Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.
$14
per month per user
SAP Business Network
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
SAP Business Network is a comprehensive B2B collaboration platform that connects people, processes, and systems across multiple enterprises, digitizing transactions, and creating transparent, resilient, and sustainable supply chains.
Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.
If your organization processes a large number of purchase orders and invoices every month/year, SAP Business Network is very effective, whereas smaller vendors without strong IT support sometimes struggle with setup and ongoing use. making onboarding and training a barrier.
The clients can link with different systems and data sources, making the functioning of various processes more accessible and more efficient.
The audience can interact with high-performance and meaningful analytics that reveal all the critical indicators of influencers and campaigns based on the data/information approach.
It includes a marketplace for brands, which makes the search process easier to find companies to partner with.
User Interface Complexity This interface can feel overwhelming and difficult to use, mainly for new users. A more streamlined, role-specific layout will help decrease the learning curve and enhance productivity.
Limited Small Vendor Integration for smaller vendors to adopt. Introducing a Modified or simplified version for smaller suppliers will make it more accessible.
Enhanced Predictive Analytics and Automation—The platform's predictive capabilities are limited, particularly in demand risk assessment.
Adding advanced automation analytics will help users proactively address supply chain needs.
Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.
I will give it a 9, one is deducted for business inspection and improvement i feel that they are in the right direction and streamlined our flow of business agility also helped us get the R.o.i and helped with more sales and visibility over business and its metrics.
The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.
There is still a ton of flexability on the customer's end of the platform, which makes standard onboarding for suppliers a challenge. Customers are allowed to ask for things, or customize certain things that are not standard for us, so we have to have special rules set up to complete an integration. There are also some limitations to automate invoice rejections that happen on the platform when a customer rejects an invoice
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.
MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.
I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.
We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.
Good performance from SAP as key deployment partner; collaboration and deployment with additional business partner for data provision and business partner onboarding was rather difficult, slowing down the project progress and overall success perception
We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.
Before we chose SAP Business Network, we looked at Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud and Infor Supply Chain Management. While SAP Business Network boasted robust features, the fact that our existing ERP system could be integrated with the tool in a better fashion, and it was more intuitive, sealed the deal for us.
As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.
SAP Business Network's streamlined supply chain and procurement processes have significantly reduced operational costs and improved resource allocation, leading to enhanced overall efficiency.
The platform's robust analytics have provided valuable insights, facilitating data-driven decision-making and enabling us to make more informed strategic choices, ultimately contributing to improved business performance.
Implementing and integrating the SAP Business Network initially required a substantial financial investment, impacting short-term cash flow and potentially delaying other critical business initiatives.
