We performed a comparison between SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and SAP Crystal Reports based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."
"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."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"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 setup is pretty easy. It's not hard at all."
"This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."
"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good."
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"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"SAP Crystal Reports offers a plethora of features, many of which were available much earlier than in the Crystal Reports we previously used. We extensively use its capabilities for generating general reports, working with Kaspersky data, and even incorporating images into our reports. The range of functions available in SAP Crystal Reports is diverse, and we leverage them across various systems for our needs."
"The most valuable feature is that from a user's point of view, it is easy to use and requires just a simple click to generate a report."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers. There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies. We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."
"The performance could be improved, like when we extract a large amount of data."
"We would like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud."
"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."
"The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
"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."
"I really want SAP to focus on the dashboarding side. Based on what I have seen in the past 10 years, dashboarding has captured a lot of markets. Executives at the top-level want data that is summarized, looks good, and tells you a story. That's where Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI have an upper edge. It doesn't mean SAP doesn't give you dashboarding. They do have a dashboarding solution, but Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are more intuitive and more attractive. I would like SAP to capture the dashboarding market as well, wherein they give at least some competition to other competitors. Presently, Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are leading the market."
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"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 103 reviews while SAP Crystal Reports is ranked 9th in Reporting with 48 reviews. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8, while SAP Crystal Reports is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform writes "Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP Crystal Reports writes "Helps analyze your data by creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect, and multiple reports from virtually any data source, delivered in over a dozen formats". SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos and SAS Visual Analytics, whereas SAP Crystal Reports is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, TIBCO Jaspersoft, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, IBM Cognos and Windward Core.
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