SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau Desktop | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.2 out of 10

Based on 280 reviews and ratings

Score 8.2 out of 10

Based on 1646 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Pixel Perfect reports

Customizable dashboards

Report Formatting Templates

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Drill-down analysis

Formatting capabilities

Integration with R or other statistical packages

Report sharing and collaboration

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Publish to Web

Publish to PDF

Report Versioning

Report Delivery Scheduling

Delivery to Remote Servers

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)

Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Predictive Analytics

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Multi-User Support (named login)

Role-Based Security Model

Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)

Single Sign-On (SSO)

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Responsive Design for Web Access

Dedicated iOS Application

Dedicated Android Application

Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Long-term financial planning

Financial budgeting

Forecasting

Scenario modeling

Management reporting

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Financial data consolidation

Journal entries and reports

Multi-currency management

Intercompany Eliminations

Minority Ownership

Local and consolidated reporting

Detailed Audit Trails

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Financial Statement Reporting

Management Reporting

Excel-based Reporting

Automated board and financial reporting

XBRL support for regulatory filing

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Personalized dashboards

Color-coded scorecards

KPIs

Cost and profitability analysis

Key Performance Indicator setting

Benchmarking with external data

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

Flat file integration

Excel data integration

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

REST API

Javascript API

iFrames

Java API

Themeable User Interface (UI)

Customizable Platform (Open Source)

Pros

SAP Analytics cloud is very easy to connect to an SAP system to directly consume data.
SAP Analytics Cloud has a very strong data model building tool for curating and cleansing the data it receives from a variety of data sources.
SAP Analytics Cloud supports a wide range of proprietary and industry standard data formats for consumption of data.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Allows for complex dashboards to be made and then presented to less-technical audiences
Stories help highlight important information in the information, allowing a presentation to stand on its own without having to be explained in person
Recommends different visualizations based on the type of data inputted

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Verified User

Analyst in Marketing

Telecommunications Company, 201-500 employees

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Cons

SAP Analytics Cloud has improved as a reporting tool but still lacks a lot in comparison to other BI tools.
Often, when there is a non-standard use case, it is hard to work around the logic that SAP has prepared in data actions. More versatility is welcome.
Documentation is often lacking or hard to find, particularly for new features.

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Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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When creating a data source that needs several tables to be joined together, Tableau does its thing by loading the metadata, executing a query and loading data for preview. It does it after each and every join condition. Basically, every time you add a join condition you wait for a minute to create another one. God bless you if you are joining ten tables. There has to be way to pause this data load or at least some part of it to make this process faster.
We had this issue of connection looping with Tableau. Even with a good connection, Tableau ask us to reconnect to the data source. This thing goes in an infinite loop until you hit "No" or "Cancel". And it doesn't exactly show in the log that why is it doing that. Logging needs to be improved.
Tableau doesn't like Star or Snowflake schema even with a columnar database. We have these big Star schema (some of them are a little snowflaked) that we tried to load in Tableau. But they were slow. We converted those to the flat tables and Tableau works great with it.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 8.9

Based on 39 answers

Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Mining & Metals Company, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

SAP Analytics Cloud 8.7

Based on 24 answers

I think that the SAP Analytics Cloud has brought us back to a more homogeneous landscape, which brings the whole organization forward. Before, it was really hard to compare the KPIs of different organizations. Today we have clear and distinct KPIs. This avoids unnecessary discussions and we all pull together again. So I consider the introduction of the product to be very positive.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Industrial Automation Company, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Desktop 9.3

Based on 26 answers

I am really a fan of tableau for its quick setup, data connection, dashboard creation time and very easy to use UI.As i have used multiple Bi tools like QlikView and SAP BO, i can say all other tools take really long time in performing above functionalities except QlikView which is really fast in term of performing analysis.

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Chandra Bhanu Pratap Singh

BI Developer

CognizantInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 8.0

Based on 10 answers

When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.

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Associate Data Analytics Consultant

MarinerInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 6.1

Based on 9 answers

Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast

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Verified User

Professional in Research & Development

Biotechnology Company, 201-500 employees

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Support Rating

SAP Analytics Cloud 8.7

Based on 25 answers

The ticket system for issues is rally noteworthy we have received reverts on every issue that was raised and the user community platform is again a really helpful platform for clearing any questions or issues that arise during normal product use with solution put forth by users who have faced the same problems earlier which ensures it's a reliable solution.

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Project Manager

ShellOil & Energy, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Desktop 8.7

Based on 19 answers

I still haven't found something that stumped me for long. The company materials are first-rate and their seems to be a natural affinity among the professionals using the product. It seems there are many who want to help those that are following them onto the platform. I've never noticed any condescension to new users or obvious questions in the forums or my personal exchanges.

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Decision Sciences - Modeling, Simulation & Analysis

San Francisco State UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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In-Person Training

SAP Analytics Cloud 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Good videos and reference material available in SAP Portal.

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Senior BI Architect

VirtusaBanking, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Desktop 9.4

Based on 4 answers

It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.

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Jon Boeckenstedt

Associate Vice President

DePaul University, Division of Enrollment Management and MarketingHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Online Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 8.0

Based on 4 answers

The training documents that are available online are very detailed and interactive. The instructors were very clear and concise in their presentations and demos and it was very easy to understand.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Telecommunications Company, 201-500 employees

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Implementation Rating

SAP Analytics Cloud 9.0

Based on 1 answer

SAP Analytics Cloud combined features of analytics and cloud offering.

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Senior BI Architect

VirtusaBanking, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Desktop 8.0

Based on 35 answers

Time needs to be spent ahead of implementation to make sure data sources are set up and ready. Consultants need to understand the data sources and the goals before setting foot on-site. Installation is easy, learning to use it takes time. The training resources available are great.

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Sr. Financial Analyst (Finance Manager)

Spring MobileWireless, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Though we have not formally evaluated SAP Analytics Cloud against other analytics products, we had a point of view on other products and the below is a summary of why we select SAP Analytics Cloud -

Smooth integration with onpremise and cloud products.
Our focus was to have HANA product integration
Audit capabilities were good

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Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 104 answers on this topic

When we first looked at getting a visualization software for analytics we looked into two options Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop, and even though Power BI is more cost-effective we decided to go with Tableau Desktop as it had more options that we are looking for such as free reader and Tableau Server and offers a very comprehensive and simple interface that is easier to learn for new staff.

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Clinton Shields

Health Information Analytics Analyst

Kings View Community Services, Inc.Hospital & Health Care, 201-500 employees

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Scalability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 7.0

Based on 3 answers

Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Finance and Accounting

Internet Company, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

Multiple SAP sources can be connected into one software.
No lag time with data or analytics. Crucial for our real estate market which is always changing.
The only negative ROI would be the training and steep learning curve we had to invest in this.

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Verified User

Employee in Human Resources

Real Estate Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Tableau has provided my clients with the information necessary to allocate multi-million dollar research budgets effectively, ensuring the company is getting the most bang for its buck.
Tableau has given my office the ability to present data quickly and easily in a professional format that customers can understand, and has them returning frequently for additional analysis and projects.

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Innovation Research Manager

Wright Brothers InstituteDefense & Space, 11-50 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

SAP Analytics Cloud Editions & Modules

Edition

Business	$21¹
Enterprise	Custom²

per user, per seat
Unlimited users

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Tableau Desktop Editions & Modules

Edition

Tableau Viewer	$12¹
Tableau Explorer	$35¹
Tableau Creator	$70¹

Per User / Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

SAP Analytics Cloud

Tableau Desktop

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