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SAP Business One vs Tableau 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

SAP Business One
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
ERP (5th)
Tableau
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

SAP Business One and Tableau aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SAP Business One is designed for ERP and holds a mindshare of 3.7%, down 6.4% compared to last year.
Tableau, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 17.5% mindshare, down 19.1% since last year.
ERP
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

Tomasz Rabong - PeerSpot reviewer
 

Featured Reviews

Ijlal Naqvi - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy but needs to improve in the area of BI
If I speak about a feature in the tool that helps with financial management, I would say that of all the products I have ever worked on, used, or implemented, the finance part is pretty much the same in all ERPs and bookkeeping software tools. Finance is a regulated thing. It has to generate financial statements related to all the accounts. All financial management systems will look into the ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. Generally the tool has two models. If the tool's in-house model is opted, then just one person is needed to maintain the product as an ERP administrator. If it is through a partner, then we usually have managed services, so you get access to a whole bunch of resources, technical, functional, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, or resources that you can have as part of the managed services contract. My company does not use much of AI with SAP Business One since it is pretty much manual now. It's still pretty much manual for business process enhancements and it still requires more of a consultative approach with more of a human touch. With SAP S4/HANA, there is a process navigator, process data mining tool that does help users since with the use of AI it provides answers to their questions. Recommendations are subjective to the requirements of the users. I would not recommend SAP Business One to a financial services institution or a bank. I would most definitely recommend it to a small family-owned business with about 20,000,000 of revenue, and that too in the area of discrete manufacturing. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have been happy with the intern purchases, and finance, such as banking."
"Technical support is quite good. They are helpful and responsive. We are quite satisfied with their level of support."
"So there are a lot of features included with the ERP system."
"Sales CRM and Financials are most valuable."
"Business One's best feature is that all the modules are integrated."
"The solution is scalable."
"I like analytics, dashboard, and KPIs a lot. It is very helpful when I need to check balances and financial statements."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business One is the price and reputation of the vendor. The solution is widely accepted around the world."
"Easy for beginners to use"
"The best part about Tableau is the visualization."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"This solution has improved insights into quantitative data."
"The ability to deploy is the added ability to centralise the Tableau repository for all Tableau Developers."
"The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use."
"I have found Tableau easy to use and the features are superb."
 

Cons

"The installation process could be easier. They should have better tools to improve the effectiveness of the installation."
"It could have RPA automation and RPA elements. There could also be add-ons for a Document Management System and Warehouse Management System."
"There are problems with Business One's collection management and reconciliation."
"Business One's production module has room for improvement."
"Some features are missing."
"There are issues with inventory management and quality management."
"The solution could improve by having some added authentication, such as SAP CC or SAP S4HANA."
"In the next release, I would like to see the inclusion of cloud features."
"I am a BI consultant. I have worked on different reporting tools, such as Power BI and MicroStrategy. As compared to other tools, Tableau lags behind in handling huge enterprise-level data in terms of robust security and the single integrated metadata concept. When we connect to large or very big databases, then performance-wise, I sometimes found Tableau a little bit slow. It can have the single metadata concept like other tools for the reusability of the objects in multiple reports."
"When there are millions of records, scaling up is quite difficult."
"In the next release, I would like to be able to have the option to see more raw data that I'm converting on the dashboard."
"Formatting controls could use some improvement."
"An advanced type of visualization is a bit tricky to create. It has something called a Calculated field, and that sometimes gets a bit difficult to use when you want to create an advanced type of visualization."
"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
"Tableau is a company that does not respect partners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product pricing structure at around six out of ten due to currency fluctuations posing challenges."
"Business One's prices are really high."
"Business One is reasonable considering the functionality."
"If you are in the US or Canadian the costs of SAP Business One could vary per license, it can be anywhere between $2,000 tor $5,000."
"Its licensing model is good. There is a one-off payment for the software license, and after that, you only need to pay the annual maintenance fee. Compared to other cloud-based systems, this cost model is quite reasonable for SMEs."
"We recently acquired the license, so we are using the latest version."
"SAP Business One is moderately priced."
"We pay annually. It is around 800 a month."
"The price of Tableau is high, although there are different types of licenses available."
"Pricing is not bad. It's competitive."
"I like the payment model. For the people who need to create, they buy their licenses. Everyone else can use the free Tableau Viewer. This is much better than some of the competitor products, which require full licences for everything."
"Tableau is free."
"Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"
"It is more expensive than other solutions."
"Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."
"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Answers from the Community

Tomasz Rabong - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 20, 2022
Apr 20, 2022
Dear Community, Many thanks for yor support and help!
2 out of 6 answers
EB
Apr 18, 2022
Hi @Delmar Assis, @Angel Pineda, @reviewer1318779, @George McGeachie, @Carel Van Der Merwe and @Moorthy Natarajan, Can you please assist @Tomasz Rabong ​with their question?​​ ​ ​ ​ ​
Leandro Sodré - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 18, 2022
Hi Tomasz Rabong,  I believe that if you have a developer team in Amundsen it would be possible.  Alternatively, you can look at Informatica EDC or at Data Virtualization Data Catalog (from Denodo).
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Are there any advantages of SAP S4 HANA over SAP Business One (SAP B1) apart from the cost?
SaP Business One is a complete solution for business management. The software applications are broad, ranging from accounting to project management and human resources. It is very versatile and com...
What do you like most about SAP Business One?
It's user-friendly and comes with comprehensive manuals. So, it is easy to learn to use SAP Business One
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business One?
The pricing model of SAP Business One is average. It is neither too good nor too bad, and there is room for more flexibility in pricing.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
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...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Also Known As

Business One
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ego Pharmaceuticals Pty. Ltd
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and others in ERP. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.