The SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence Platform provides users with ad hoc queries, reporting, data visualizations, and analysis tools. Its integrated, unified infrastructure aims to offer scalability from one-to-many tools and interfaces on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid approach.
Strengths: very good dashboard creating tool and two separate ad hoc modules: one for simple reporting ("Analysis") and one for more advanced, "Pixel Perfect" reports ("BI Publisher). All available from the same place and web based …
Verified User
Consultant
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform has deeper analysis, better version control, and a more superior web dashboard access over Oracle API Manager. We were using Oracle product due to our data being in several different applications with different databases where it was not possible …
ThoughtSpot is superior for query speed and simplicity but is inferior in merged-dimension query setup and execution. BOBJ is superior to Tableau in that the universes simplify the queries for the end-user, however, it's inferior in visualizations. decisionpoint is a dashboard …
Analysis Services and Oracle Discoverer are more developer oriented than true self service tools and their development capabilities as well as their content delivery is limited. The Symantec layer sets BO apart in that regard. Heavy development is also possible and custom …
Business object is a very complete BI suite and its highly developed. I think is very suitable for companies with high complexity data and analysis. The cost of the license and project is expensive.
The biggest advantage that SAP Business Objects has over these competitors are value and options. Value wise, it brings together a tool set that delivers a bit of something for everyone. With integration into Microsoft Office, additional options are available to for those …
I have used Data Stage; plug and play extractors help to fetch data from SAP CRM/ECC. It reduces the ETL job design efforts. I have used Tableau, the SAP dashboard provides more options in designing legends on charts, in-built hide/show features in charts.
We found the community, support and talent pool more accessible with SAP BusinessObjects than JasperSoft. Independant forums such as BOB at (http://www.forumtopics.com/busobj) plus sites form SAP such as SCN (http://scn.sap.com) provide most of what we need to overcome an issue …
I have recently been evaluating Information Builders, MicroStrategy, and Cognos. IB had some nice dashboard and analytics, but was lacking on the scheduling side. We were looking for something more robust. MicroStrategy had a very impressive UI and the dashboards were among the …
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is more dependent on IT for development. We had issues with loger development time with Cognos. Hyperion Essbase Smartview is a good discovery tool but not a good enterprise reporting tool. It is very business centric with the Excel …
SAP Business Objects is primarily used since it can plug into a large variety of existing data sources and only required setup of it's own admin server. A number of other tools have been utilized for functionality but SAP Business Objects proved the best for reporting.
Google Analytics gives a user access to different types of data but from a reporting perspective, it does what SAP Business Objects can do and more. I wish SAP Business Objects had the type of data visualization and readily obtainable insights that Google Analytics has to …
Verified User
Analyst
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Originally, Business Objects was implemented before I joined.
When we had issues with Business Objects Version 3, we evaluated:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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
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.