SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

We use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for reporting, dashboards, and broadcasting.

What I find useful in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is that it has a lot of flexibilities. It's where you can develop so many reports, and it's able to connect to multiple source systems.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to be improved performance-wise. The look and feel of this application also needs improvement.

The scalability of this application has to be improved, and its setup should also be more simplified.

Technical support for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform also needs to be improved.

We've been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in our company for six years.

The application is now stable, but there are still some things they have to improve on the hardware side.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is scalable, but the scalability of the servers and other parts is complex. SAP has made scalability complex. It's not so easy, and it's not so quick, while in other solutions, we can increase the scalability of the servers very easily and very fast, e.g. in Microsoft, but in SAP, it's complex and it takes more time.

Technical support for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is okay, but it depends on the priority level. For example, if you raise a ticket that's high priority, then they'll respond to that ticket, but if you raise a medium priority ticket, they don't respond at all. Technical support needs to be improved in that sense.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has a complex setup, and could still be simplified, especially if you want to increase your capacity, which could be difficult in the SAP side.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application, e.g. compared to Power BI. The analytics cloud is complex to set up. It's very hard. It takes a lot of time to complete the setup, because there are so many prerequisites to set it up before your analytics cloud. It's complex and it's expensive.

We've evaluated Analytics Cloud and Power BI.

Just recently, we moved SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform over to the cloud. Before, it was on our home site, but recently, e.g. just two days ago, we moved it to the cloud.

We've been using three different products: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Analytics Cloud though not fully on it yet, and Power BI.

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

You cannot compare SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform with Power BI, but WebI, or SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, is there. Power BI is more powerful compared to WebI, because there are a lot of flexibilities, and you can use them in a simpler way, e.g. these are also possible in WebI, but it's more complex, especially during the setup.

The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good.

The solution is not good for self-services, they can improve in this area.

We are in the beginning stages of the implementation and once we roll it out to end-users then we will see further improvement areas.

In SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform we use Lumira Designer, or the earlier version is Design Studio, where we create management dashboards. We feel that the tool is very complex in terms of implementing the dashboard. Lots of coding and performance issues. We require particular skillsets and resources, regular users cannot understand it. The management dashboards should be easy to configure. The only option right now is Lumira Designer, but it is complex to implement. Maintaining and supporting it takes time, and something should be done to improve the experience.

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

The solution is stable.

I have found the solution to be scalable.

We have approximately 1,000 users using this solution in our company.

We did not find any major support areas that needed the support from SAP. The majority of the application support our team managed fine and we did not suffer any hardware issues. Our issues were resolved. 

The installation was a medium difficulty level because we do not have complex scenarios in our use case. There are some complex portions but there were no roadblocks that prevented us from continuing.

The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value.

Our organization prefers one visualization tool, that's why SAP will be in our roadmap.

I think companies prefer self-service. BSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform seems a little typical tool in terms of self-service. We recommend other solutions, such as Microsoft BI, because they can do a lot more functions.

The SAP BusinessObjects product suite is made of different products. This review refers to the Web Intelligence product.

The user friendliness of the interface enables non-IT-literate persons to create their own queries without need SQL knowledge, and that has been the case a very long time. (I started to use BO in 1990.)

It gives power to the user, who can create his/her own queries without needing IT services, therefore leading to savings. However, it must be noted that the semantic layer (Universe) must be built carefully by IT staff with the full collaboration from beginning to end of future key users in order to be intuitive and user friendly. The training given to the user community and the documentation is also extremely important, so that the users know what objects they can combine together.

Since I started using BO, the desktop version gave way to the web version. The beginning of the web version (Web Intelligence) was a little bit chaotic, with some key functionalities present in the desktop version forgotten in the web version (like custom groupings, double scaling...) However, these functionalities are finally back. I think SAP should listen more and better to its customers.

I have 25+ years experience of working with SAP BusinessObjects, combining SAP and non-SAP data in BO and I also have started to use QlikView and roll it out in our organization. I hold the function of BI director now and develop an entire reporting strategy for a multinational organization.

