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Looker Studio 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

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (11th)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.3% mindshare, down 3.8% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.6%
Microsoft Power BI17.4%
Tableau Enterprise16.5%
Other63.5%
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Other81.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.
Declan Dempsey - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Keyrus
Provides efficient data reporting while needing easier deployment and improved interface
Users tend to put everything into Excel, though I try to discourage this. The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made. This means you don't have those months that get assigned. You can just get to the point and get a report very quickly. Unfortunately, in some ways, it's a double-edged sword because it becomes more of a self-service ETL, even for the reporting team. If you have a decent universe and you just want to quickly get something together, it's very usable. Compared to Click, you can drop those reports very quickly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"​Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports.​"
"​The report development tool called SAP Web Intelligence under the BI Launch Pad portal has been the most valuable feature."
"It can process big volumes of data fast."
"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."
"​It is a very good product, stable, and has good technical capabilities.​"
"It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"There are two tools inside BusinessObjects' schematic layout called the Universal Design Tool and Information Design Tool. These are the most powerful tools that set BusinessObjects' reporting from other solutions. If my organization has 300 or 400 tables, I can combine all of them into one universe, and everyone can use that. It is just a schematic layout that does not hold any data but the table relationships."
 

Cons

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."
"There are areas of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform that need improvement, particularly in licensing, which can make it complex and expensive for users."
"More thorough testing of Service Packs before release."
"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"It is not simple to use."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"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."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
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
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
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...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.