Likelihood to Recommend Well suited: 1. If data set is not yet well organized. 2. Hypothesis is not yet established. 3. Need to visually explore to find patterns of data (often when analysts have no good understanding of data) 4. When [you need] to analyze events with a timeframe (specifically a sequence of events as a transaction) Less appropriate 1. If a data set is very large, such as Hadoop data, it becomes hard to manage data pipeline and process to feed the data into Ayasdi. To be feed into Ayasdi, data should be aggregated or organized to some level.
Read full review The proper management of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards requires an expert on the team to manage and build reports. If an organization does not have the proper expertise on board to build and deploy reports it will fail. Data analytics, dropping into excel, and broadcasting of information are major bonuses for the use of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.
Read full review Pros Ayasdi Core provides an easy way to get some insight on data. Typically analytics may require having a model or hypothesis before starting to look into the data, but Ayasdi lets you just feed the data first then start seeing what the data looks like. Ayasdi Core's topological network visualization is quite unique. It allows you to explore patterns and potential relations between multiple data elements. A user can also dynamically navigate data with different aspects on the web. The Web version of Ayasdi is easy to use, stable, and fast. It hasn't crashed even when we feed it a lot of data sets, although it took time. Read full review This software is easy to initially learn, and very powerful in producing reusable reports. It is much faster than my company's internal manual queries. The ability to build off of a saved query and share queries to other users is a great positive. My favorite part is that you can run queries in the background and it does not interfere with your current work or slow your computer down. Read full review Cons Use of Python SDK is required to feed data into Ayasdi, but it lacks training materials or sample codes for a novice to get started. Although Web UI of Ayasdi is looking good, often it freezes when the user runs an analysis. It doesn't crash but the web page needs to be refreshed to see the progress of analysis. Algorithms provided by Ayasdi, such as metrics types, lens types need to be explained (what they are and what their strengths and weaknesses are). We had to Google or do research on our own to understand what they are. Read full review The installation can be very complex and time-consuming, it requires a lot of planning and foresight as to what role the software will play in the organization. The software has a relatively large learning curve that takes dedicated users months to get comfortable with, the UI is a bit intimidating for new users. SAP could organize their help better, it can be difficult to find dependable solutions to issues via their website and support channels. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The institution has decided to move in a different direction, and will be using MSBI for reporting. I have been very happy with the Business Objects suite of tools, and will continue to use them heavily until we make the transition.
Read full review Usability From a server and client side perspective. the Business Intelligence Platform provides a foundation for all aspects of content development, distribution, analysis, collaboration and self service. Ease of use from targeted content delivery through controlled accessibility. Content exporting in the format of the users choice. Scheduling for internal or external delivery. Public and private folders for secure content access when requied. Web based for viewing on the users device of choice without the need to download additional applications.
Read full review Reliability and Availability When we implemented 3.1, we had a tough time managing the system: It took almost a year to stabilize. With 4.0, we want to roll out to more users, and are holding back because of fears about the performance issue
Read full review Performance Overall, the tool (Web Intelligence 4.2) is fast and solid. One issue is a dependability on JAVA for a full feature report creation/edit capabilities (as opposed to limited HTML option). Second, planned end of JAVA support by major browsers (Chrome is already not supporting JAVA applet).
Read full review Support Rating SAP has released various versions of SAP BO BI. starting from 3.1 and going to 4.0,4.1,4.2 and latest being 4.3. SAP provides support to these new versions. As new versions keep on coming, support for the very old software goes out of scope from SAP. it is when the different organization plans to get their BO content migrated from a lower version to a newer version. The newer version had definitely added functionality and features which ease the work of users.
Read full review In-Person Training SAP authorized training is best, Please go ahead with it. Even lot of online training options/videos available for self learning
Read full review Online Training I haven't used it or got feedback from the end user. Content looks to be pretty detailed. Focused on SQL but not BW.
Read full review Implementation Rating Hire specialists and experienced staff. Mix some beginners so that everyone is not a leader but a learner too. Plan well; architect well; break down implementation in small steps and move towards larger steps. Create a centralized and authorized SAP Business Objects implementation team.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We had a working group that has been using R studio for the general purpose of statistical analysis in our organization. Although it is a great tool that provides enriched function sets, it is time-consuming for our clinical analysts to learn the tool to see the first result. R is somewhat of a developer-oriented/friendly tool. Ayasdi is friendly to a domain analyst or end users. Plus, support and consulting from Ayasdi were excellent so that we could get knowledge from them immediately whenever we needed.
Read full review We selected SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) based on price. It can stack up against others in terms of price and honestly, that's about it.
Salesforce Commerce does a hell of a better job at handling it. However, in the space of Business Intelligence, SAP can do more, and that's why at the end we went with it
Read full review Scalability SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform supports SOA Service Oriented Architecture. You can start/restart/enable/disable all the servers. You can seamless do load balancing and clustering. It supports all leading application and web server. Supports LDAP SSO integration. People who can work on excel with training they can work on SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, dashboard, Lumira, Information design tool product suite. Tool is very user friendly and easy to learn and implement
Read full review Return on Investment By generating and distributing reports in a timely manner, we were able to save millions of dollars for the company which otherwise would not have been visible. Almost realtime dashboard, saved the company a huge amount by showing the outages and kept the company from buying a tool to do just that. It showed the customers who were not paying the bills and were missing in the system due to some loophole. This was visible by doing reporting on the theft usage of electricity. Read full review ScreenShots