I encountered stability issues. The beginning of the web version was very chaotic. It look a long time for Web Intelligence to open, refresh and so on. We regret that versions that are initially released do not seem to be well finished (a lot of bugs), and that a lot of patching is necessary to get to a stable version (our experience for BOXIR3, BI4 and so on).

I did not encounter any scalability issues. It is easy to deploy (weblink). But in order to be able to use the query panel, users must ensure that the Java component is installed.

Technical support is quite OK.

Initial setup is straightforward.

I cannot give any advice on this, as I am not involved at all in this issue, but depending on the licensing model used, this product can be quite expensive.

We considered Oracle Discoverer, MS BI, but BO was chosen for its flexibility of usage.

The reporting tool is easy to use and implement. Overall, you should consider how this tool is going to be implemented in your organization, and what added value it will bring to your organisation (e.g., do you have a lot of people doing a lot of reports in Excel). Finally, a decision whether or not to use BusinessObjects Web Intelligence should not be taken on its own but rather as a part of how information is managed in the organization.

I've used BusinessObjects for projects in finance and healthcare. Also, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies uses it as a reporting tool. We had the data source and ad hoc requirements, so we created semantic layer data modeling for the database and reporting system. Then we used BusinessObjects as a tool for reporting and dashboards.

BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting.

I want BusinessObjects to have more flexibility like Tableau or Power BI. The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly. SAP could add more ability to design and customize the dashboards.

BusinessObjects is not that user-friendly. They have different tools for designing dashboards like Discovery— previously called Lumira. That isn't as user-friendly as Tableau. 

I've been using BusinessObjects for four to five years.

BusinessObjects is stable.

BusinessObject's main advantage is the ad hoc capability.

I've contacted SAP support once or twice. We raised a support request, and they responded promptly. They organized a call and helped us resolve the issue. 

BusinessObjects' installation is comparable to Tableau, but BusinessObjects requires a skilled administrator for management and maintenance because it's a little more complex than Tableau.  

In terms of flexibility and user-friendliness, Tableau is better than BusinessObjects, but if you have ad hoc requirements, then BusinessObjects is better.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects eight out of 10. I would recommend BusinessObjects, but it depends on the requirements. SAP is a better choice if you are doing daily reporting where you need to drag and drop objects and create ad hoc reporting then export to Excel or CSV. 

I call it a big boys toy due to costs involved for full, not large, scale deployments. Due to SAP gobling up a multitude of products over the year, the integration issues have mostly all been resolved now and its mature platform whereby all the others are still playing catchup.

It gives you end to end view. You can build a dashboard or report and see full lineage even into etl and wrangling layers. Saving is made when you dont have to waste time integrating with a mirade of other tool sets.

Ive yet to find a bi tool that can match SAP’s offering, and Ive implemented all of them.

Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution.

More than five years.

It is a solid product.

I did not encounter issues with scalability of the solution. 

The tech support is very good.

My career has been filled with greenfield projects it bi rehab whereby I would replace a mess with SAP BO

The initial setup was easy because I specialize in implementation.

I usually get called in as a specialist

No redoing if set up right, and thats usually issue with SAP BO deployments I get called in to mature.

Have a big wallet if you want to be serious

Read gartner to your own detriment

I advise someone considering this solution: Go big or go home!

Web Intelligence for its ad-hoc ability and user interface for allowing business users to create reports without depending on the IT department. The ability to merge data from multiple databases also allows more flexibility and business solutions.

Since SAP purchased Business Objects, they have made some nice improvements, but have still not managed to seamlessly integrate and harmonize the many products they offer.

Life Cycle manager needs to be more stable and easier to use. The Information Design tool could be improved when creating a multi-source universe for improved memory usage and SQL functions available.

? I have worked with the Business Objects tools since 1999, SAP BW since 2006 and SAP Business Objects since 2011 with XI3

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer service for the most part is good and a part of that may be due to the size of the investment the company has with SAP. We were provided a customer advocate on site to escalate issues within SAP as necessary.

The technical support has been a challenge when it comes to finding the correct support analyst who is familiar with how the various product components integrate. Many times we would get someone familiar with Crystal Reports but not with BW or Xcelsius etc.

