SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews and Pricing

Architect at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

May 9, 2013

Deployment is easy but scalability and stability of the product has been cumbersome

On a scale from 1-5 (1=worst, 5=best), how would you rate this product overall compared to similar products?
- 3.5

For how long have you used this product?
- 2 Yrs

Which features of this product are most valuable to you?
- Scheduling Reports and Features supported to schedule reports.

Can you give an example of how this product has improved the way your organization functions?
- Users are getting reports that run for hours offtime on their inbox and file share devices or Shared Portals.

What areas of this product have room for improvement?
- Ease of use and understanding.

Did you encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability?
- Deployment is easy but scalability and stability of the product has been cumbersome.

Before choosing this product, did you evaluate other options? If so, which ones?
- Yes. Tableau

How would you rate the level of customer service and technical support?
- Horrible

Was the initial setup straightforward or complex? In what ways?
- Being in this technology for more years I'm impressed with the straightforward setup approach of their recent releases.

Did you implement through a vendor team or an in-house one? If through a vendor team, how would you rate their level of expertise?
- In House.

What advice would you give to others looking into implementing this product?
- Great Product but requires attention on their individual needs.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user10185IT Analyst Programmer with 10,001+ employees

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Sep 20, 2013

I have been using this product for 10+ years and I can agree wholeheartedly with the points about poor support. It has always been a big issue. I suspect that their product testing just isn't of the correct quality so they are fire fighting all the time.

With regards to how much knowledge users need, I think that depends on what they are using it for and what parts of the suite they are using. If you are a developer or support person then yes you do. need as much knowledge as you can get.
If you are a normal user writing your own ad-hoc reports then the difficulty is really down to the complexity of the universe you are using. A group of small Universes using business understandable terms for object names, good object grouping and each with limited business scope will usually serve you far better than one monolithic universe covering everything.
I say usually because it is not impossible to create a good large universe and segment off the different business areas to different groups of users.

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it_user5802

BI Expert at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 9, 2013

Comparison of Business Objects & Cognos

Most of my experience is with Business Objects. I have done a little with Cognos Elite also. Comparatively I find Business Objects much easier to work with when it comes to customizing the presentation of the data. Neither of the two products does a drill-down as well as you can in Crystal Reports, but they both allow you to create multiple views of the data on one page. Business Object WEBI reports allow you to use multiple universes and multiple report pages in one WEBI document.

Both system will force you to use another layer between the presentation and data layers. In Cognos it is called Framework Manager. In WEBI it is called Universes. Both Universes and Framework Manager define the structure and connections the are usable to the presentation layer. Both middle layers can connect to any kind of database or even spreadsheets on an accessible drive.

Both products will force you to use their WEB portals as an interface into the presentation layer. Both allow you to schedule and deliver reports in multiple formats and in a variety of means. Links to reports, send the reports via e-mail, only send reports with data the user can see, and send alerts when reports fail are just a few of the common things that can be done.

When it comes to ease of use, Business Objects is a lot more intuitive and straight forward. Cognos seems to make you take a lot more steps to get the same results. Some of those steps are tough to figure out. The term "clunky" comes to mind when I think of working in Cognos.

Both products offer very similar concepts and tools to summarize and chart the data in a report.

Licensing costs and how you want to architect your server infrastructure are going to be the key driver to which product fits your organization better. Business Objects offers the advantage of another more static reporting tool with Crystal Reports.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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reviewer1709313

Technical Consultant at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 17, 2021

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Makes receiving reports easy

What is our primary use case?

We use it for our customers and to schedule reports. We use it so we can provide them options, to let anyone type in the system and run the report anytime they want.

What is most valuable?

What I find most valuable is that you can run the reports anytime and you can receive the report at a scheduled time. When someone wants to receive these reports at a certain time, we schedule the report to be sent at their requested time. The user can access the application and run the report anytime he wants, whenever.

What needs improvement?

In terms of improvement, some reports need more customizations. Customers request reports that need more customization.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is reliable.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good, but we have to renew the support license every year. If we don't renew, we don't get any support.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was a little complicated. It's not as easy to install it and there is not much information on the internet, so you have to depend on yourself. When you compare it to other applications, like BMC, HP, Dell, and IBM, there are many users who have experience with the solution and share their knowledge on the internet, but there is not much information online for SAP.

What other advice do I have?

It integrates well with many other solutions. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

reviewer1473648

Entrepreneur at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 4, 2021

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A robust solution with pretty direct integration with SAP ERP, but needs better pricing and more dashboarding metrics

Pros and Cons

"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."

"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for dashboarding. We are using the previous version of this solution.

What is most valuable?

It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use.

What needs improvement?

Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use.

It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about ten years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have about a hundred users of this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is all right.

What about the implementation team?

It was a partner who did the installation. It took about one week. You need two people for its deployment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is not cost-effective. It is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

reviewer2141742

Head of Data Management & Analytics at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Mar 31, 2023

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Difficult to set up, and not user-friendly, but is stable

Pros and Cons

"The solution is stable."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features."

What is our primary use case?

We have the transaction data on a PRP site. We have all the options in the warehouse, so we are just extracting data from the system. We create some data bars at the end using credits we pull from BW and create some BI reports.

What needs improvement?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features. The UI is not user-friendly and it is not easy to navigate through.

I would like to have better integration with other options or third-party products. This will provide a better user experience.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for almost four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sometimes we encounter issues with nodes when we migrate or update to a support package. Otherwise, the solution is stable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is delayed because we have to submit a ticket to our vendor before it is forwarded and they respond to us.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up SAP BBIP initially is more difficult than Tableau, as it requires numerous additional components, making it a tedious process.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a five out of ten.

We have over 100 people using the solution.

I do not recommend the solution as it does not meet most business requirements.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.