Business Analytics Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-03T03:09:27Z
May 3, 2024
It is a very good and reliable product from SAP's perspective, especially compared to other products. It offers a comprehensive set of BI reporting features, and SAP regularly improves the product. Before I left my previous company, they were transitioning to the SAC platform for analytics due to its capabilities in planning, predictive analytics, and forecasting. Overall, I highly recommend this tool as it is very helpful and improves productivity. I would rate the product a seven out of ten.
My advice for new users is to consider SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, especially if they're dealing with complex organizational structures. It is beneficial for centralizing data from various departments into a unified system, providing a robust solution for analysis and decision-making. Overall, I would rate it as a nine out of ten.
There are mixed reviews on this product from our customers. You won't find as many companies use it as you'd find with HANA. It's not widely used. I rate this solution seven out of 10.
Learn what your peers think about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
BI/BO Hana Application Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-02-24T13:41:02Z
Feb 24, 2022
Just recently, we moved SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform over to the cloud. Before, it was on our home site, but recently, e.g. just two days ago, we moved it to the cloud. We've been using three different products: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Analytics Cloud though not fully on it yet, and Power BI. I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten. You cannot compare SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform with Power BI, but WebI, or SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, is there. Power BI is more powerful compared to WebI, because there are a lot of flexibilities, and you can use them in a simpler way, e.g. these are also possible in WebI, but it's more complex, especially during the setup.
They're evolving very quickly. They are giving users new features. They are taking feedback from the users, and they are making sure that they are not losing the trends. They understand the user needs and where the industry is moving in terms of cloud, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies that are going to be the driving force in the future. It is really amazing how SAP is doing it. I have been working with their tools for the last 10 years, and I've seen that they are coming up with almost everything that users need. Now that everything is moving to the cloud, they are also working on the cloud side of their business. For example, SAP BusinessObjects is not good with dashboarding. It is basically for financial reporting and drill-down reporting. So, they came up with a cloud product that is not only for reporting but also for dashboarding. They have given a one-stop solution wherein you can do your reporting, dashboarding, and storytelling. If you are completely new to business intelligence but you are already using SAP solutions, this is the best tool that you can use to leverage your financial systems or logistic systems. It is not a self-BI type of tool. It needs an IT expert. If your data is important and you are a big company or a mid-scale company, you should go with SAP BusinessObjects because it is already in the market, and it has integration with SAP ERP. The user experience will be good. You'll not see any performance issues with the queries. At the end of the day, when a business user sees a report, he doesn't understand which tool it is, whether it is SAP, Power BI, or something else. They want the experience to be good. They want the functionalities. The advice for a new company is to first find out the integration. If you're using Power BI with SQL Server, it will work wonders, but if you are using it with SAP HANA or SAP BW, you'll not get the experience that SAP can give you. You need to understand the landscape and different applications that are there and then decide whether it would work for your use case. SAP doesn't fit everywhere. Similarly, Power BI doesn't fit everywhere. An organization that is completely new to BI should try to identify: * What type of reports do they want? Do they want aggregated reports or operational reports? * Who is the target audience? There are a lot of processes that are involved depending on whether the data is coming from your data warehouse, or you're querying the OLAP system directly. I read a very good article where a company did this exercise and asked enterprises about the BI tools they use. What they ended up seeing was that no organization was using one BI tool. There were two, three, or even four BI tools. So, it all depends on your source systems. It is always a combination, and there can't be only one BI tool. It is difficult to have a single, centralized BI tool. I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.
Application Development Assoc Manager at Eccenture
Real User
2022-01-05T07:30:17Z
Jan 5, 2022
I rate SAP BusinessObjects eight out of 10. I would recommend BusinessObjects, but it depends on the requirements. SAP is a better choice if you are doing daily reporting where you need to drag and drop objects and create ad hoc reporting then export to Excel or CSV.
Managing Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
2022-01-05T07:26:56Z
Jan 5, 2022
I rate SAP BusinessObjects a six out of ten. To those looking into implementing this solution, in the SAP side, there are modules. You should focus on one of the modules. There's HR, FI, SDMM, et cetera. Also, there are BI modules, and there are lots of products on the BI side: BW, Hana, SAP BusinessObjects. There is also a cloud side of SAP. So, they are time consuming. You should focus on one of them before jumping to the second one.