Business Objects XI 3 was implemented in house with assistance from various outside consultants. The upgrade to 4.0 was done the same way.

I don’t know the exact cost but one of the reasons the business chose to use Business Objects was that they could reduce licensing costs since it was already an SAP R/3 and BW customer.

Microstrategy and Web Focus were also considered back in 2010 when SAP bought and promoted the product for use with BW (replacing Web application designer). At the time none of the products were determined robust enough to use with BW as an enterprise level reporting tool.

Do not undersize the system hardware. Turn on all functionality for a product when installing – even if not anticipating using immediately. Spend ample time up front planning the security set up and only go with one option whether SAP, Enterprise, Windows AD or LDAP.

If I were to compare it with Power BI and I wanted to build proper well-formatted reports, BusinessObjects Business Intelligence does that much better. Power BI is just getting into that space. They've concentrated more on visualization, which is what the SAP Lumira does. With Web Intelligence, you are able to build reports that users can interact with. They can also do a lot of querying themselves.

It is robust in terms of security and integration. It is also quite scalable.

I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools. Web Intelligence is good for reporting and all kinds of stuff, but I would rather have one product. All the reporting features of Web Intelligence should be developed within Lumira.

A lot of predictive abilities have been brought into the cloud version of SAP Analytics. It would be nice to see a lot of newer technologies and AI. Predictive capabilities are becoming a little more standard. Instead of having to get another model, we are just looking for one solution to deal with analytics including predictive.

My first engagement with SAP BI was in 1998, so it has been more than 20 years.

Its environment is quite robust, especially when it is on-premise.

SAP BI is quite scalable. It supports multiple servers and multiple combinations of landscapes. It is quite good. You can add more servers to get better performance. You can also separate services. You can separate the application server from the webserver. If you want to deploy a large on-premise setup, it would be the way to go.

I work for an SAP partner company. We were the first SAP BusinessObjects partners in Nigeria, which is where I'm based. We've been partners since '98. Our goal as consultants is to be as self-sufficient as possible. We hardly need to get in touch with tech support because we are self-sufficient.

The installation of SAP BI is an extensive function. Typically with an SAP installation, you need a combination of on-premise and cloud. The cloud functionality is still evolving and maturing. As compared to Power BI, it would take a lot more work. However, if I went the way of Lumira, I could use Lumira Desktop standalone, and I get to use the features.

We have our own team for maintenance within our company. We used to have five people, but we have scaled down to just two full-time employees. We also have a number of people who are available on request.

I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI.

I will be a bit biased, and I would definitely recommend SAP BI. It is a bit more robust and mature as compared to Power BI. Power BI keeps changing every day, which is not a bad thing considering how old it is. For a serious setup, I would rather use SAP BI, but I look forward to having one tool rather than two.

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

The features that are most valuable are report and dashboard development, universe layer, ability to connect to a wide variety of data sources, ability to develop robust semantic layer, ability to combine different data sources and data federation.

Provides a platform for developing reporting that can be used by end users, which will give relevant, consistent and correct results. Also, ability to combine data, I created a report based on SAP data from BW and combined it with data from SQL server to be able to report on the data in a way that would not have been possible to do except with manual steps. The solution I built replaced a manual process that would take 3 weeks and provided an automated solution. We were able to get the critical analysis in a small fraction of time and able to run the business better as a result.

Can be a little buggy. As with any system you need to do the work to set up the foundation; nothing is as easy as you install it and all your problems are solved.

I have been using this solution for 12 years.

No issues with deployment.

Sometimes encounter some bugs. SAP seems to have taken the approach of letting the users test the product lately.

No - the system is very scalable.

Customer service was average.

Technical support was average.

I've developed many solutions to replace solutions using Access and Excel.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I've done implementations myself.

I'm not sure, as I've been part of projects as a part of the larger organization. In general, it could be very high or very low. I know that BOBJ is costly - so you would need projects to justify the cost.

Not sure haven't been involved in this aspect.

No.

Definitely cost justify it. If you have a lot of manual processes involved in getting the reporting that you need, then this product will definitely help. You can cut out all the manual steps.