

Sigma and SAP Business Data Cloud compete within the business intelligence and analytics software category. SAP Business Data Cloud has an upper hand due to its comprehensive integration within the SAP ecosystem and advanced predictive analytics capabilities.
Features: Sigma provides a user-friendly spreadsheet-like interface for easy data interaction without the need for SQL expertise, live query access on cloud warehouses, and real-time collaboration features. Its formula capabilities greatly enhance the ease of use, allowing business users to manipulate data intuitively. SAP Business Data Cloud offers seamless integration within the SAP ecosystem, combining predictive analytics, planning, and business intelligence. This offers a more comprehensive suite of analytics tools, ensuring that users can extract deep insights from their data.
Room for Improvement: Sigma's primary challenges include handling complex queries and providing a wider array of visualization options. Another area for development is its interface responsiveness when dealing with larger datasets. SAP Business Data Cloud needs to enhance its visualization functionalities to stay competitive with platforms like Power BI and Tableau. Additionally, connectivity with non-SAP systems and the high costs associated with its deployment and integration can be barriers for potential users.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Sigma offers a cloud-first approach, leading to easier deployment across various environments, and is appreciated for its responsive and knowledgeable customer service. SAP Business Data Cloud also provides multiple deployment options but tends to be more difficult to integrate, particularly for non-SAP environments. While its support is effective, the cost and complexity of licensing within the SAP environment limit its broader accessibility.
Pricing and ROI: Sigma's pricing model reduces infrastructure expenses through its cloud-based approach and user-based licensing. However, its pricing structure can limit extensive report creation despite providing strong ROI in operational efficiency. In comparison, SAP Business Data Cloud is generally more expensive, mainly due to its planning functionalities, but the cost is justified by its robust integration within the SAP suite and valuable out-of-the-box capabilities. Its comprehensive BI functionalities can offer significant potential for cost reduction through optimized operational processes.
We have saved a lot on the number of employees, and implementation time for the projects has reduced significantly since we started using the standard features of SAP Business Data Cloud.
Once the content is available, then it is a faster go-live with lesser cost in implementation, and that would give an ROI.
It will definitely reduce the need for more staff to handle this technology.
It's essential for everything data-related within our company.
I have seen a return on investment with Sigma; we already said that it saves about a quarter, it gets me to answers about 25% faster.
I have definitely seen a return on investment through time saving because once the dashboards are built, they are built.
The technical support is a very well-organized service, with a lot of tools for me as a consultant and for the end user on how to contact SAP support and get issues solved.
For example, when I provide a set of instructions, they often simply ask me to implement those steps without checking whether they are applicable.
In SAP's policy, for the first couple of years, the product team is also part of the support team.
Their support I really think is a 10 out of 10.
The support staff are all professional users of the product itself and they are available almost 24/7 and helped me to come up with solutions to all of the problems that I had.
As Sigma is a cloud platform, you do not need to do all that maintenance work.
The scalability of SAP Business Data Cloud has been strong, as it has handled growth in data volume, user demand, and reporting requirements without significant performance issues.
SAP Analytics Cloud can be used by a small company, and it can be used by a large corporate.
Since SAP has consolidated everything on one platform, there is ample room to expand as much as needed.
Sigma seemed to scale just fine with our large data sets and could handle anything we threw at it.
Permissions are easily set, so you only get to see what you need to see and you can share what needs to be shared.
You have a chance to test it on your test tenant in small increments, so it should not break your productive reports and productive environment.
It has been reliable for reporting, analytics, and data integration activities.
This really allowed virtual access to data, which means there was no heavy replication of data involved, greatly improving performance.
We did not face typical errors during our project with Sigma.
On the other hand, it is perfectly fitting to the SAP environment, with seamless integration to all SAP modules, not only ERP but also SuccessFactors and other tools from the SAP family.
If SAP can come up with innovative options to reduce licensing costs, many customers would incline toward SAP Business Data Cloud.
If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.
The main improvement needed is in data modeling capabilities.
Sigma lacks a versioning feature to track changes.
It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst.
If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.
From a planning license perspective, SAC on that side is very expensive if you need developer features.
SAP Business Data Cloud is at a disadvantage when compared to tools like Talend or Informatica, which are cheaper and more capable.
The pricing of Sigma is a concern, as it restricts our ability to provide more users with report-creating capabilities due to the high cost of admin or report creator licenses.
For SuccessFactors and S/4HANA Cloud, there are pre-built reports available which are commonly used by customers.
SAP Business Data Cloud has positively impacted my organization by federating SAP data, which is now available for all to use.
The main standout feature is BDC Connect, as it is very useful for sharing data without replicating to third-party tools such as Enterprise Databricks, Snowflake or even in the near future, Google BigQuery as well as Microsoft Fabric.
The use of Sigma in decision-making, presentations to customers, and reporting to investors showcases its value in handling data-related tasks.
Sigma has positively affected my organization by saving us time in accessing information, which ultimately gets us to complete projects faster.
Sigma has positively impacted my organization because I think it has been a huge impact, and we use it for all our reporting and our dashboards for tracking.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| SAP Business Data Cloud | 2.7% |
| Sigma | 1.4% |
| Other | 95.9% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 44 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 21 |
| Large Enterprise | 64 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 7 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 2 |
SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) is a unified, intelligent data platform — part of the SAP Business AI Platform — that governs SAP and third-party data through a business data fabric. As an evolution of our industry-leading data, analytics and planning solutions, Business Data Cloud brings together Datasphere, Analytics Cloud, and Business Warehouse with a unified experience that delivers transformational insights across all lines of business. By harmonizing mission-critical data with the business processes and logic that give it meaning, SAP BDC delivers a trusted foundation for analytics and AI, empowering data teams and business leaders to make faster, more confident decisions.
What are the most important features of SAP Business Data Cloud?
What benefits or ROI should users look for in SAP Business Data Cloud?
SAP Business Data Cloud is a key component of SAP's vision for the autonomous enterprise. By unifying data connectivity, governance, semantic modeling, and analytics in a single cloud-native platform, SAP BDC eliminates fragmentation and complexity — serving as the connective tissue that ties your entire enterprise together and positioning organizations for long-term success in an AI-driven world.
Sigma enhances data tasks with an Excel-like interface, encouraging collaboration and non-technical user engagement. Its strengths include handling vast datasets and facilitating real-time data exploration, appealing to industries aiming for data-driven decision-making.
Sigma stands out with its capabilities for real-time collaboration and ease of use due to its Excel-inspired interface. It supports engagement with large datasets and prioritizes strong data governance. Key features include live queries on cloud databases and seamless integration with Snowflake. Its AI capabilities and self-service access help users perform detailed reporting and pivot table creation from extensive datasets, significantly affecting organizational efficiency and decision-making processes.
What are Sigma's most important features?Sigma is predominantly used for creating dashboards, reporting, and data visualization. It assists in real-time data exploration and ad hoc analysis, connecting seamlessly with Snowflake for consistent data views. Sales teams use it for performance comparison dashboards, while marketing teams apply it for data migration assessments. Organizations leverage its comprehensive reporting and analytics for informed decision-making.
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