SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

That is only for reporting and dashboard, which is the purpose for which I'm mainly using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

The most valuable function of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is the universe, so customers can build their own reports without programming skills.

The main benefits that SAP solutions provide include saving time and visualizing data more easily.

Functional wise, I'm satisfied with interactive dashboards and visualizations from SAP. It's okay. It's also helpful with interactive dashboards.

The platform is totally separated; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not easy to integrate with third parties or inside the SAP environment.

The initial setup for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is too complex from my perspective.

SAP can make SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform better by simplifying the installation and configuration.

In the functionality part, it would be great to see some new functions, maybe some AI or something similar, but I'm not sure whether this should be done by such a reporting platform; perhaps other tools or technologies would be more suitable.

I've been working with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for ten years.

It's quite stable; I would rate it an eight or nine for stability.

That's also good regarding scalability, the ability to scale and expand.

I have experience with SAP technical support and have contacted them.

That's one thing I've complained quite a lot about, and recently I saw some improvement, but I would rate them a number five.

Neutral

We are evaluating some other alternatives, for example, open source software; that's my experience with competitors.

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform serves as a BI tool. I am not working with predictive analytics capabilities from SAP. I am an SAP real user, not a partner. I would rate this solution a 7 out of 10.

We primarily used it for BI reporting and analytics, preparing dashboards, reports, and everything related to data analysis.

Dashboard and analytics are good features. Visualization is better than other tools. First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are much more mature. The tool is fully compatible. Visualization is tremendous or various, colorful, or objects. So, as per my recommendation,  visualization is a strong point.

Another thing is SAP is putting in the planning, or their features, so that it is very useful for each and every organization.

Ad hoc reporting is very good.

The workflow is easy to get with SAP. In terms of SAP, some other, in other domains, just like other than SAP tools, maybe some technical skills are required for the integration parts.  

As per my opinion, because SAP is a very worldwide product or very useful product, I'm not talking about improvement, because I just think that SAP can focus on the pricing factor. 

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. So, it is a very costly product. 

Secondly, from an educational point of view, So, it is not easy to adapt to each and every IT person because some, most, in India, most cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, or Chennai, only metro support the educational platform for that. 

So, just my suggestion is SAP should focus on every user; it should be easy to pick the product and, easy to carry, easy to use in every life. So, SAP must try to improve in this part.

I have been using it for three to four years. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It is a pretty scalable product. 

I would recommend it for enterprise level companies. 

We used various SAP products in my previous company, including SAP SuccessFactors, SAP BusinessObjects, and others. Currently, we use SuccessFactor and are moving towards the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

The initial setup is very simple. It's just functional. The installation part is very easy to use.

Our vendor, Accenture, or PwC, and other valuable vendors support me. So, for most of the integration part, they are looking at it.  

I just handle the front end or user support.

Comparing just for the price segment, it is very high, so that is why not each and every company uses SAP.  

As a competitor for Power BI, it's easy to use. Power BI click or Tableau are use it more mature than SAP BI. Because SAP BI is basically properly guided, if fields are required. So, not each and every person can use this. 

As per my suggestion, SAP should be easy to use, maybe easier than Power BI. An old user can pick up and adopt.  

It is a very good and reliable product from SAP's perspective, especially compared to other products. It offers a comprehensive set of BI reporting features, and SAP regularly improves the product. Before I left my previous company, they were transitioning to the SAC platform for analytics due to its capabilities in planning, predictive analytics, and forecasting.

Overall, I highly recommend this tool as it is very helpful and improves productivity.

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. 

Currently, I work for an organization in the insurance sector. So we do a lot of detailed reporting using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. We provide the specific KPIs that investors want us to report on. So one of the use cases is that we build reports for our external customers, such as investors, partners, vendors, and the department’s internal employees. Since SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile tool, it can be used to distribute the reports to the downstream system. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform gives us a lot of flexibility to model the data and control what we deliver. At the same time, we are also using the platform for dashboarding solutions.

First, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an enterprise tool in a real sense. For comparison, we have to use Power Automate or Power Apps while using Power BI to refresh or schedule the dashboard. But SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has that functionality within itself. While GitHub has repository tools for versioning, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has versioning capabilities in its 4.1 and 4.2 versions. The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding. I think SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is already working on that, and they have improved a lot from where they were, but there's still a long way to go.

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for more than ten years now.

If your environment is very big, and you have frequent changes coming, you will see that SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not a hundred percent. But for relatively small environments that follow the life cycle or process with fewer changes, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has one of the most stable systems.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is scalable vertically and horizontally.

I have used the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform’s tech support, which has lately improved a lot.

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.

You need a consultant to set up your SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform environment because if you are making a cluster of business object servers, you need to know how clustering works and how to scale your environments. You need to do a lot of benchmarking and know about the number of reports and users.

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost. While Power BI costs eight or ten dollars per user license, the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform costs around $80-90. Since the cost makes a huge difference at the organizational level, SAP must be more competitive with its licensing cost.

Overall, I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an 8.5 out of 10.

We use the solution for reporting, including ad hoc reporting. The source is our own IDT Universal, an alarm product. We are a PR gate responsible for revenue accounting for different addresses. Customers mainly receive reports.

There are many valuable features. First, we can create ad hoc reports on a priority basis and deliver them to users quickly. The source is you can write a free end screen. Secondly, We can create reports with dynamic input controls, which is handy for showing data trends to users. Lastly, the sections and breaks features are handly and can merge multiple data providers.

The solution is pushing too much into the cloud, which is difficult. Reporting is powerful but could be more dynamic, like in Tableau or other front-end tools.

Visualization could be strengthened.

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for over ten years. We are using v4.2 of the solution.

The product is stable. No product comes close to the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. It is both user-friendly and easy to build for end users. It has good features, but the visualization part is entirely redundant. The visualization capabilities are not as good as Tableau's. We are using Tableau for visualization.

We have managed 500 users and five administrators, and scalability has not been a problem. I haven’t faced any issues in adding new users.

The free version has a time limitation, even for version 4.2. After a certain period, the first level of technical support is no longer available. The full version of the platform does not have this limitation. When you ask them any questions, they do reply, of course. However, they often come up with additional suggestions, such as "Why don't you buy this?" or "Why don't you do that?”. Every time they have a marketing pitch, it makes it more detachable.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I have been using it since 2005. I have migrated from Duo 6.5 to XAR2, then to 3.1, and finally to 4.5 and 4.2. The deployment has never been that difficult. The migration is still easier in 4.2 and 4.3 than in previous versions. In earlier versions, you have the same folders and structures. However, this limitation is no longer there when migrating from 4.2 to 4.3.

The solution’s pricing is very high.

The features are pretty good, but there are also problems. The security rights can be confusing because security rights are universal.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case for BusinessObjects today is for comprehensive Business Intelligence reporting. Most organizations using BusinessObjects today primarily use Web Intelligence or Crystal Reports or both for critical enterprise reporting and ad-hoc query and analysis. 

We managed multiple BO deployments for multiple organizations, from the local and federal government to healthcare providers and from insurance to manufacturing. 

In all these organizations, timely and accurate reporting is essential, and BusinessObjects is solid, reliable, and versatile. You can produce professional drillable formatted reports quickly and either interact with them or publish and distribute them in commodity formats like PDF and Excel.

They've made it more efficient and able to respond to both report and ad-hoc requests in a timely fashion.

The world still runs on reports. Reports are needed for financial statements, compliance, auditing, and dozens of other areas.

BusinessObjects has proven to be a report engine powerhouse where we can quickly create these reports and get them to the right destination in the right format.

The speed of turning around report requests has really had the most impact on the organizations we manage.

The semantic layer or BusinessObjects universe behind the Web Intelligence report provides the ability to create contexts and calculations that can be easily shared across multiple reports.

