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Alteryx vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (5th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Alteryx is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 23.6%, down 26.2% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 4.1% mindshare, down 5.4% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Theresa McLaughlin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick development enables seamless data processing despite occasional support issues
There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason. The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system. Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage. For instance, our licenses were temporarily lost during negotiations when an agreement couldn't be reached.
Sumeet  Zalpuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Fully integrated enterprise-level tool
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alteryx speeds up the time to obtain business answers/insights on data."
"The solution has been stable."
"The product's Macros probably are one of the most useful aspects."
"The support is very good."
"Its initial setup is easy."
"Predictive models, which are easy to use, and help a lot with fast design and deployment​."
"There are a lot of good customization capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Alteryx is the intelligence suite."
"Business analytics are the most valuable features of this solution; I don't have experience with the other functional features offered."
"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
"The scheduling and publication features are very useful."
"The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly."
"We find the product to be very stable."
"​Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports.​"
"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
 

Cons

"There are no ready models to use in analytics."
"A colleague of mind mentioned that the solution should have more options for the visualization of data."
"I'd like it to be easier to work with PDF."
"I honestly can't think of anything that needs to be improved."
"We can't browse multiple files. When we deploy a solution on a gallery, let's say I have ten different files, and I have to upload them all at once. This is something that's difficult in the gallery. So case by case, I see some downsides, but often we do something alternative."
"The event handling, such that the file system watcher, is in need of improvement."
"They can provide some pre-built tools for predictive analytics instead of us having to build all the tools. It should also be improved from the visualization aspect. It should have better visualization capabilities. There are tools out there that have better visualization capabilities, which Alteryx is lacking currently."
"There could be a bit of improvement related to performance. Sometimes it demands a lot of resources for running it, like memory and search."
"The UI could be updated a bit."
"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."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."
"The calculation engine requires some improvement."
"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."
"Recently, it's become less stable if I am working on Citrix."
"It is limited for us because SAP is shifting toward the cloud, and we can't use a cloud solution for SAP BusinessObjects. SAP introduced a product called PlusTimes one or two years ago and another one that I believe was called Automatic BI. This tool is more powerful than BusinessObjects and other tools because it's provided in the cloud."
"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can be a bit pricey, especially after the first year."
"I rate the tool's pricing a two out of ten."
"While it offers extensive features, including predictive analytics, for those who mainly use it for data preparation and blending, the cost can be prohibitive."
"Alteryx isn't extortionately expensive, but it's not cheap either."
"We use the free version of the solution. There are enterprise licenses available. It cost approximately $5,000 annually. It is an expensive solution and there are additional features that cost more money."
"The pricing is $5000 per year per production license."
"In order to have designers, and, if you want to collaborate, you have to buy a server. If the designer is $5,000, and if you want a server, you have to pay $80,000."
"It has a good price."
"Its price is fair."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me directly if you want to know more.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, R integrations if your team requires this. It can handle over 2 billion rows of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say the following: - An excellent desktop tool for Data Prep and analytics. - Featu...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.