My advice to anyone considering SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is to keep an eye on the requirement side that they need. If you are looking for a flashy dashboard with a lot of user interactions with click and dicing the graphs, I don't recommend the Business Intelligence component or the Crystal Reports. They may have to look into other products. On a scale of one to then, I would say SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a 7.
Head of BI and Analytics at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2021-11-05T14:54:41Z
Nov 5, 2021
This solution is not meant to be very complicated, solutions that are complicated require other tools. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.
I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using. What we have is completely on-premise as we are still on ECC. We are using the HANA architecture, and we are still on-premise. I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I would recommend the solution to other users and companies.
Manager Data Analytics and Interfaces at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
2021-09-07T15:39:11Z
Sep 7, 2021
I would advise others to get somebody who knows what they're doing when they install it. That's what we did. It is a complex product, and trying to fumble through all the bits and pieces and the nuances of it is challenging. It has been around for years. It has been there ever since I went to software engineering. It does what it does. It is built to do that every year. It just needs to get more efficient at doing it. It just needs better integration with third parties and maybe a price reduction for the licensing. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.
Senior Architect at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-05-31T10:46:37Z
May 31, 2022
The SAP Business Objects BLB platform is available in the SAP business technology platform, which is accessible via the cloud platform. Instead of going with on-premise, it is better to analyze software as a solution. I would rate the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.
BI & Analytics Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2022-05-04T06:59:39Z
May 4, 2022
I would advise others the solution has a great presentation layer, but it needs to be managed well before you receive the most out of the performance. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
Business Intelligence & Data Management Director at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-03-21T12:11:37Z
Mar 21, 2022
I would recommend this solution to others. We are using an on-premise version which is good but the cloud version is more up-to-date. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
For the last 17 years, we were using on-prem. Last year, we upgraded our SAP into HANA. From that time we have been using the cloud and updating on the cloud. We don't have any database servers. We don't have any physical hardware in my organization. We are using a cloud solution now. I would recommend the solution to other organizations. In order to grow, you really need some sort of analysis element to help guide you, and this solution fulfills that need. I'd advise new users to use a single solution for all the functionality to make a user-friendly solution. If you are using multiple solutions you have to integrate all the solutions together. If multiple solutions are out there, everybody is facing challenges. It's much easier to just have one solution, one point of entry. It helps align with your business needs. Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. Crystal Report and the enterprise reporting is very good. It's very detailed. In the VB report, they have also come up with various features, not only setting up the security at the back-end. Even at the database-level, if a customer doesn't want to do any security setup or changes, and they want to do a report-level or the universe-level restrictions, that is in the IDT tool. From version 4.2 onwards, we have that functionality. Last time, we tested it in SP6 and it worked well. If they don't want to have any security at the back-end and want to go with the security at the BO level, and if they want to make sure that the report is accessible by the higher management, mid-level management, that kind of a security, we can do it. We have seen that feature in SP6.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-12-27T19:55:10Z
Dec 27, 2021
I rate SAP BusinessObjects seven out of 10. However, I can't recommend BusinessObjects because its usage is limited, and it can't provide a new solution for end-users.
BusinessObject Delivery Dev. at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-11-19T13:10:19Z
Nov 19, 2021
I rate BusinessObjects nine out of 10. It's a mature, complete product with a long history and a decent reputation on the market. Many organizations and commercial companies are using it right now. It's reliable, scalable, and stable too. I would recommend it.
Analytics Manager at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2021-11-02T08:56:36Z
Nov 2, 2021
Our organization prefers one visualization tool, that's why SAP will be in our roadmap. I think companies prefer self-service. BSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform seems a little typical tool in terms of self-service. We recommend other solutions, such as Microsoft BI, because they can do a lot more functions.
Director of Underwriting & Product Development at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
Real User
2021-10-16T07:22:16Z
Oct 16, 2021
For anybody who does not have a BI solution and is thinking about implementation should look at them all before deciding. We have another vendor we have worked with, Cognos, and I have worked with Tableau and it is important to evaluate all of the solutions to see which one makes more sense for their use case. I downloaded a list of the top five and they all are pretty similar, I will not say they are the same because there are a lot of differences but they are all heading in the same direction of getting the information to the universe and pulling out the data. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
Data Science Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-09-10T17:50:00Z
Sep 10, 2021
SAP is a stable solution, but you need to have multi-experts to be able to maintain it. The biggest console that we implemented is using SAP as a self-service BI. It is an incentive for business users and different stakeholders, to be able to use the self-service BI and answer their questions instantly. This is conditioning that we as IT are using the right models, the right repository, and requiring all the data for them. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight.
