No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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 2.5%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.2% mindshare, down 3.7% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.5%
Microsoft Power BI15.3%
Tableau Enterprise15.1%
Other67.1%
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.2%
Microsoft Power BI8.1%
Tableau Enterprise6.0%
Other83.7%
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.
EO
Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited
Solution empowers self-service reporting and delivers comprehensive performance insights
Empowering business users means they should be able to work independently without depending on the developer. One advantage of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is self-service capabilities, allowing users to do drag and drop to build their own reports and perform analyses without needing technical know-how.The platform has many drivers that I can use to connect to virtually all available databases, making it easy to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and many others. With the cloud version, I can fetch data on-premises and to the cloud for analysis easily. It is so flexible that I can make choices for fetching data. For authentication in an SAP environment, I can choose to integrate with SAP logon for SSO or use AD authentication for convenience, along with the flexible integration options.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"We previously used Microsoft Power BI, but Google is better."
"This solution is a powerful way to have several tools integrated at one location and convert data into beautiful reports that can be easily edited and viewed."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"The fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit; it is very accessible and not too difficult to use."
"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."
"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."
"What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process."
"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."
"The solution I built replaced a manual process that would take 3 weeks and provided an automated solution."
"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is definitely scalable."
"Universe Designer is the product's most valuable feature because you can manage joins or derived tables as you wish."
"We are using SAP BusinessObjects because its scheduling capabilities are more powerful than those of other tools."
"It has got great flexibility; as a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it, it allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product so you can do server-side joins instead of pulling all the data into Crystal Reports to aggregate that data, it has great visualization, and for the most part, it operates quite efficiently."
 

Cons

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"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."
"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to be improved performance-wise. The look and feel of this application, its scalability, setup, and technical support also need improvement."
"Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using."
"I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement."
"The biggest area for improvement would be the dashboarding capabilities due to the recent change from Xcelsius to Dashboard Designer."
"The technical support for general issues gives us a good response, but for certain critical issues, it can takes four weeks to obtain a response."
"Factoring in total implementation and maintenance costs, SAP BusinessObjects is too expensive. If you deal with a huge amount of data, you can go with BusinessObjects. However, if you are a medium-sized company with a modest amount of data, you can opt for another solution."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"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."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"Its price is fair."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
886,576 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
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 Enterprise20
Large Enterprise66
 

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.
886,576 professionals have used our research since 2012.