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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
302
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 17.5%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user112062 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 11, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

Sumeet  Zalpuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Fully integrated enterprise-level tool
The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult. For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation. Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated. You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders. I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process."
"This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."
"Business analytics are the most valuable features of this solution; I don't have experience with the other functional features offered."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"It is more user-friendly and easier to work with the report creation part, creating reports out of an established universe. Maybe a business person could liberate the existing universe and create a report on top of it, as well. So that's one cool feature."
"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."
"It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis."
"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
"I work for clients. That is my business model. Business people really like to see Tableau. They love Tableau because it is very user-friendly. The platform provides an easy to use interface, which is what most people like about it."
"I love the customization skills that Tableau has, it is not restricted to what is built-in already."
"Tableau has greatly enhanced our organization's data-driven decision-making processes by enabling us to create visually compelling reports and dashboards."
"The most valuable feature is the geographic data analysis."
"One of the most valuable features of Tableau is that it's a visual analytics solution, not just a dashboarding solution. Compared to Power BI, which is a dashboarding solution, there are no limitations with Tableau. For example, when you add a chart or a map to Power BI, it has a 3,000-point limitation. When you try to track your whole vehicle on the map, you only see the first 3,000 rows on the map, and Power BI doesn't tell you which part of the data is shown on the map. But Tableau doesn't have any limitations, which means that you can see five million data points on a map. It starts the project by creating the visuals that directly converts to SQLs. In that way, all the components have no limitations. When we compared Tableau to Power BI, we also found Tableau to be more fancy. Fancy means you can create more visual graphics and more visual dashboards. With Power BI, this isn't so—it's just some tables and some simple charts together. Tableau is more for business users who want to analyze data. Tableau can directly connect the analytics systems, like R or Titan, and get the results in screen, so it's a good solution for analytics scientists. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data."
"It is easy to adapt visualizers to have interactive conversations among decision-makers."
 

Cons

"The solution is not good for self-services, they can improve in this area."
"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."
"It is limited for us because SAP is shifting toward the cloud, and we can't use a cloud solution for SAP BusinessObjects. SAP introduced a product called PlusTimes one or two years ago and another one that I believe was called Automatic BI. This tool is more powerful than BusinessObjects and other tools because it's provided in the cloud."
"I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement."
"Recently, it's become less stable if I am working on Citrix."
"It could be a lighter solution."
"SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."
"When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
"It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export."
"Tableau could be more intuitive. It has all the features, but it is difficult to find them."
"The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL."
"The forecasting feature in Tableau in my view is too limited because it must have dates but I should be able to predict the outcome of an event without having a date as part of the input."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"Its price is fair."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure."
"We pay for the enterprise license for Tableau. The licensing could be cheaper and more flexible."
"The pricing for Tableau is the same as the other products in the market."
"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."
"Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users."
"Cost is where tools like MicroStrategy, Power BI, or Spotfire come into play. Cost-wise, Tableau is a little bit costlier than other tools such as Power BI. I have been using Tableau all these years, but about four years ago, Power BI came out at a very low cost. Their desktop version was free from the beginning. Power BI Desktop has always been free, whereas Tableau Desktop is costly. When it comes to cost, people prefer Power BI because it integrates very well with Office 365. You don't have to worry about integration with Teams or SharePoint."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is on a per-user basis. The server is free but the users you have to pay for."
"The professional version of Tableau is quite expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Answers from the Community

it_user112062 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014
Sorry, I do not know Tableau, I know BO just for upgrading old reports. I use Qlikview.
2 out of 9 answers
it_user116763 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 9, 2014
Hi, We would recommend QlikView (QV) to your Client, not Tableau or SAP Business Objects. QV have much more advanced opportunities which Tableau is just working on now: for example mobile versions of this application. SAP Business Objects takes longer time to create reports (hours), when QV does it in minutes or seconds. You can read more about them from Gartner 2013 BI Magic Quadrant. Regards, Angelika Galayko Specjalista ds. Sprzedaży [QlikView Solution Provider Icon] mobile: 666 063 268 e-mail: angelika.galayko@bpx.pl www.bpx.pl [stopka bpx] Business Partners eXcellence Pl. Powstańców Śląskich 28/30 53-333 Wrocław [http://www.bpx.pl/images/face.png][http://www.bpx.pl/images/link.png] Adres do korespondencji Ul. Równoległa 2 02-235 Warszawa Spółka wpisana do KRS dla Wrocławia-Fabrycznej pod numerem 0000262389. Kapitał zakładowy 78 400 PLN wpłacony w całości. NIP 894-287-81-84. REGON 020355704
it_user116742 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 9, 2014
Beginning with version 7.0.4, Tableau supports connecting directly SAP® Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) using the Tableau SAP BW connector. The Tableau SAP BW connector uses the OLE DB for OLAP provider and issues live queries to SAP BW using the MDX query language. One benefit to this type of connection is that you will always connect to the latest data. Additionally, the connection experience is very similar to using Tableau with other OLAP data sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and Oracle Essbase. Beginning with Tableau 8.1 the Tableau SAP BW connector also supports data connections using extracts. For more information about using SAP BW extracts, see SAP BW Extract limitations.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.