Global Product Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-07-13T12:35:37Z
Jul 13, 2021
We are SAP partners. I use the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the product to others. Even now, for ourselves, we are looking into an alternative option. I would rate the solution at a six out of ten.
Manager IT (SAP) at CLASSIC MARBLE COMPANY PRIVATE LIMITED
Real User
Top 20
2021-05-21T14:38:14Z
May 21, 2021
We're just an end-user and a customer. We don't have a business relationship with SAP. We are not yet on the latest version of the product. I would advise new users to not go for these old versions and instead go for the new versions that at least use embedded analytics, et cetera. I'd rate the solution at around seven out of ten. There are a few areas it could improve upon.
Enterprise Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-03-16T23:02:24Z
Mar 16, 2021
My advice is to try to truly understand the system. It is fairly complicated. To get this system to work, you need a systems engineer and an architect in addition to a lot of other people who understand what's going on behind the scenes.
Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2021-03-03T04:12:13Z
Mar 3, 2021
I will be a bit biased, and I would definitely recommend SAP BI. It is a bit more robust and mature as compared to Power BI. Power BI keeps changing every day, which is not a bad thing considering how old it is. For a serious setup, I would rather use SAP BI, but I look forward to having one tool rather than two. I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
Gerente de BI at a government with 201-500 employees
Real User
2021-02-10T07:21:12Z
Feb 10, 2021
We are customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the organization. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it as a perfect ten. It's been great. For the most part, we have been happy with the product.
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-01-27T16:57:15Z
Jan 27, 2021
For data visualization, I would recommend Power BI and Tableau. For the report format, I would recommend SAP BusinessObjects. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Business Intelligence Functional Manager BU SAP at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
MSP
2020-10-27T17:56:19Z
Oct 27, 2020
We are working with an older version also well as the latest version of the solution. I would recommend this product to other organizations. It's a stable and powerful enterprise solution. Everything from the broadcasting to the scheduling, to the user management and the reporting, is very powerful. 90% of customers end up asking for a solid and consistent reporting solution. In these cases, I definitely suggest SAP Business Objects Platform. That said, the dashboard isn't the best with this product. It should be noted that SAP is working on their dashboards offerings in Cloud environment. Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
I am a great believe in choosing a commercially successful product rather than technical best of breed as there is nothing worse than having an 'orphan' product. That being a product that is poorly supported, does not have a development path and limited availability of expertise. Business Objects is a commercially successful product and despite SAP's poor management of the product is likely to continue to be so.
Team Leader at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2018-07-25T07:31:00Z
Jul 25, 2018
Look at who will be your end-user group. Who is going to use the tool? I would rate this solution at seven out of 10. Seen from the administrative and compliance point of view, it's an excellent tool for an enterprise. But I can't give it any more than that because the user interface for the average user is not very intuitive. You need too much training before you're able to use the tool effectively.
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...
It is a very good and reliable product from SAP's perspective, especially compared to other products. It offers a comprehensive set of BI reporting features, and SAP regularly improves the product. Before I left my previous company, they were transitioning to the SAC platform for analytics due to its capabilities in planning, predictive analytics, and forecasting. Overall, I highly recommend this tool as it is very helpful and improves productivity. I would rate the product a seven out of ten.
My advice for new users is to consider SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, especially if they're dealing with complex organizational structures. It is beneficial for centralizing data from various departments into a unified system, providing a robust solution for analysis and decision-making. Overall, I would rate it as a nine out of ten.
I recommend those planning to buy the solution to try it for a few days. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
There are mixed reviews on this product from our customers. You won't find as many companies use it as you'd find with HANA. It's not widely used. I rate this solution seven out of 10.
Overall, I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an 8.5 out of 10.
I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution. I rate the solution as a seven out of ten.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.
Just recently, we moved SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform over to the cloud. Before, it was on our home site, but recently, e.g. just two days ago, we moved it to the cloud. We've been using three different products: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Analytics Cloud though not fully on it yet, and Power BI. I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten. You cannot compare SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform with Power BI, but WebI, or SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, is there. Power BI is more powerful compared to WebI, because there are a lot of flexibilities, and you can use them in a simpler way, e.g. these are also possible in WebI, but it's more complex, especially during the setup.
