SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core comparison

SAP and Windward Studios are both solutions in the Reporting category. SAP is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.4, while Windward Studios is ranked #25. SAP holds a 2.8% mindshare in RT, compared to Windward Studios’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of SAP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Windward Studios users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SAP Crystal Reports and Windward Core based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP Crystal Reports vs. Windward Core Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

SAP Crystals vs. Windward Core

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.4%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Crystal Reports is 2.8%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windward Core is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

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.

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MVD Prasad

Assistant General Manager at Soma Enterprise

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

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.

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Hit Mistry

Vice President at PSC Group, LLC

It has streamlined a lot of our reporting processes

Their PDF needs improvement. We've run into some issues when we tried to generate a Word document. If we try to generate the same document in PDF, sometimes it doesn't look exactly the same. We have gone back to Windward support a couple of times on a few issues, e.g., we had some issues with reports that had barcodes on them. The barcode wasn't displaying properly. It was displaying as a skewed image as opposed to an actual barcode. Therefore, we worked with Windward support, having some daily calls with them. Then, within the next release, they were able to resolve the issue. They even gave us a pre-release, so we could implement it into our code before the actual official release on the website. It would be nice to have some sort of workflow capability within the product. Anytime you generate a document, nine out of ten times there is something which precedes that document, whether it's entering parameters in, e.g., if I'm requesting the status report for a project. The first thing that I usually want from a status perspective is which project is the status report for and which week is it for, as those are some of the things that I have to supply before I can generate a document. From a workflow perspective, it would be nice to say, "This project belongs to this person, and this person is okay with me pulling information out of this document for whatever need I have." From a workflow perspective, I would like a wizard interface that goes step-by-step, like a questionnaire, where there are a bunch of things that you have to answer, "Yes or no," before it knows what to do or how to produce the document. Right now, we write our own custom UI for this.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."

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

"The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau."

"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."

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

"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."

"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."

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

More IBM Cognos pros

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

"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."

"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."

"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."

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

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

"It is an user-friendly solution."

"The most valuable feature is the fact that it uses Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel as base templates, so when you generate, it's easy for clients to upgrade, and maintain, and generate out either a PDF or an actual Excel spreadsheet."

"Windward helped automate reports which otherwise would have needed IT to create and maintain."

"Creating dynamic table of contents (TOC) based on dynamic data in different reports."

"The ability for users to have design and layout control is very important because it allows them control over the design and layout of their reports, without the help of IT."

"Thanks to Windward, our documents need very few tweaks and are usually "customer-ready" right out of the box."

"Technical support is very good. They reply immediately and follow-up with any questions."

"The quality of the layouts and designs is second to none. Windward's ability to help us generate templates, for which we can actually tag documents, is the key feature that we use."

"For the designer we use AutoTag which is a Microsoft Word plugin. In general, it's easy to use, it doesn't have a very steep learning curve. It's not difficult, for people who know Microsoft Office well, to start using the AutoTag tool... It feels just like you're in a Microsoft Office environment with some extra functionality."

More Windward Core pros

Cons

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."

"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."

"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."

"It could have more options for themes."

"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."

"Need improvement towards Visualization."

"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."

More IBM Cognos cons

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

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

"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."

"The financing part needs improvement."

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

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

"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."

"There is always room for improvement in the speed, especially with the complex, multi-line Excel spreadsheets. They made some improvements in the last version that are quantum-fold faster than when I first started. But there is always room for improvement there. You always want reports faster and faster."

"One thing that frustrated us a little bit is that we have to use the Office PDF generation, because the native PDF generation is always slightly different compared to the one in Office. The formatting is just a little bit off here and there... This means that we need to have Office installed on the server to be able to generate these documents via API."

"I have to deal with VERY long lists of properties contained in our XMLs and it would be nice if Windward offered a way to alphabetize this property list."

"We would like to shrink these reports into one page, because there is a lot of free space on one page, but we cannot shrink it into the one page to be shorter. This is one thing we would like to change."

"Regarding AutoTag, we do notice that when you want to refactor a little bit of your template design or when you want to implement changes, sometimes you need a lot of clicks to get the change done. For instance... it would be helpful to be able to find all the identifiers with the old name and replace them with the new name. We haven't found a way to do that with the find-replace tool. Throughout the user-interface of Windward, you need a lot of clicks to get that done."

