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Looker Studio vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (12th)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.3% mindshare, down 4.0% since last year.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio2.7%
Microsoft Power BI17.3%
Tableau Enterprise15.6%
Other64.4%
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
Microsoft Power BI8.9%
Tableau Enterprise6.2%
Other82.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.
Declan Dempsey - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Keyrus
Provides efficient data reporting while needing easier deployment and improved interface
Users tend to put everything into Excel, though I try to discourage this. The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made. This means you don't have those months that get assigned. You can just get to the point and get a report very quickly. Unfortunately, in some ways, it's a double-edged sword because it becomes more of a self-service ETL, even for the reporting team. If you have a decent universe and you just want to quickly get something together, it's very usable. Compared to Click, you can drop those reports very quickly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit; it is very accessible and not too difficult to use."
"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."
"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"​The report development tool called SAP Web Intelligence under the BI Launch Pad portal has been the most valuable feature."
"The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great."
"This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."
"The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform outperforms all other tools such as Power BI and Tableau, showing more accuracy, reliability, and flexibility compared to all other BI tools worldwide."
"The common metadata environment means that the entire organisation has the same definition of core measures rather than these being derived in spreadsheets or specific reports."
 

Cons

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."
"There is still a lot to be done on the mobile side to make Web Intelligence truly seamless between the desktop and mobile versions and I would like to see SAP pay a lot more attention to this."
"The admin features for disk space management need work. It's very difficult to manage the disk space by the application; good admin features and not included to allow you to do that. I don't believe that is in the latest version of the product either."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."
"The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
"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."
"It is not simple to use."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"The tool is free."
"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."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
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 would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
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 been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.