume them.

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.  

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.

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.

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.