SAP Lumira Discovery vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SAP Lumira Discovery
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
SAP Lumira Discovery is SAP’s data visualization and discovery application. It facilitates data discovery, visualization, and analysis by assisting users with creation of dashboards, infographics, presentations, data facets, tag clouds, and more.
$185
per user
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$70
per month
Pricing
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
SAP Lumira, standard edition
$185
per user
Tableau Creator
$70.00
Per User / Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
SAP Lumira Discovery
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
I found SAP Lumira first, but actually have begun to use Tableau more. SAP stacks up pretty well against Tableau, but it feels just a step behind in most areas.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Both Tableau and QlikView score very highly in end user experience and visualisation development compared to Lumira. However the integration of Lumira with existing Universes you may have or cost implications if you have a SAP BI Suite licence can help shift the preference into …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Lumira is the last of my visualization tool selections, this is in comparison to Tableau, Qlik, etc.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery

- Power BI has more features (like ETL) and more integration. Power BI Desktop is free.

- Tableau has better visual and better interactivity. Tableau is expensive.

- SAP Lumira is affordable as long as you don't need the Web Portal.

Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
I have evaluated products such a Tableau Desktop and Splunk and the biggest difference I realized was the ability to include interactive controls in the output. For instance if I wanted to include the ability to filter by a category or filter by a date range, the controls can …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
It has better visualization than the above-mentioned software. It is much easier to use SAP Lumira for quick data visualization without any hitches. We are confident in the product and it has never failed to deliver what we looked for. Our efficiency has increased 3 fold since …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
The way it works with other SAP apps is a great factor which tilts the pointer in favor of SAP LD. By that I mean ability to import data from places like SAP HANA, BW, BO Universe, etc. provides a flexible way to cleanup and prepare data for analysis easily and quickly. The …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Lumira is more powerful in some ways but also slightly more limited in others. While at least in my experience Lumira can feel somewhat cookie cutter in the options you have, overall you are able to get a better sense of understanding of the current state of things using …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Lumira is the worst. If you are a total SAP shop you might prefer to use WebI, BeX, or even Crystal Reports/Dashboards before making the leap into Lumira. If you have the option and are already a MS 365 user, download PowerBI, it is cheaper, easier and more powerful.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
None of the above mentioned tools have good SAP products connectivity. Most of the medium and Large organizations usually run large-scale SAP deployments.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
SAP Lumira is mainly for non technical persons. When one is not into much data and doesn't want to dig dip into data models and algorithms, it is very handy. But, if you are dealing with lots of data with huge variety and volume you should consider the alternatives, as the …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
SAP lumria is user-friendly and need no basic training for visualization training.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
For a full featured SAP environment, Lumira is the suitable platform for a BW, Hana, ECC universe or third party DB universe sourced reporting compared to all of the other analytical platforms.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Easy to use, one time license cost, close integration with BI/BO, custom user story for case based data presentation.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira is a more powerful program that lets us create better visualisations than other options that were considered. We were happier with the results we were able to get with Lumira than with other programs that we used in the past.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Certain features that SAP BusinessObjects Lumira has are not as good as in the other software that we considered, but SAP BusinessObjects
Lumira was a more reliable program overall than some of the alternatives, which helped us decide to purchase this software versus the other …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
I used SAP BusinessObjects Lumira while consulting with a company that had existing licenses. While I'm not normally a big SAP fan, I was blown away by this product.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
I think the only real reason to select SAP BusinessObjects Lumira over the others listed above at the moment would be due to the integration with the rest of the SAP stack, whether that is the current level of integration or the future level that is expected. On all other …
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
The ease of access to Data and visualizations. The fact that it is integrated with BW and HANA makes it a must have for SAP customers
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
It looks like Lumira is inferior in terms of utilizing ZIP mapping.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
Lumira is more tightly coupled with the SAP HANA data source. It is more suitable for doing real time data analysis.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
I select edto use SAP BusinessObjects Lumira because it's the best solution for data analysis.
Chose SAP Lumira Discovery
