SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

It is easy to use and it connects to the major databases.

It provides trusted business information for decisions and operations management.

The sales, operations, and IT areas could use improvement.

I have been using Crystal Reports for 20 years, since 1997.

I have had no major issues with deployment.

I have had no issues with the stability.

This is a simple but powerful reporting tool. I don’t have scalability issues for more than 100 users.

I would give customer service a rating of 4.5/5.

Technical support is good. I would give technical support a rating of 4.5/5.

I used Excel, but that was a long time ago when the BI tools were very basic.

I have implemented both with a vendor team and in-house. My level is expert.

The ROI depends on your use. In the first implementation, it was very productive with sales increases and time reduction.

Today, I only use a standalone license.

If you are looking for a cheap operational tool, the Crystal Reports family is the correct decision.

The most valuable features for us are its ability to provide reports on what's going on in the database and to schedule reports for end users.

It's made data more accessible to our end users in a couple of ways. First, with the ability to schedule reports, end users no longer need to run reports on demand. They're run and made available at pre-scheduled times. Second, the data is readily available to end users, as opposed to having to run queries for them.

I'd like an easier way for end users or an AD group to subscribe to reports that can be received as attachments to emails.

I've been using it for twenty years.

The configuration is cumbersome and not really clear. It would be nicer for it to be easier to configure across multiple servers.

There have been no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it.

Customer support is spotty at best, and when they do get involved it has to be according to the support person's schedule. They contact you and if you are busy, it is hard for them to understand that as a customer you would like pre-notification and the ability to set some time aside.

We have always used Crystal Reports. We have enhanced our reporting by using Tableau as well for dashboards.

The initial setup is complex. They need to have clearer instructions on how to configure servers for the best performance.

We did an in-house upgrade of two systems into one. There was no vendor support onsite.

Test your installation prior to upgrading to a production environment.

It allows me to pull data from multiple data sources without coding SQL. Creating SQL code to copy is one of my favorite uses.

We have better efficiency overall and we've saved on doing data imports -- $36K so far. I can do them myself using Crystal Reports.

Also, it's essential to our ERP function.

I have an old version and there's no hyperlink function. Otherwise, everything I could wish for is probably already out there!

However, I had an issue where if I had the main application in one Window and a fly out menu on another monitor, it would crash. It was probably a hardware issue on my side.

I've been using it for nine years. We purchased it in 2007 and I was one of the first employees to be trained on it. I use it practically every day.

I had no issues deploying it.

I had the instability issues, described above, which led to the system crashing.

We've had no issues scaling it out.

I've never needed to use it as I am able to find the answers on Google.

I believe it was bundled with our Tyle/Eden solution.

We implemented it with out in-house team. Our configuration is pretty simple. We don't use any of the enterprise features.

It is essential for our ERP reporting to function, so the value is very high.

I can't live without it. I wish it could do a few more things, such as better hyperlink functionality. I have an older version, so I have no idea if a newer version has the features I would wish for.

It is quite a bit to take in at once. Just start with something that is meaningful to you.

Report Wizards and Sample Reports are very useful for us, and I'd say they're the most valuable features as well. I only wish there were more reports to choose from because the wizards make it easier to create a quick report.

Reporting once a month at our partners meeting with my providers, Crystal Reports ensures that I get the information directly from our SQL database so that I can combine and manipulate my reports as needed.

For me, the biggest area for improvement would definitely be the sample reports and wizards with more options and themes you can use to create more report styles.

We've used it for five years.

The software was installed prior to starting my position with this practice, so I'm not certain whether there were or were not any issues with deployment.

There are no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

In my experience, technical support is good, although I haven't really had to call in for many issues.

I haven't used anything similar to Crystal Reports in the past.

It was already set up when I began my current position, so I wouldn't know whether setup was straightforward or complex.

One valuable feature is the ability to integrate seamlessly with the Business Objects Enterprise Software solution.

It allows the organization to share information/data with their customers so that they can make decisions based off of actual data.

I feel an improvement would be allowing users to change the font on translated fields. I remember having to work around this by overlaying fields with a formula because formatting was not available in the translation management tool.

