IBM SPSS Statistics vs. SAP Crystal

SPSS's ability to deal with things like survey verbatims is a significant competitive disadvantage. The ability to do most of what researchers do without having to learn to program (think R or Python) is the primary advantage SPSS brings to bear.

Incentivized

Generation of templated reports is the strong suit of SAP Crystal. Allows users to change formats in templates bases on requirement with minimal effort. Automated report delivery requires the user to be aware of sql which cannot be expected from all users. Should support more document export formats and improve the UI for SAP B1 Users

Incentivized

• SPSS has been around for quite a while and has amassed a large suite of functionality. One of its longest-running features is the ability to automate SPSS via scripting, AKA "syntax." There is a very large community of practice on the internet who can help newbies to quickly scale up their automation abilities with SPSS. And SPSS allows users to save syntax scripting directly from GUI wizards and configuration windows, which can be a real life-saver if one is not an experienced coder.
• Many statistics package users are doing scientific research with an eye to publish reproducible results. SPSS allows you to save datasets and syntax scripting in a common format, facilitating attempts by peer reviewers and other researchers to quickly and easily attempt to reproduce your results. It's very portable!
• SPSS has both legacy and modern visualization suites baked into the base software, giving users an easily mountable learning curve when it comes to outputting charts and graphs. It's very easy to start with a canned look and feel of an exported chart, and then you can tweak a saved copy to change just about everything, from colors, legends, and axis scaling, to orientation, labels, and grid lines. And when you've got a chart or graph set up the way you like, you can export it as an image file, or create a template syntax to apply to new visualizations going forward.
• SPSS makes it easy for even beginner-level users to create statistical coding fields to support multidimensional analysis, ensuring that you never need to destructively modify your dataset.
• In closing, SPSS's long and successful tenure ensures that just about any question a new user may have about it can be answered with a modicum of Google-fu. There are even several fully-fledged tutorial websites out there for newbie perusal.

Incentivized

• Crystal Reports allows us to create a consistent template for all of our reports.
• Crystal Reports and Server allows us to house a repository for all of our reports to make them easy to find and update when necessary.
• Crystal Reports can connect to a wide variety of data sources.
• Crystal Reports can be a little daunting when first implementing. There are a lot of nuances in learning how to truly master this software and it can be frustrating at times.

Incentivized

• collaboration - SPSS lacks collaboration features which makes it near impossible to collaborate with my team on analysis. We have to send files back and forth, which is tedious.
• integration - I wish SPSS had integration capabilities with some of the other tools that I use (e.g., Airtable, Figma, etc.)
• user interface - this could definitely be modernized. In my experience, the UI is clunky and feels dated, which can negatively impact my experience using the tool.

Incentivized

• The export of reports to Excel is very cumbersome and the results are difficult to format.
• The design of reports and the graphical features (e.g. charts) feel quite rigid.
• The learning curve for a non-programmer is incredibly steep, making Crystal a specialty tool.

Incentivized

Both
money and time are essential for success in terms of return on investment for any kind of research based project work. Using a Likert-scale questionnaire is very easy for data entry and analysis
using IBM SPSS. With the help of IBM SPSS, I found very fast and reliable data
entry and data analysis for my research. Output from SPSS is very easy to
interpret for data analysis and findings

Incentivized

We have been using this product for so many years and it has truly become a cornerstone to our business processes when it comes to developing and distributing information via reports. We currently have over 500 reports developed to date over about 30 systems and that will continue to grow as user needs change.

Probably because I have been using it for so long that I have used all of the modules, or at least almost all of the modules, and the way SPSS works is second nature to me, like fish to swimming.

Incentivized

Crystal is very robust, but not always easy to use. It create wonderful looking reports, and so deserves a high rating. However, I have to take a couple of points off for the simple fact that I cannot hand it to a user and expect them to be able to do development with it.

Incentivized

SPSS can tend to crash when I am trying to do a lot of data. This can slow me down when I need to do a lot of data

Incentivized

SPSS does the job, but it can be slow. I do have to plan a lot of time to get through a huge amount of data.

Incentivized

I have not contacted IBM SPSS for support myself. However, our IT staff has for trying to get SPSS Text Analytics Module to work. The issue was never resolved, but I'm not sure if it was on the IT's end or on SPSS's end

The support community can be difficult to navigate. I've also run into issues with my login. The SAP system has a bizarre mechanism for validating users that requires users to have what is called an S-ID. A basic ID may not give you access to all the features in the portal. The limitation may include not being able to perform a simple task like downloading patches and updates. This isn't a big deal for single user license but for teams it can be a pain.

Incentivized

Trainer was patient and thorough in going through the basics and willing to answer questions by email after the initial training

Incentivized

Have a plan for managing the yearly upgrade cycle. Most users work in the desktop version, so there needs to be a mechanism for either pushing out new versions of the software or a key manager to deal with updated licensing keys. If you have a lot of users this needs to be planned for in advance.

Incentivized

Just like any other implementation: When designing the differing reports, get end users' input, make sure to design the reports so that they display the information that the company requires, in the best and clearest way possible.

Test, test, test, revise when needed, and, particularly, do sufficient training so users are comfortable using Crystal Reports!

Incentivized

If you have made it this far, you should have a very good idea of how SPSS stacks up the competition (data processing and analytics tools). Even the free ones, such as r Studio or Stata, are leaps and bounds ahead of SPSS. IBM is resting on a reputation developed nearly 30 years ago and has shown no desire to improve.

Incentivized

Crystal reports is useful in case we want to import data from data base . We can write queries in it but Google Charts require to be implemented in our application using code so crystal reports is better than Google Charts.

Incentivized

I am neutral because I have not had to look into scalability since I am using as a student.

Incentivized

• I found SPSS easier to use than SAS as it's more intuitive to me.
• The learning curve to use SPSS is less compared to SAS.
• I used SAS, to a much lesser extent than SPSS. However, it seems that SAS may be more suitable for users who understand programming. With SPSS, users can perform many statistical tests without the need to know programming.

Incentivized

• It is a decent buy for specific departments in terms of reporting capabilities but updates and cost (frequent) demands are higher with the benefits offered.
• So long as the requirements are not ever changing, with scheduling functionality, it's a handsome tool.

Incentivized