SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

I use IDT and Web Intelligence the most to enable self service and ad-hoc reporting capabilities for our end users. When building a dashboard with defined KPIs, I'll use Design Studio as it gives a clean and uniform look.

The combination of IDT and Web Intelligence has taken some of the burden of report creation off of our central data team. The corporate team has the task of creating sound, reusable universes, and we give 'superusers' out in the business the ability to create their own Web Intelligence reports using these universes. in this way, the business is able to develop the reports they feel would be valuable, and if a different view/additional data is needed, the corporate team would fulfill that need.

IDT and Web Intelligence are pretty mature products, and have many features that make them adaptable. Design Studio in combination with SAP HANA as a source can be valuable although when using crosstabs, database calls become costly. I would expect this functionality to change to better utilize returned data sets in the future. Lumira is also a promising tool, but at this point still feels inferior to Tableau. SAP continues to pour money into this visualization solution, and claims that in the near future will be more feature rich than it's competitor.

I've used Business Objects for about four years, versions 3.1 and 4.1.

We've had no issues with the deployment.

We've had no stability issues.

The only issue that comes to mind with the toolset is the scalability of Design Studio when using crosstabs as I stated before. When defining a dataset for a crosstab, you are locked in to that 'view' of the dataset and are unable to create a second view of the data with different dimensions from the same source - you must call the database again to accomplish this.

Customer support is responsive, the SAP help forums also have an extensive amount of knowledge and help if your organization does not have a support agreement with SAP.

Our organization also uses Tableau in some instances when we need to query several data sources/views for one dashboard because of performance. However we usually try to use Business Objects because of the synergy we find with SAP systems as a data source as well as the data security options available in SAP HANA.

I was not involved in the technical set up of the tools.

We used this product for years with Teradata as the datasource, but much can be gained by using SAP HANA as the source if possible - not only in performance but also in data security and not requiring a universe for a few of the tools.

• Universal concept
• Connectivity with databases
• Good visualization

It's improved decision making process.

• Better visualization
• Better portal
• License price is prohibitive should go back to CPU based
• Improve customer service.

I've used it for five years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We had no issues with the stability.

I've had no issues scaling it.

Not good. SAP does resolve issues in time.

We are retiring SAP Business Object Webi and Xcelsius, they will be replaced by IBI Web Focus.

The security set up is complex, and there are compatibility issues with Internet Explorer.

We built some dashboards and an application brought some reports out of the box.

It is too expensive, charging by user and if you have hundreds of them you won’t be able to get ROI not even in many years.

Be careful with the license model. If you want to promote personal BI or ability to run your reports in disconnect/passive mode this is not the product.#

I would say universe designer as I have used or looked at other vendor tools and they don't even come close. Semantic layer is their main heart of SAP Business Objects.

Not one tool can satisfy everyone, and this tool is no different but in my opinion the ad hoc capabilities using Web intelligence over universe is very productive as users can self serve themselves

The Dashboard tool Current Xcelsius is not so user and developer friendly and is very bad compared to other vendor products. It has been wonderful but they have to integrate it with the Big Data economy system to sustain it.

This particular version six years, but I have been using Business Objects before SAP acquired for over 16 years ago.

We had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no stability issues.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

8/10

8/10

It has been wonderful but they have to integrate it with the Big Data economy system to sustain it.

It's straightforward.

In house with a little help from professional services.

Pricing and licensing is competitive with other solutions.

Keep an eye upgrade and converting cost especially with deprecated tools like desk and it's reports, make consolidation of reports and universes and other objects early on .advise you to do user inbox,personal doc spring and fall clean up to make future upgrades easier

SAP Business Warehouse for its pre-built BI standard contents as it contain best practices generally and specific to industries both. Also standard analytic reports are very valuable.

SAP BO because of its functionalities, ad-hoc reporting, drill down, formatted reporting features. SAP BO tools like Explorer and Lumira for data explorer and trends.

All these things have benefit the main stakeholders to check and observe the trends and take the decision for the betterment of the company. Dashboards are one of the best features of SAP BO tools.

It helped the organization in analysis. It always helps the C level and upper management in monitoring the progress of the company by using dashboards and reports which contain important KPIs and trends. Based on such things, then main stakeholders take the decision for the betterment of the company.