"AutoTag needs to be web-based, so our customers can create reports from our web."

"The only thing I can think of, that we'd like it to do, would be the ability to "burst out" reports, meaning one section of a report could be sent out as an email to a manager of a department, say, without having to run multiple reports to do it. As it sits now, we have to do multiple reports to do it."

"It would be nice to have a black-and-white, ideal setup for servers, to maximize capabilities. We went through a lot of scenarios to get something that is scalable. An ideal AWS-package server setup could have saved us a lot of time. But I understand this is very company specific."

More Windward Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The solution is affordable."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

"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."

"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 and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"We pay fifteen hundred dollars as licensing fee."

"SAP Crystal Reports is a very expensive solution."

"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."

"This product costs a lot of money."

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

"It is absolutely worth the value. They have flexibility, depending on what you're looking for from a buying standpoint. The current pricing models are quite flexible, with the ability to use it on an as-needed basis, or to get a perpetual license that covers a customer that might have extensive needs. I think it's pretty good."

"We negotiated our prices many years ago, and while they go up a little bit here and there, they've been pretty steady."

"I can't advise anybody about pricing and licensing, but it was competitive. A lot of things we did look at were all volume-based, so it was a case of you buy a license to generate this many reports a year, and that's not something that I'm particularly interested in because it doesn't give you any idea - if we have future growth, or if we have a lean year - for budgeting reasons it's more difficult. With Windward it's a straight out license fee, whether we generate one page or we generate a million, it makes no difference."

"The cost is reasonable."

"Pricing is something I complain about. Production pricing is okay, but for a testing environment the pricing looks a bit high to me."

"The pricing is fair. The way that they have it priced is the Windward Designer has a price that's associated with it. Then, depending on the number of cores that you're looking for, that is the price that you pay. The more cores that you want, the more expensive it is."

"CapEx fits our requirements, OpEx is higher due to the 20% service and maintenance cost, where we normally pay 15%."

"Windward is very expensive when the volume of documents being generated is low and it is cheap when the volume is high."

More Windward Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

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 ...

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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

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

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Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

QlikView vs IBM Cognos

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 21% of the time

TIBCO Jaspersoft vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 21% of the time

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 11% of the time

MicroStrategy vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 7% of the time

Qlik Sense vs SAP Crystal Reports

Compared 3% of the time

More SAP Crystal Reports Competitors

Docmosis vs Windward Core

Compared 40% of the time

More Windward Core Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Crystals

October 2024

Download SAP Crystal Reports product report

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core

October 2024

Download Windward Core product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

Windward, Windward Studios

Learn More

IBM

SAP

Windward Studios

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.”

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

What is Windward Studios?

For over a decade, Windward has been a leader in the software development industry by creating the most innovative and advanced document automation and reporting software on the planet.

Data-Driven Document Automation

Generate stunning documents that incorporate relevant data easily and seamlessly.

Visually Striking Designs

Our software provides innovative tools and features to build beautiful designs and stunning layouts, all within the familiar Microsoft Office Suite. Your imagination is the only limitation.

Agile Document Logic

We offer the best document automation software for the new millennium. With our conditional logic functionality, you can swiftly personalize the document content to gratify your end users.

Huge Time Saver

Looking for faster template creation that enables you to keep pace with your business? With our software, template creation takes minutes and you do not need any programming experience to get it done.

Exceptionally Intuitive Interface

Our program's design offers documents that can be edited, customized and designed using MS Office. Enjoy a stress-free document automation experience in programs you already know.

Efficient Savings

Significantly reduce the resources and time required for template development by using our streamlined template design and document automation tools.

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.

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

HAL, Inc., Axe Group, White Clark Group, Blueprint Software, Aspect Security, Nucleus Software, LeBlanc’s Food Stores, South Sound 911, Aegon, Barclays, Fidelity Investments, ArisGlobal LLC, USDA, RepLink, AON Hewitt

Buyer's Guide

SAP Crystals vs. Windward Core

October 2024

Free Report: SAP Crystal Reports vs. Windward Core

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Crystal Reports vs. Windward Core and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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