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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 2.5%, 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

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"This is a great tool if your organization leverages other sets of Google tools and needs some quick ideas that are a prettier and more interactive than Google Analytics."
"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 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 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."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"We are using SAP BusinessObjects because its scheduling capabilities are more powerful than those of other tools."
"The return on investment from this solution is high, with the highest ROI observed."
"The product works well, but is only as good as the servers it uses."
"The solution can scale."
"We find the product to be very stable."
"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."
"If I were to compare it with Power BI and I wanted to build proper well-formatted reports, BusinessObjects Business Intelligence does that much better."
"Tableau offers excellent visualization and fast data discovery with quick turnaround time."
 

Cons

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."
"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"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."
"We feel that the tool is very complex in terms of implementing the dashboard; lots of coding and performance issues, and we require particular skillsets and resources as regular users cannot understand it."
"I am not sure about how it supports my compliance and data governance requirements."
"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."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"According to our experience, SAP BO is too heavy and very difficult for customers with medium, or smaller-sized businesses to install and maintain."
"ROI for the reporting product alone, as a component in a whole stack of things contributing to ROI, is in my view a minor contributor."
"The technical support has been a challenge when it comes to finding the correct support analyst who is familiar with how the various product components integrate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"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 cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"Its price is fair."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of 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."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
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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
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.
886,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.