SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs SAP Crystal Reports comparison

The compared SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and SAP Crystal Reports solutions aren't in the same category. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked #6 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 4.5% mindshare in the category. SAP Crystal Reports is ranked #9 in RT , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of SAP Crystal Reports users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

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, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

October 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Jul 27, 2022

Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department

I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

Read full review

MukeshMathur

Business Analytics Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

May 3, 2024

Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product

As per my opinion, because SAP is a very worldwide product or very useful product, I'm not talking about improvement, because I just think that SAP can focus on the pricing factor. The cost of this product, so every company is not suitable to use it. Because of the very huge amount of integrations, every organization can not use it. So, it is a very costly product. Secondly, from an educational point of view, So, it is not easy to adapt to each and every IT person because some, most, in India, most cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, or Chennai, only metro support the educational platform for that. So, just my suggestion is SAP should focus on every user; it should be easy to pick the product and, easy to carry, easy to use in every life. So, SAP must try to improve in this part.

Read full review

MVD Prasad

Assistant General Manager at Soma Enterprise

Jan 9, 2024

Helps analyze your data by creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect, and multiple reports from virtually any data source, delivered in over a dozen formats

We were dedicated to Crystal Reports, and now they have shifted to SAP reports. While both functionalities are similar, there might be some enhancements or additional features to look forward to in the SAP version. However, I haven't encountered any issues. I've consistently used SAP Crystal…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."

"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."

"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."

"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."

More IBM Cognos pros

"It is a very good product, stable, and has good technical capabilities."

"We find the product to be very stable."

"The features that I have found most valuable are that we are able to build all dashboards with self-service BI and are able to provide our business users with self-service BI. We are building a repository on top of our data warehouse and building all the dashboards and KPIs."

"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."

"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. Power BI is just getting into that space. They've concentrated more on visualization, which is what the SAP Lumira does. With Web Intelligence, you are able to build reports that users can interact with. They can also do a lot of querying themselves. It is robust in terms of security and integration. It is also quite scalable."

"The scheduling and publication features are very useful."

"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."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pros

"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."

"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."

"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."

"It is an user-friendly solution."

"The overall environment is the best. Data management, graphs, and layout – everything is the best, in my opinion."

"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."

Cons

"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."

"The solution's support could be better."

"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."

"The charts and graphics are weak."

"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."

"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Recently, it's become less stable if I am working on Citrix."

"It could be a lighter solution."

"The solution can improve by having more analytical features."

"When we implemented BusinessObjects, the setup was straightforward. After SAP bought BusinessObjects, it gradually became more and more stepwise. There are too many steps, and they take too much time."

"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."

"The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint."

"I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools. Web Intelligence is good for reporting and all kinds of stuff, but I would rather have one product. All the reporting features of Web Intelligence should be developed within Lumira. A lot of predictive abilities have been brought into the cloud version of SAP Analytics. It would be nice to see a lot of newer technologies and AI. Predictive capabilities are becoming a little more standard. Instead of having to get another model, we are just looking for one solution to deal with analytics including predictive."

"Most of the Apps right now are into dashboarding. This tool, for the Crystal Reports in the phase I'm primarily working on, does not have those dashboarding capabilities, like in the other advanced tools like Power BI or ClickView, and compared to them the dashboard generation is not that great."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform cons

"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."

"The financing part needs improvement."

"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."

"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."

"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."

"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."

"Maybe some Power BI-related features could be added, like dashboards or direct editing in reports."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."

"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."

"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."

"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."

"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."

"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."

"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."

"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."

"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."

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pricing and cost advice

"The cost of licensing can be a significant factor to consider when upgrading or transitioning to a new version of SAP Crystal Reports. It's important to evaluate the benefits and features offered by the new version against the associated costs to ensure it aligns with your organization's needs and budget."

"SAP Crystal Reports is a very expensive solution."

"This product costs a lot of money."

"We pay fifteen hundred dollars as licensing fee."

"I feel that SAP Crystal Reports is a reasonably priced product."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user6663

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

See all answers

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 wou...

See all answers

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 be...

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?

Maybe some Power BI-related features could be added, like dashboards or direct editing in reports. We use query langu...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?

We use SAP Crystal Reports for reporting. We use it for financial reports like statements of accounts, trial balances...

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP Crystal Reports?

We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs IBM Cognos

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

SAP Analytics Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Essbase vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Looker vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Competitors

TIBCO Jaspersoft vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 22% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 21% of the time

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 10% of the time

MicroStrategy vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 7% of the time

Pentaho Business Analytics vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP Crystal Reports Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

October 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

October 2024

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Crystals

October 2024

Download SAP Crystal Reports product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects

No data available

Learn More

IBM

SAP

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.
Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.
Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

Reviews from Real Users

SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."

A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "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. It has great visualization.

Turn information from almost any data source into a sophisticated, interactive report with SAP Crystal Reports. This powerful, user-friendly application for small businesses and departments can help you deliver key insights to the right decision maker, at the right time, in the right format.

Click here for a free trial

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

October 2024

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: October 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.