When compared to other tools our approach is towards the self-servicing rather development that grabbed out attention towards SAP Lumira. also has more scope of maturity as a Self-Service BI.
Tableau Desktop
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is preferred over other BI software because it allows for more data visualization, storytelling, and dashboards. Microsoft Power BI may be a better option if you need to perform data modeling, however. Tableau Desktop is an excellent tool for nearly all other …
Chose Tableau Desktop
I feel like Tableau is easier to use and offers a greater selection of visualizations. I feel that the dashboards are easier to put together and offer a great amount of flexibility for the end-user. Tableau has an excellent user support group. I find the community to be …
Chose Tableau Desktop
It is more useful and easy.
Chose Tableau Desktop
Excel is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades Swiss army knife approach. You can do almost anything but it is missing much of the polish of dedicated applications of Tableau. Great for the initial approach to a new dataset. I have created some custom Excel macros that go in and run …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau is not as user-friendly as SAP Lumira. SAP Lumira is more efficient and productive time-wise, especially for first-time users. Tableau is better for more complex and detailed dashboards; especially interactive dashboards. Tableau enables users to create interactive …
Chose Tableau Desktop
More flexible and easier to use than Lumira
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau is the only tool that can be exposed to end users so that they can build their reports and dashboards and can publish these without the help of a dedicated developer.
Chose Tableau Desktop
SAP Lumira starts off well with its ease of use but the number of visualizations are very limited in Lumira when compared to Tableau Desktop. Also the ability to customize the visualizations is limited. Its integration with the non SAP data sources is poor. Also, the components …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
7.5
96 Ratings
9% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.5
166 Ratings
4% above category average
Customizable dashboards7.596 Ratings9.0165 Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.3138 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.3144 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
7.6
102 Ratings
7% below category average
Tableau Desktop
9.0
163 Ratings
10% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.799 Ratings9.2158 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.9102 Ratings9.0161 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration7.497 Ratings9.3156 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.3121 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
7.2
94 Ratings
15% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.8
157 Ratings
5% above category average
Publish to Web7.781 Ratings9.3148 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.693 Ratings8.4148 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling6.355 Ratings9.2122 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.7115 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.572 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
5.6
103 Ratings
36% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.6
155 Ratings
6% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.1101 Ratings8.9153 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization6.794 Ratings8.8148 Ratings
Predictive Analytics2.072 Ratings8.7125 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.7
141 Ratings
1% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.8138 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.4118 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7128 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.976 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
134 Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.6123 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings8.396 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings8.7116 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
SAP Lumira Discovery
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.7
63 Ratings
9% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.655 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.350 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.948 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.845 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.552 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.845 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
6.8
(104 ratings)
8.8
(193 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(39 ratings)
Usability
7.8
(14 ratings)
8.6
(63 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
6.1
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(11 ratings)
6.9
(56 ratings)
In-Person Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
2.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SAP Lumira DiscoveryTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP
Infographics derived from specific data sources appears to be well suited for development using Lumira. The development of executive level dashboards was less appropriate from my perspective. The software does not provide sufficient demonstration or samples for the users to learn from in my opinion.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop is one the finest tool available in the market with such a wide range of capabilities in its suite that makes it easy to generate insights. Further, if optimally designed, then its reports are fairly simple to understand, yet capable enough to make changes at the required levels. One can create a variety of visualizations as required by the business or the clients. The data pipelines in the backend are very robust. The tableau desktop also provides options to develop the reports in developer mode, which is one of the finest features to embed and execute even the most complex possible logic. It's easier to operate, simple to navigate, and fluent to understand by the users.
Read full review
Pros
SAP
  • SAP has built in features you would expect from a data visualization package, like easy import from other SAP systems.