Of course every product needs some room for improvement but currently nothing is coming to my mind. However, because SAP lacks a professional services offering, we had issues with deployment, stability, and scalability. Also, the initial setup had a medium level of complexity, so it should be done by someone with relevant knowledge.

I've used it for eight years.

There were issues because they lack professional services.

There were issues because they lack professional services.

There were issues because they lack professional services.

8/10

8/10

Because of its features and ease for adoption for the user. IT become strategic after adopting these tools.

It was on medium level.

Have a capable resource who knows how to work and have a good knowledge and experience in the relevant field.

SAP Business Objects Data Services is user friendly and easy to learn. It is easy to connect to SAP ECC or SAP BW, and does not require any additional plugins like for the other ETL tools.

Our organization uses SAP BI tools, and Qlikview for building reports for our doctors and other teams. It has helped us to build an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). It helps the BI teams to build reports over this warehouse.

It needs some improvement in its performance. It handles our data great as we do not process much data daily, but we are going to process huge amounts of data. I don't think it can handle well when compared to other ETL tools. I would like to see its data handling improved.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

I think this product is best if we are not loading huge data. Also for its easy to use and learn.

• It provides centralized access for business users to all enterprise reporting content. This includes SSO access, reports with content personalization and tools for ad hock data access (Web Intelligence, Lumira)
• Customers highly benefit from Semantic Layer applications – they successfully hide the complexity of the databases and provide possibility to build queries using business vocabulary
• It provides easy administration of content using web based CMC application
• It provides scheduling, publishing capabilities of Business Objects reports

My company creates SAP Business Objects based solutions for many customers in the Middle East. The benefit customers have is easy access to their company’s information, simple ad hoc reporting tools, and the possibility to share created reports by using the portal.

There are a lot of stability related issues with all SAP BI products, especially compared with similar Oracle, Cognos or QlickView tools. This has a huge impact to BI implementation projects and overall customer satisfaction. Especially big issues are coming in SAP BW/BO integration project. Though SAP had acquired BusinessObjects quite long time ago still they did not manage to integrate their older SAP Business Warehouse with Front end BusinessObjects tools.

SAP Support is next to useless in many cases. Out of more than 100 tickets created by a project team in one of my projects, only less than a third was resolved by SAP support personnel. The resolution of tickets usually takes a long time. SAP engineers are mostly working from India, in a different time zone, and seem to be more interested in demonstrating proactivity by asking customers to perform various tests or activities which don't seem to be related with the original issue the customer has. Some of the questions they ask demonstrate that they have little knowledge about the products they are trying to support. In my biggest SAP BI/BW implementation project at British American Tobacco, SAP support asked me to demonstrate issues we were having with the Analysis For OLAP product, however after a call in a meeting, the minutes he had written said that we were having Web Intelligence session issues.

It is definitely useful as an integrated platform for medium or large enterprises which require a modern information management solution. It is definitely not without issues, but looks like SAP has a clear vision about where they want to get and that vision is supported by the customers.

• Web Intelligence reports because they have flexibility for detailed data analysis
• Dashboard designer for managerial reports
• OLAP Analysis reports for ad-hoc analysis.

We were able to combine data from two different sources and compare and identify data discrepancies thereby enabling us to correct the data.

It needs to become more user friendly. Currently, it is very cumbersome to use.

I've been using it for seven years.

We have no issues with the deployment.

Some database issues were encountered, but SAP has vastly improved on technical support for Business Objects over the last three to four years.

We've been able to scale it for our needs.

It's good, and around three to four years ago, SAP’s technical support was not up to the mark. Now SAP it is reliable and fast.

It's complex and has technical challenges.

We achieved the implementation in-house with hard work and technical support.

We went with it because my organization already had SAP deployed as the corporate ERP.

Go ahead with it -- it’s a good product.

The security features and flexibility of the product are the most valuable functions of BO.

BO helps our organization make important business decisions with the data it provides. It has great integration with an ERP solution.

They need to improve the processing of software as it has lag when it initially starts.

I've used it for four and a half years.

We had no issues deploying it.

There are some issues with the stability, but this is improving.

We have had no issues scaling it for our need.

The tech support is pretty good.

I've been using it for a long time.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The implementation is much more fun when you know what kind of requirements you're going to process I think it is the best product on the market as it has good integration with ERP.