TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Score7 out of 10

856 Reviews and Ratings

What is SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence?

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.

Read more details.

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • Pixel Perfect reports

    Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.

    Category average: 7.9

  • Publish to Web

    Category average: 8

  • Customizable Platform (Open Source)

    A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API

    Category average: 8

Areas for Improvement

  • Responsive Design for Web Access

    Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.

    Category average: 7.7

  • Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

    In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.

    Category average: 7.4

  • Mobile Application

    A dedicated app for iOS and/or Android.

    Category average: 7.1

Who Buys & Uses SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Pros

  • Robust report scheduling and automated distribution.
  • Strong data integration from multiple sources, including SAP BW.
  • Comprehensive security and access control, with SAP BW role synchronization.

Cons

  • Outdated and complex User Interface and Design.
  • Steep learning curve requiring significant technical knowledge.
  • Visualization and reporting features are less advanced than modern tools.

Powerdul Analytics platform with strong reporting features.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

1.I have used it to create business reports from company data like sales, performance and operations.
2.It helps to analyzes large amount of data to understand trends and business performance.
3.We can craete dashboards to monitor key business metrics in one place for better busines decision making.

Pros

  • create detailed and well formatted business reposrt easily.
  • handles large volumes of data efficiently.
  • Combines data from multiple sources into one platform.

Cons

  • Needs a more modern and user-friendly design
  • deployment process can be time-consuming.
  • Visualization options are not as advanced as modern BI tools

Return on Investment

  • Faster report generation
  • better decision making
  • Centalized data management
  • Improved productivity

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Cloud

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power BI

Enterprise-Grade BI Tool That Hasn't Modernized.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is used to generate various core reports across different Commercial and Finance units within the organisation. It leverages SAP data from SAP Business Warehouse and allows users to access up-to-date reports, including interactive in-browser reports and scheduled email exports, reflecting various predetermined KPIs and business scenarios. Access controls restrict data to users who should see it.

Pros

  • Connection to SAP Business Warehouse for business context and semantics.
  • Paginated reports for print/export.
  • Scheduling of report refresh and sending to users and destinations.

Cons

  • Report building is not intuitive and simple tasks are very time-consuming.
  • Modern interface hides a lot of important functionality behind multiple clicks/menus.
  • It is very difficult to trace back to data sources when something goes wrong.

Return on Investment

  • Ability to view consolidated figures consistently and accurately.
  • Able to talk about the same numbers without risk of manual transformation errors.
  • Able to measure different parts of the organization accurately.

Usability

SAP BusinessObjects BI Powerful Tool

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is integrated with our ERP system, datawarehouse, and CRM system for centralized reporting. It provides our users self service analysis for their daily operational tasks. The platform allows for governance and security compliance with right access and controls in place. The product helps address ad-hoc report requests to free up our BI team and is proven to increase productivity.

Pros

  • Self service reporting
  • Scheduling and management
  • Governance and security

Cons

  • The learning curve could be improved
  • Faster performance for certain reporting
  • More visualization and reporting templates

Return on Investment

  • Faster operational results
  • Better response and performance
  • Meeting compliance needs

Usability

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence helpful for decision making and Predictive analysis

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is generally used in our organisation for creating dashboards with some specific and dynamic drill downs, with additional reports, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence helps the stakeholders get an on demand status for KPIs which help taking correct decisions promptly. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence can be easily attached to SQL database views with the help of OLEDB connections.

Pros

  • Centralized Reporting and Dashboards
  • RealTime updates
  • Single source of truth
  • Drill Downs

Cons

  • Its very tightly coupled with other SAP products
  • UI is little less intutive
  • Requires some technical knowledge in attaching views to reports

Return on Investment

  • Positive ROI
  • Provides ways to promptly takes decisions which helps in allocating resources efficently
  • It requires some technical supervision for best integration but after that it can be utilized properly by non tech personal as well.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI, Tableau Server and Oracle Analytics

Other Software Used

Matterport, Egnyte, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Time for a change

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence for many years now as the front-end tool across multiple sources, but it has very limited functions. What we mostly use it now is a tool to schedule running a report after loading has completed and save that report to a shared drive. Most users prefer using the Analysis for office or Power BI as they can use online and offline data. I think SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is a bit older than SAC and now people are liking stories and other functions in SAC and are moving away from SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Pros

  • Scheduling the report run with prompts
  • Front end too that can get data from multiple sources
  • Roles synced from BW can be added to limit data access

Cons

  • Flexibility of multiple drill down options
  • Combining data in system and offline data from computer
  • The need of Universe designer so less self service ability

Return on Investment

  • Slow response takes up more of people's time
  • Not valuable for analysis, so a bit of waste

Usability