SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

In my company, the solution is used when I get involved in scenarios to get more insight into the analytics part before presenting different options to the company's CEO, because of which I stress over those scenarios related to externalities.

I can create and manipulate scenarios, which has helped me a lot because before we started with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, I worked on Excel documents. Excel documents used to get modified by a lot of people in our company, so no one could follow all the patterns when working on the Excel sheet. Within SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, I have been able to follow a path and know who or why modifications were done.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that none of the users can modify a status if I don't allow it.

The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement. The solution's financial area needs to improve because a lot of the segment reports have been working with the finance part, so a lot of projects can be done now that our company couldn't do in the past.

Sometimes, there is a possibility that our company has to share some files with certain external users, and we find it hard to provide them with all the information that they want even after using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

The machine learning part in the solution is an area of concern that should be considered for improvement.

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for three months. I don't remember the version of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I don't use the technical support provided for the solution since I prefer to use the web or the internet to search for information related to the product.

I have programming experience, and now I work on business intelligence tools like Power BI and Tableau.

The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Based on my ability to understand the information related to the solution, it does help in providing me with a higher profit. I cannot be exactly sure about the ROI since I don't know the price of the solution.

I recommend those planning to buy the solution to try it for a few days.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

Right now, we're using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for an in-house project — we don't have any customers. 

I work for an educational institute — in the main reporting area. I create different reports based on student performance using exam results and other data from various schools. In our university, we have around 20 different departments. One for Computer Science, one for Engineering, one for Audio Civil, one for Electronics, etc. I was planning to build a consolidated report that would show how our students are performing compared to other schools — a consolidated view. Then I can drill down further into individual fields. 

Big organizations can implement Business Warehouse on the cloud. Small organizations, like educational institutes, don't have that much complex data, so it doesn't make sense for them to buy Data Warehouse on the cloud. We want to use HANA and something called SLT. This will cover our replication and allows us to do modeling directly in the cloud, which is a great feature. 

As the technology stands, and from what I have researched at this particular point in time, companies that don't have much complex transaction data available on a day-to-day basis, don't need Business Warehouse or Data Warehouse on the cloud. We want to use SAP Analytics Cloud directly and do our data modeling on HANA Data Modular. This would really help because we wouldn't need separate licensing for Data Warehouse and for SAP, etc. We could remove all of this. We could do everything with HANA and SAP.

There should be more integration with other platforms. 

Everybody wants to use SAP Business Intelligence. Because we need a Business Warehouse or a Data Warehouse, we have to create a universe consisting of everything that we'll use as an input in BI. For this reason, we have a lot of dependencies. We require connection with the two different platforms. If we were to use HANA, then we wouldn't need Business Warehouse or Data Warehouse — we could just use SAP Analytics Cloud. We could use SAP Analytics Cloud as a standalone solution for reporting purposes and we could also use Business Intelligence as a standalone solution for reporting. 

This should be fixed so that companies don't require three separate licenses for three separate applications. Not everyone has that kind of a budget. It should be an all-in-one solution — this only turns away potential customers. If SAP provided a feature like standalone BI, we could use it directly, access ERP, get the data we need and start building reports. Single application licensed universities are ready to pay for that. But when it's three to four different applications, it's beyond their budget. 

I have worked in data services for the last eight to nine years. 

I haven't used all of the features yet, so I can't answer this question properly. 

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is definitely scalable. 

I haven't connected with support because we're using it for an in-house project. We installed it and work on it ourselves so we haven't had to contact them regarding SAP. Regarding ERP issues they are proactively able to help clients. We're a client for SAP. They've been able to help us. 

The initial installation is quite simple for me, but for inexperienced users, it may be difficult.

At my previous job, I deployed this solution myself. Deployment took two to three days.

As of now, we don't pay for a license. I think SAP has a program in which they give free access to Analytics Cloud for our university. Under that scheme, I have access to SAP Analytics Cloud, where I have explored different features; however, I don't have access to BI.

I am interested in SAP for the cloud because where I work, we have SAP ERP on the HANA Cloud. Currently, we don't have a license for SAP Analytics Cloud. That's why I'm exploring different methods to implement it. Currently, Business Warehouse is on-premise but I am planning to upgrade it to the cloud.

Although I haven't been able to use the BI portion, I would give this solution rating of eight. 

• Universe Designer - I use single interface for all the BI users who access/create ad hoc and canned report
• SDK - important because we architected and designed a BI Product for 200+ customers using SDK
• Lifecycle management tools - We keep releasing new versions of our product based on customer requirements/changes requests depending on product changes.
• Multi-source connectivity - Extended the same BI product to support analytics/reporting on other applications/sources from same portfolio.

It's provided us with best practice reports out of the box for various modules. 
As well as an interface for creating adhoc reports with more analytical capabilities. This now allows us to exporting/share data in various formats (Excel, PDFs etc.)

We do not have self-service BI tools which would enable SAP to compete with tools like Tableau and Qlikview. Reports/Dashboards on RDBMS cannot handle or scale the demands of the latest data analytics solutions.

I've used this solution for over 10 years.

For deployment, SAP Business Objects has lifecycle management tools. It comes with features such as revert changes and automatic backup which helped us.

We had no issues with the performance.

It wouldn't scale when we needed to handle over one terabyte of data.

Customer service was found to be satisfactory.

SAP Business Objects when compared to Linux/AIX/Sun-Solaris is complex to install on Windows due to version/patch issues, and we had to put in requests for patches. Business users who used Web Intelligence were able to find some Java script plug-ins that needed to be installed.