The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great.

The new features in BI 4.3 that allow you to use a Web Intelligence report as a data source have helped to create "master" reports that can be delivered to casual users, who can then create their own derived reports from this "master" report.

Shared Elements allow commonly used charts, tables, and graphs to be saved and re-used in other reports.

We would like to see the semantic layer opened up to other popular BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI. This integration makes a lot of sense for most organizations.

We would also like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud.

It would be nice to see some native integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and capabilities to really take Web Intelligence to the next level of Business Intelligence. This could be integrated with existing popular AI tools instead of new development.

I have been using BusinessObjects almost as long as the product has existed - 30 years, believe it or not. The most current version BI 4.3 has been out for just over 18 months and is currently at Service Pack 4 (SP4) which was released in December 2023.

The stability is very good. After 30+ years of development, this is a very solid platform.

BusinessObjects scales all the way from one or two users to global enterprises with hundreds of thousands of users.

Technical support is not bad. Sometimes the responsiveness could be better. Once someone is assigned to the call, it is handled well.

Neutral

The setup is straightforward after you have done it at least once. You would need some hand-holding the first time.

We are the vendor team that helps with implementation.

We saw an ROI within six to 12 months.

Very reasonable compared to other BI solutions/tools

Tableau, PowerBI

The next release BI 2025 became available in March 2025 and has even more features and functionality. Evaluating it now

We are integrators and implementers. It's purely technical instead of functional. I take care of all the servers and do server configuration, capacity planning, sizing, capacity planning, and performance tuning.

Mainly, my work is not in the reporting part. We support the users and the business, and we take care of all the BusinessObjects servers.

We are using version 4.2 right now. In that, we have a reporting tool called Web Intelligence. We haven't explored 4.3 yet.

The reports are most valuable. If it is a single-source universe, based on only one database, the performance, and the reporting tool is user-friendly, and users are very familiar with the tool and are comfortable using it. In the VB, we developed a dashboard in Xcelsius in the same way we can report in the VB.

The dashboard can easily be accessed by users. Right now with version 4.3, SAP is saying that they're coming with a query feature, where they can have a single platform and access all the reports. In 4.2, they have that one from SP4 onwards, but none of the users are using that one, so there needs to be more education with that. 

Also, reporting on the CMS database is a little bit of a headache. That is one problem that we are facing right now. With SP3 onwards, they have provided it. But right now, with version 4.3 onwards, it is very much integrated within that BO suite, so it was very easy. Right now there is a separate driver we need to install and take it further from there. That part is a little bit of a challenge.

The performance could be improved, like when we extract a large amount of data. Especially in the last project, what I've seen is multi-source. If we are developing a universe, based on Db2, SQL, Oracle and SAP BW, and developing a report on top of the multi-source universe, then there are some performance-related issues and data federation service instability.

There is a data federation administration tool, but that configuration is not very easy to use. That needs to be improved.

The solution could be more user-friendly. Right now, there is self-service functionality like how we have in Tableau, and a split view. Whatever the self-service functionalities, that needs to be improved. SAP has apparently improved it in version 4.3, but I haven't tested it.

The solution is stable. In 4.2, after SP4 onwards, there are a few patches and we have had some issues, but it's okay. SP7 and SP8 are stable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support is very good. We can raise an incident with SAP, in the SAP portal, and they respond based on the priority.

I would rate technical support 4 out of 5.

The setup is straightforward.

Integrating earlier versions like 3.0 and 3.1 with SAP was challenging, especially when you have multiple domains, for example, and you are in the SAP domain and also if you want to integrate with SAP America. So if you want to have a multi-domain environment, that is a little bit challenging.

That is also one issue which we have faced. There are multiple changes, even from the Windows side. Otherwise, we have certain challenges in that configuration.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

Crystal Report and the enterprise reporting is very good. It's very detailed. In the VB report, they have also come up with various features, not only setting up the security at the back-end. Even at the database-level, if a customer doesn't want to do any security setup or changes, and they want to do a report-level or the universe-level restrictions, that is in the IDT tool. From version 4.2 onwards, we have that functionality. Last time, we tested it in SP6 and it worked well. 