I have been using Crystal Reports software for over 10 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

The team did have questions on stability/scalability practices for the Business Objects Enterprise Software solution. SAP has provided documentation and is working with us on this.

7/10

It was pretty straightforward in terms of setup. It contains the basic setup for data sources. It has a good amount of options which makes the software flexible.

We implemented it with an in-house team and were lucky to have certified individuals involved with the project so they were familiar with all aspects and features of the products.

The organization has evaluated other products, but felt that this is a more mature reporting platform solution. It met many of our needs.

The only advice I can give is to just make sure that you are very familiar with the products and the services that they offer. Ensure there is someone involved who is familiar with the product and its features for the implementation of the SAP Business Objects Enterprise Software solution.

Ease of extracting data from various sources and displaying in such a way that user can’t tell the difference.

Largely used by stores manages and senior management to view / analyze sales metrics.

I would like to see a mobile and iOS friendly version.

I have used Crystal Reports for approximately 15 years, and in my current company for eight years.

There some issues with the deployment.

We have had minor issues with its stability.

It's been difficult to scale for our needs.

6/10

It was straightforward in terms of installation, development and deployment.

We’re implementing it through CMC and have an in-house application that pulls the report from CMC.

In my experience, the strongest feature of Crystal Reports is in developing automated business intelligence reports which convert raw data into actionable business intelligence.

In 2000 when I joined a manufacturing firm, most of the accounting data was exported into spreadsheets, consequently extensive time was spent on preparing reports and making timely decisions. In 2002, I initiated utilization of the MS Access Reporting tool by importing Excel files into Access. I created reports about all accounts including customers, suppliers, employees and entities related to the business. I soon realized that MS Access reporting is a good start, but it became hard to integrate data from variety of sources, in addition to an additional step of importing data into MS Access. On further research, I found Crystal Reports to address the issue of data integration, and hence utilized Crystal Reports 8-9. I found Crystal Reports to be an excellent dedicated reporting tool, and I invested time in taking advanced training.

I would like to have horizontal paging like crosstabs.

I have been using Crystal Reports for the last 12 Years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

This is a mature product and so I have not came across any major stability issues.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Previously, I used MS Excel, then Access before moving on to Crystal Reports.

It was fairly straightforward.

We performed an in-house implementation and this should be fine for all cases.

I found Crystal Reports to address the issue of data integration, and hence utilized Crystal Reports 2013. Crystal Reports is an excellent dedicated reporting tool, and I invested time into advanced training. I would say Crystal Reports is great tool, and has been in the business intelligence arena for a while. Hence, it's an excellent choice.

We have several dashboards that we use, some of which are for revenue. We have an SQL server as a data warehouse and the other division is using HANA for the backend database. 

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

The drag-and-drop capability is good.

It is easy to change between different file types.

The reports scheduler is helpful.

It provides a lot of flexibility.

There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities.

Crystal Reports could be more graphical.

Management wants to be able to see everything on one page.

I have been using Crystal Reports for more than 15 years, since the first version that was released.

This is a stable solution and we have not experienced any issues.

This product is easy to scale.

There are other divisions and some of our users have rights to create their own reports. I am not able to say how many users we have in total, but with the BI team and the developers, we have twenty users.

For an enterprise, you can have many users for SAP.

Most of the users are using it daily, to check their dashboards. We plan to continue using this solution as most of our dashboards are sitting on the SAP.

In my division, we have not contacted technical support, but it's possible that some of the other divisions have.

My guess is that the support is good.

I used Crystal Reports when it was incorporated with Visual Basic. It has now been separated, which makes it easier.

We also use Microsoft Power BI, which allows you to use graphs and filtering on one page. You can also see the different objects on one page. It is more on the graphical side.

They still have the same functionality where you can drill down to the lowest level, depending on the database schema.

The initial setup straightforward and it's easy to setup.

Initially, I did the deployment myself, although we now have a BI team to do this for us. It is a specific department that does all of the setups for us.

We have considered migrating to another platform but there are so many available.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to learn the dimensions that are needed for the reports. There are some measures or formulas that are needed, and you have to organize your templates. With practice, it becomes easy to use.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.