  • SAP has most of the typical charts that you would expect in order to visualize your data.
  • SAP allows you to have multiple charts on one visualization for your data.
Read full review
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Read full review
Cons
SAP
  • Even though the process of creating visualizations of data is now greatly improved, it could still be a lot better as users become accustomed to this kind of tool and bring forward edge cases the developers did not anticipate.
  • It would be awesome to have a cross platform tool that works on more than just Windows.
  • Some options for specific graphs feel limiting.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
SAP
No answers on this topic
Tableau
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.
Read full review
Usability
SAP
SAP Lumira is very good self service analytical tool with powerful capabilities. However need to look into other SAP products in BI space, like SAP SAC. SAP Lumira is more used for custom and complex analytical need in business intelligence area. Also SAP Lumira is going out of maintenance in coming future replaced by SAP SAC.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
SAP
Lumira is a desktop application runs in its own JVM. It installs its own java runtime libraries to avoid any core java version conflicts. The availability of the application is completely relies on individual machine hardware configuration. On a decent desktop, it performs well and always launches in either 32 or 64 bit environment based on the hosts system's OS
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Tableau
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.
Read full review
Performance
SAP
The performance is linear with amount of data that is being explored. We have done some benchmarks acquiring 10million data cells without having any performance problems. We need to make proper adjustments to jvm run time properties to start with higher heap size and other parameters that optimizes the run time performance
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Tableau
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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Support Rating
SAP
It does not have many bugs or issues since not a lot of new features are being added. The customer support for SAP Lumira Discovery is good and anyone considering this as a self-service tool would be happy. It integrates well in the SAP BI suite of products and the overall experience is positive.
Read full review
Tableau
I have never really used support much, to be honest. I think the support is not as user-friendly to search and use it. I did have an encounter with them once and it required a bit of going back and forth for licensing before reaching a resolution. They did solve my issue though
Read full review
In-Person Training
SAP
We did not take in-person training
Read full review
Tableau
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.
Read full review
Online Training
SAP
Most of the user guides are pretty comprehensive and very easy to understand. The product itself is designed to be self-serve tool, did not need much of the end-user training. Most of the training we had is to how to read the data, how to explore the data, how to acquire the data etc.
Read full review
Tableau
The training for new users are quite good because it covers topic wise training and the best part was that it also had video tutorials which are very helpful
Read full review
Implementation Rating
SAP
Installing the desktop software on end-user machines is always challenging. The machine specifications are the biggest factor when running Lumira and be able to handle large datasets during data exploration. This often demands beefy machines at least for power-users. Although Lumira software licensing is not a big problem but managing partner's extensions and keeping track of their individual licenses may be an issue. If there is a way to bundle the more popular extensions such as vSQL or vOLAP should be bundled in core product and offer them as part of Lumira license instead of a separate license which causer operational burden.
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Tableau
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
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Alternatives Considered
SAP
Even though SAP Analytics Cloud is considered to be better in aspects such as data connectivity or analytics, we decided to choose Lumira as it was easier to understand, learn and use. As our business is not really that big and does not require the inclusion of large amounts of data, Lumira was overall the safest and most comfortable option. Also, some members in our team had previous knowledge so it was easier to adapt
Read full review
Tableau
If we do not have legacy tools which have already been set up, I would switch the visualization method to open source software via PyCharm, Atom, and Visual Studio IDE. These IDEs cannot directly help you to visualize the data but you can use many python packages to do so through these IDEs.
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Scalability
SAP
Enterprise wide implementation is a challenge with data security and trustedness. No easy installation can be done across the enterprise. no upgrade paths also available from SAP. They have so much of experience with desktop implementation, there it could be a controlled environment with a capital budget. These may be resolved in the upcoming releases
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Tableau
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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Return on Investment
SAP
  • We could obtain original data from vast and detailed corporate and personal data sources.
  • We could share visual analysis results with stakeholders via the cloud, and it could also be viewed on a tablet.
  • It is very flexible and accurate to use. It can be used for forecasting sales, resource planning, and scheduling.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
Read full review
ScreenShots

SAP Lumira Discovery Screenshots

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