They're evolving very quickly. They are giving users new features. They are taking feedback from the users, and they are making sure that they are not losing the trends. They understand the user needs and where the industry is moving in terms of cloud, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies that are going to be the driving force in the future. It is really amazing how SAP is doing it. I have been working with their tools for the last 10 years, and I've seen that they are coming up with almost everything that users need. Now that everything is moving to the cloud, they are also working on the cloud side of their business. For example, SAP BusinessObjects is not good with dashboarding. It is basically for financial reporting and drill-down reporting. So, they came up with a cloud product that is not only for reporting but also for dashboarding. They have given a one-stop solution wherein you can do your reporting, dashboarding, and storytelling. If you are completely new to business intelligence but you are already using SAP solutions, this is the best tool that you can use to leverage your financial systems or logistic systems. It is not a self-BI type of tool. It needs an IT expert. If your data is important and you are a big company or a mid-scale company, you should go with SAP BusinessObjects because it is already in the market, and it has integration with SAP ERP. The user experience will be good. You'll not see any performance issues with the queries. At the end of the day, when a business user sees a report, he doesn't understand which tool it is, whether it is SAP, Power BI, or something else. They want the experience to be good. They want the functionalities. The advice for a new company is to first find out the integration. If you're using Power BI with SQL Server, it will work wonders, but if you are using it with SAP HANA or SAP BW, you'll not get the experience that SAP can give you. You need to understand the landscape and different applications that are there and then decide whether it would work for your use case. SAP doesn't fit everywhere. Similarly, Power BI doesn't fit everywhere. An organization that is completely new to BI should try to identify: * What type of reports do they want? Do they want aggregated reports or operational reports? * Who is the target audience? There are a lot of processes that are involved depending on whether the data is coming from your data warehouse, or you're querying the OLAP system directly. I read a very good article where a company did this exercise and asked enterprises about the BI tools they use. What they ended up seeing was that no organization was using one BI tool. There were two, three, or even four BI tools. So, it all depends on your source systems. It is always a combination, and there can't be only one BI tool. It is difficult to have a single, centralized BI tool. I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.
I rate SAP BusinessObjects eight out of 10.
I rate SAP BusinessObjects eight out of 10. I would recommend BusinessObjects, but it depends on the requirements. SAP is a better choice if you are doing daily reporting where you need to drag and drop objects and create ad hoc reporting then export to Excel or CSV.
I rate SAP BusinessObjects a six out of ten. To those looking into implementing this solution, in the SAP side, there are modules. You should focus on one of the modules. There's HR, FI, SDMM, et cetera. Also, there are BI modules, and there are lots of products on the BI side: BW, Hana, SAP BusinessObjects. There is also a cloud side of SAP. So, they are time consuming. You should focus on one of them before jumping to the second one.
My advice to anyone considering SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is to keep an eye on the requirement side that they need. If you are looking for a flashy dashboard with a lot of user interactions with click and dicing the graphs, I don't recommend the Business Intelligence component or the Crystal Reports. They may have to look into other products. On a scale of one to then, I would say SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a 7.
This solution is not meant to be very complicated, solutions that are complicated require other tools. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.
It integrates well with many other solutions. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using. What we have is completely on-premise as we are still on ECC. We are using the HANA architecture, and we are still on-premise. I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I would recommend the solution to other users and companies.
I would advise others to get somebody who knows what they're doing when they install it. That's what we did. It is a complex product, and trying to fumble through all the bits and pieces and the nuances of it is challenging. It has been around for years. It has been there ever since I went to software engineering. It does what it does. It is built to do that every year. It just needs to get more efficient at doing it. It just needs better integration with third parties and maybe a price reduction for the licensing. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.
Although I haven't been able to use the BI portion, I would give this solution rating of eight.
The SAP Business Objects BLB platform is available in the SAP business technology platform, which is accessible via the cloud platform. Instead of going with on-premise, it is better to analyze software as a solution. I would rate the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.