If they don't want to have any security at the back-end and want to go with the security at the BO level, and if they want to make sure that the report is accessible by the higher management, mid-level management, that kind of a security, we can do it. We have seen that feature in SP6.

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process by automating data injection, eliminating manual preparation, and reducing associated costs. The user-friendly interface allows for quick analysis, while robust security ensures controlled access to sensitive information.

While SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform offers powerful reporting features, I believe there is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options. Currently, users might face limitations and complexities in developing specific use cases within SAP. Unlike other business intelligence tools such as Power BI, SAP could enhance flexibility, allowing users to seamlessly integrate data from various sources like CRM systems, providing a more dynamic and adaptable reporting environment for users.

In terms of stability, SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform has been good. It is a reliable solution, especially for injecting and integrating data from sources like SAP, Microsoft Azure, or AWS. The platform's partnerships with major systems like SAP and Oracle contribute to its overall stability.

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is highly scalable. You can easily upgrade the account to accommodate your specific needs. The platform's cloud capabilities allow for seamless integration of advanced analytics like machine learning or AI. Currently, we have over 20 customers using it.

Setting up SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform can vary in complexity depending on the customer's specific use case. For us, the process was generally straightforward. We identified the tables the customer wanted data from and extracted and injected the data accordingly. Visualization and analytics were then tailored to their specific needs. The deployment process, from development completion to implementation, involved collaboration with staff and followed a systematic approach.

The licensing cost for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform can be significant due to its complexity. It is crucial for customers to carefully assess the value they expect to derive from the implementation. Start with a basic version before opting for more advanced options like SAP HANA to manage initial expenses wisely.

My advice for new users is to consider SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, especially if they're dealing with complex organizational structures. It is beneficial for centralizing data from various departments into a unified system, providing a robust solution for analysis and decision-making. Overall, I would rate it as a nine out of ten.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is used for a variety of reporting purposes. 

We have data from the business warehouse that has been affected by the S/4HANA system.  Various reports have been created in the BOBI.  This would reflect those reports based on the various requirements.

Business analytics are the most valuable features of this solution; I don't have experience with the other functional features offered.

The initial setup could be simplified.

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for six years.

The product is stable, but we do experience issues around the time SAP releases patches.

Yes, the scalability is satisfactory. We have the authority, and we will run the systems on-premises. It is possible to scale both up and down.

We have 2,000 users in our organization.

We have no plans to increase usage. We will gradually migrate to the SAP cloud platform.

Technical support is the same as that provided by the cloud platform.

We are a premier partner with a premium SAP account. We have biweekly calls with SAP account managers and SAP to promote the product as needed. For example, we currently have a large number of applications running on the SAP data center. It is known as the Neo data center, and SAP is gradually reducing its use of the SAP data center. SAP encourages the use of multiple clouds. It's called Cloud Foundry, which is an open-source platform where you can develop for all of the different hyperscalers. SAP is assisting us in transitioning from the Neo platform, which is the SAP data center, to the Cloud Foundry data center.

All of the systems were running on-premise. However, when the SAP Cloud Platform was introduced, we began using SAP's native solutions and native applications. You can use the SAP cloud connector to connect backend systems that are running on-premise. This is the type of usage we began with when we first used the SAP Cloud Platform, and we have been very pleased.

The initial setup was a bit complex.

The implementation took about six months. We installed the development systems first, followed by the quality system, test system, and production system.

We have a team of six to deploy and maintain this solution.

We used a third-party service to help us with the implementation.

This is a standard licensing fee. 

It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this.

The SAP Business Objects BLB platform is available in the SAP business technology platform, which is accessible via the cloud platform. Instead of going with on-premise, it is better to analyze software as a solution.

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