We communicate with a vendor team as part of all our evaluations and implementations. This provides clarifications, resolutions, and additional features but mostly it was implemented an in-house by team.

It is dependent on our customer needs/requirements, and specific version with specific features were available. We also evaluated Tableau for its technical features, as per business user requirements, pricing, and licensing for choosing the product and also based on outcome of the Proof of Concept.

Our company is in the healthcare industry and we are using BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for a lot of our data, such as eligibility, claims, premium, plan. We run all kinds of different reports for our customers and our brokers on how the claims and planners are performing and what is the utilization of different services throughout the claims.

The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features.

Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using.

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for a short period of time.

The solution has been stable in my usage. Our company has had SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for as long as I have been here, which is 20 years. I think we have had dashboards with it before. I did not know how it worked with the data universes and we did not have a lot of data in the universe. Using software for service we will upgrade when they upgrade. I have heard that when we move to version 4.3, the user interface looks entirely different and I do not know how that experience will go.

Our IT department does the data and the universe design. We have a universe designer who does it and it is their full-time job. Additionally, they do all the ETLs and many other operations within the company. My team is more focused on business analysts and is trying to learn the report-building side of the solution, designing the reports, and working with the interface. I have one person that does works with the designer to try to make the connections better and they have a good understanding of the data. The IT people do not understand the data, we understand the data. We are trying to learn how to write the reports and we only have five people in training. I have five users that I want to learn how to be involved in the process and create these reports.

I have previously used Tableau.

For anybody who does not have a BI solution and is thinking about implementation should look at them all before deciding. We have another vendor we have worked with, Cognos, and I have worked with Tableau and it is important to evaluate all of the solutions to see which one makes more sense for their use case. I downloaded a list of the top five and they all are pretty similar, I will not say they are the same because there are a lot of differences but they are all heading in the same direction of getting the information to the universe and pulling out the data.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.

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.

1. SAP BO/BI

• Enterprise scalability
• Security
• Ease of use
• Semantic layer

2. Tableau

• Visualization
• Data discovery
• Turnaround time

3. IBM Cognos

• Enterprise scalability
• Security
• In-memory feature

4. MS BI - Flexibility

5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade

6. QlikView

• Data visualization
• Turnaround time.

7. OBIEE

• Enterprise security
• Semantic model

1. SAP BO/BI

• Visualization

2. Tableau

• Scalability

3. IBM Cognos

• Ease of use

4. MS BI

• Visualization
• Ease of use

5. Pentaho

• Ease of use
• Semantic layer

6. QlikView

• Scalability

7. OBIEE

• Visualization
• Database connectivities

• I have used SAP for almost 12 years
• Tableau – Rate 6/10 overall but 9/10 for visualization. I have used it for three years
• IBM Cognos - Rate 7/10 and I have used it for three years
• MS BI - Rate 5/10 and I have used it for two years
• Pentaho - Rate 5/10 and I have used it for over five years
• QlikView- Rate 7/10 and I have used it for two years
• OBIEE – Rate 7/10 and I have used it for five years

• SAP BO/BI - Below average
• Tableau - Good
• IBM Cognos - Average
• MS BI - Average
• Pentaho - Average
• QlikView - Above average
• OBIEE - Average

• SAP BO/BI - Below average
• Tableau - Good
• IBM Cognos - Average
• MS BI - Average
• Pentaho - Average
• QlikView - Above average
• OBIEE - Average

There is no perfect solution or one size fits all. Be clear on the requirements that you are trying to meet with the tools and solutions and do a POC and thorough evaluation. Also most of the time a single vendor works better than using best of the breed solution.

We primarily use the solution for business intelligence as more people ask for that.

We're a financial business, and this has helped us make important decisions. 

This is the easiest way to gather information and have everything together. We have manipulated the information effectively in the way we want. 

It is a stable product.

The solution can scale. 

The platform should be a bit more user-friendly. There should be an easier way to use the solution.

I've used the solution for about a year. I have not used it for that long just yet.

I'd rate stability ten out of ten.

The scalability is good. I'd rate scalability eight out of ten. 

We have around 50 users using the solution at this time. 

Likely, we will increase usage in the future. 

I've never contacted technical support. I do not know how helpful or responsive they are in general. 

I was not part of the process of selection.

I'm not sure about the initial setup. I wasn't a part of the deployment process. 

I am not familiar with the pricing of the solution. 

We have used the latest version of the solution. However, I don't know the exact version number. 

New users need to understand a bit about business intelligence in order to prove the usefulness of the solution. You also need to have an idea of what you'd like to get out of the solution, and that should be decided at the outset.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We use this SAP solution for designing reports. This is a purely analytic application for designing reports to cater to higher management and specific business use cases.

There are features within Business Objects that can be leveraged to scale out, and scale up. All SAP products are scalable these days. 

Some configurations related to business objects are a little tricky. Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex. There's not enough documentation available on the net. 

We've been using this solution for almost 10 years. 

Stability can be affected by configurations related to business objects which tend to be somewhat complex. It's not a very widely used product and that in itself is a problem.

The solution is scalable. There are features that can be leveraged to scale. 

The customer support is pretty good. 

The installation can take anywhere from three to five days. The solution has installers that are directly available for download from the SAP download center. There are certain prerequisites that have to be carried out on the server. The host has to be prepared, there's a runtime environment and a database that needs to be pre-installed. We use two to three admin people per deployment. 

The ROI depends on whether there's a significant volume. If there's not enough volume there might not be a return. 

The SAP model for licensing is quite complex and they generally don't deal with service providers.

There are mixed reviews on this product from our customers. You won't find as many companies use it as you'd find with HANA. It's not widely used. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10.