I would advise others the solution has a great presentation layer, but it needs to be managed well before you receive the most out of the performance. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
I would recommend this solution to others. We are using an on-premise version which is good but the cloud version is more up-to-date. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
For the last 17 years, we were using on-prem. Last year, we upgraded our SAP into HANA. From that time we have been using the cloud and updating on the cloud. We don't have any database servers. We don't have any physical hardware in my organization. We are using a cloud solution now. I would recommend the solution to other organizations. In order to grow, you really need some sort of analysis element to help guide you, and this solution fulfills that need. I'd advise new users to use a single solution for all the functionality to make a user-friendly solution. If you are using multiple solutions you have to integrate all the solutions together. If multiple solutions are out there, everybody is facing challenges. It's much easier to just have one solution, one point of entry. It helps align with your business needs. Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. Crystal Report and the enterprise reporting is very good. It's very detailed. In the VB report, they have also come up with various features, not only setting up the security at the back-end. Even at the database-level, if a customer doesn't want to do any security setup or changes, and they want to do a report-level or the universe-level restrictions, that is in the IDT tool. From version 4.2 onwards, we have that functionality. Last time, we tested it in SP6 and it worked well. If they don't want to have any security at the back-end and want to go with the security at the BO level, and if they want to make sure that the report is accessible by the higher management, mid-level management, that kind of a security, we can do it. We have seen that feature in SP6.
I rate SAP BusinessObjects seven out of 10. However, I can't recommend BusinessObjects because its usage is limited, and it can't provide a new solution for end-users.
I rate BusinessObjects nine out of 10. It's a mature, complete product with a long history and a decent reputation on the market. Many organizations and commercial companies are using it right now. It's reliable, scalable, and stable too. I would recommend it.
Our organization prefers one visualization tool, that's why SAP will be in our roadmap. I think companies prefer self-service. BSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform seems a little typical tool in terms of self-service. We recommend other solutions, such as Microsoft BI, because they can do a lot more functions.
For anybody who does not have a BI solution and is thinking about implementation should look at them all before deciding. We have another vendor we have worked with, Cognos, and I have worked with Tableau and it is important to evaluate all of the solutions to see which one makes more sense for their use case. I downloaded a list of the top five and they all are pretty similar, I will not say they are the same because there are a lot of differences but they are all heading in the same direction of getting the information to the universe and pulling out the data. I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
SAP is a stable solution, but you need to have multi-experts to be able to maintain it. The biggest console that we implemented is using SAP as a self-service BI. It is an incentive for business users and different stakeholders, to be able to use the self-service BI and answer their questions instantly. This is conditioning that we as IT are using the right models, the right repository, and requiring all the data for them. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight.
We are SAP partners. I use the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the product to others. Even now, for ourselves, we are looking into an alternative option. I would rate the solution at a six out of ten.
We're just an end-user and a customer. We don't have a business relationship with SAP. We are not yet on the latest version of the product. I would advise new users to not go for these old versions and instead go for the new versions that at least use embedded analytics, et cetera. I'd rate the solution at around seven out of ten. There are a few areas it could improve upon.
My advice is to try to truly understand the system. It is fairly complicated. To get this system to work, you need a systems engineer and an architect in addition to a lot of other people who understand what's going on behind the scenes.
I will be a bit biased, and I would definitely recommend SAP BI. It is a bit more robust and mature as compared to Power BI. Power BI keeps changing every day, which is not a bad thing considering how old it is. For a serious setup, I would rather use SAP BI, but I look forward to having one tool rather than two. I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.
We are customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the organization. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it as a perfect ten. It's been great. For the most part, we have been happy with the product.
I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.
For data visualization, I would recommend Power BI and Tableau. For the report format, I would recommend SAP BusinessObjects. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
We are working with an older version also well as the latest version of the solution. I would recommend this product to other organizations. It's a stable and powerful enterprise solution. Everything from the broadcasting to the scheduling, to the user management and the reporting, is very powerful. 90% of customers end up asking for a solid and consistent reporting solution. In these cases, I definitely suggest SAP Business Objects Platform. That said, the dashboard isn't the best with this product. It should be noted that SAP is working on their dashboards offerings in Cloud environment. Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
I am a great believe in choosing a commercially successful product rather than technical best of breed as there is nothing worse than having an 'orphan' product. That being a product that is poorly supported, does not have a development path and limited availability of expertise. Business Objects is a commercially successful product and despite SAP's poor management of the product is likely to continue to be so.
I advise someone considering this solution: Go big or go home!
Look at who will be your end-user group. Who is going to use the tool? I would rate this solution at seven out of 10. Seen from the administrative and compliance point of view, it's an excellent tool for an enterprise. But I can't give it any more than that because the user interface for the average user is not very intuitive. You need too much training before you're able to use the tool effectively.