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SAP Crystal

SAP Crystal

Overview

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

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Recent Reviews

Decent reporting tool

8 out of 10
February 15, 2020
Incentivized
I used SAP Crystal for report visualization. The graphs in the tool are outstanding with strong information telling ability combining with …
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SAP Crystal Review

7 out of 10
January 08, 2020
Incentivized
Crystal is used enterprise-wide for pixel-perfect reporting. We have both on-demand reporting use cases, and scheduled reporting via email …
Continue reading
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 29 features
  • Publish to PDF (131)
    10.0
    100%
  • Report sharing and collaboration (118)
    10.0
    100%
  • Report Formatting Templates (115)
    10.0
    100%
  • Formatting capabilities (133)
    10.0
    100%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
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Pricing

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Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020

$295

On Premise
per single user license

SAP Crystal Reports 2020 64-Bit

$495

On Premise
per single user license

SAP Crystal Reports 2016 32-Bit

$495

On Premise
per single user license

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.sapstore.com/solutions/99013…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Software TRAIL DEMO SAP Crystal Reports 2013

YouTube

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design - Demo video

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

9.3
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

9.6
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9.4
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.6
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.4
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Server are designed to help users create pixel-perfect, richly formatted, and dynamic reports from virtually any data source – delivered in dozens of export formats, in up to 24 languages. SAP Crystal Reports is a production reporting tool designed to turn almost any data source into interactive, actionable information that can be accessed offline or online, from applications, portals and mobile devices. SAP Crystal Server enables self-service access to reports, dashboards, and data exploration within a secure infrastructure.

SAP Crystal Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
  • Supported: Delivery to Remote Servers

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: Javascript API
  • Supported: Java API
  • Supported: Themeable User Interface (UI)
  • Supported: Customizable Platform (Open Source)

SAP Crystal Screenshots

Screenshot of Pixel-perfect reporting solutionScreenshot of Refresh with a clickScreenshot of Build pixel-perfect documentsScreenshot of Connect to all data sourcesScreenshot of Use drag and dropScreenshot of Build interactive reportsScreenshot of Export to popular formats

SAP Crystal Videos

SAP Crystal Solutions: The Mobile Worker Use Case
SAP Crystal Solutions: Identify and Eliminate Clutter in Your Visualizations
SAP Crystal Solutions: How to Buy SAP Crystal Reports Digitally

SAP Crystal Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Thai, Czech, Hungarian, Slovakian, Turkish, Romanian, Slovenian

Frequently Asked Questions

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

Windward Core, Jaspersoft, and Jet Reports are common alternatives for SAP Crystal.

Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Report Formatting Templates and Drill-down analysis highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of SAP Crystal are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(558)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 156)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Proulx Mfg has utilized SAP Crystal for our reports for several years; We can appreciate SAP personalization to customize the data our company requires from our platforms which helps target root cause issues by easily using selected parameters that SAP reporting tools provide by showing our financial tools, inventory data, and company performance even at a standard or customization level SAP Crystal Reports is a great insight to our company demands for managing data with ease.
  • Accessible data within our company network
  • Easy to personalize data and report parameters
  • Works seamless with our database servers
  • Sorting edit grid data
  • designing seems limited at times
  • imaging doesn't always load up to size
SAP Crystal Reports has work well in cases where our servers are down and even though our database is offline SAP continues to work as if our network is still online cause no disruption to our service or downtime, SAP is extremely dependable for our reporting needs and meaningful data sources
Emeka Opara | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal is used across the company. It allows you streamline inventory refreshes and the custom ordering process into a single automated report. This helps a lot in preventing outages of certain tools or stock.
  • It can connect to various data sources
  • Quick logins and authorization syncing with SSO
  • It may be a bit hard to setup for a new user.
  • While it may be hard to setup it has a lot of great functionality that will come in handy once you are comfortable with it.
SAP Crystal is used to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, and more.
Issac Paul | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal is an extremely important and critical tool in our business operations primarily serving sales, finance and dispatch departments where bulk of our invoicing, sales order, Purchase order and delivery challans are generated to cater to our clients as well as for internal auditing documents. All templates for each of the documents mentioned above are designed in SAP Crystal and formatted to match our compliance and governance policies. Especially since we are relying heavy on automation these documents are modified for intricate details capture by our automation bots.
There is a good power of customization for end user with the help of SAP Crystal to generate pdf, excel as well JSON format documents easily
  • Template Standardization
  • Multiple Export Formats
  • Automated Interactive report Generation
  • Report generation lead time should be improved
  • Export options are limited to excel and pdf only
  • Frequent updated should be provided
Generation of templated reports is the strong suit of SAP Crystal. Allows users to change formats in templates bases on requirement with minimal effort.
Automated report delivery requires the user to be aware of sql which cannot be expected from all users.
Should support more document export formats and improve the UI for SAP B1 Users
Akhilesh Arya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
This tool is amazing for reporting. You can generate reports from different types of data sources easily. We are using this tool in the department of computer science and engineering in our organization for research purpose. Generally while working on research projects we have some huge datasets and that too from different sources and in different format we have to prepare meaning full reports out of them in order to use them as research findings.
  • It can connect to different data sources
  • Generates report with attractive charts and tables
  • Very flexible and easily customize-able
  • A little programming related to SQL and .NET is required for the efficient use of the tool
  • Adjusting spaces between multiple rows is a bit difficult task
  • Documentation part should be improved
1. If you are a researcher and you have to review and prepare reports using datasets this is a really helpful tool for you.
2. For a person working in sales; this will help to generate sales reports.
3. It can be use in the finance and accounts departments also for budget sheets, expense sheets etc..
Abdul S. Usmani | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal is being used for many solutions we use that just require some form of static reporting and batch reporting. It is used by managers and operations personnel to review data and aggregations.
  • Aggregations
  • Output in various formats
  • Multiple data sources
  • Summarizing data
  • Maybe a little bit more easy to drag and drop/WYSIWYG capability
Great for connecting to multiple data sets, great for reports generation and output in multiple different formats, great for emailing reports to users.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
All the divisions where the need of formatted reports was there, i.e. in HR departments to get the complete detail of an employee for all past performances indicators, hikes, travel opportunities, PII data or be it on the floor of manufacturing company. In real time replication of data , details of Sales Order/Purchase Orders or internal material movement order were printed in the highly formatted way using Crystal reports detailing each entity/price or other nuance of the type of report it was. Dynamic text of logged in the system was printed in some cases when movement for item was restricted by only some authorized persons so that Security guards can easily check and catch the unwanted movement of product.
  • Highly formatted reporting capabilities.
  • Pixel oriented perfect reporting for printing.
  • Embedding of dynamic images/logo or barcodes for customized reports.
  • Easy to share with other users.
  • Dragging and dropping the elements into the canvas to fit in pixels is sometime difficult.
  • Exporting the report in Excel looses formatting.
  • Learning curve of Crystal is difficult for consultants as it's a bit tricky for data connections.
If your organization is needing such a data intelligence solutions where in data reported is important but the way it is presented is also highly important, without even thinking one should go for SAP Crystal Reports. This tool is capable of providing pixel perfect formatted reports giving a very crystal (justifying its name) clear insight of the information represented in form of data. The reports can easily contain company logos/dynamic images or text as per reporting requirements.
Only in case where you need row columns based reporting where you can see data in excel like formats you should not go for SAP Crystal Reports.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as our main reporting tool as part of our software application for all internal and external reports.
  • Fairly easy to learn the report designer. Even for people without strong database knowledge.
  • Ability to reuse existing report components.
  • Can design reports targeted for printing (can cleanly handle pagination).
  • Can report from multiple data sources without the need for a data warehouse.
  • Better handling of imported images from a database. Need to maintain aspect ratio.
  • Add option to disable grid lines.
  • Changing data source on same server needs a little TLC. Still have to change each table instead of just updating the connection.
  • Pivot Table formatting.
  • Chart formatting.
  • Importing formatted text from MS Word.
  • Support for HTML text formatting.
Very well suited for customer facing reports like invoices, statements and contracts. Great for listings / rosters.
Fun backdoor functionality to be able to execute stored procedures to updated data within the database and provide results without the need to build custom application solutions.

Not very useful for exporting to MS Word for contracts that need further editing. Pivot tables and charting capabilities are very simple when compared to MS Excel and are only used when basic functionality is needed.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Create reports which are customizable to the needs of our organization. User-friendly and very likely the best for our clients. Intuitive and user-friendly interface. Reliable with financial reporting, which is very accurate and timely. Great with inventory control and stock control
  • Reporting which is timely.
  • Timely with financial management and easy to use.
  • Intuitive user interface and customizable dashboard.
  • Customizable reporting.
  • Cloud based and documentation.
  • Improve on training users.
Great software with reporting which helps to filter by the month. Really easy to integrate with CRM. Reliable with financial management and easy to make decisions.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal is being used by my organization to generate all kinds of reports across the entire organization. The company has been using the tool for more than 10 years and is still using it. The feature to automate and generate reports and sent the result to our client via email is outstanding at the time.
  • Clean
  • Connection
  • User-friendly
  • Clunky
  • Hard setup
  • No regular update
SAP Crystal is well suited for a company with upper management who are only used to old school analysis and the analysts are either not familiar with coding or only be able to write SQL queries. In that case, the tool fits the needs of the company well at a lower cost.
Gene Baker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Crystal Reports to generate over 200 standard reports for various data topics from our record-keeping system. These reports can be for the business or for our customers. We generate thousands of reports each week that are then delivered to our clients. Crystal is used within our organization. The enterprise has a variety of reporting tools in use. We have been using Crystal Reports for over 18 years on our team.
  • Complex queries are supported through the use of stored procedures. Because of this, we are able to create very complex reports to satisfy consumer needs.
  • User-friendly formats are supported and we can display these reports online.
  • Running multiple queries without using stored procedures.
  • We need to have developers write SQL code. Drag and drop type report creation can be difficult to accurately create without writing SQL. SQL relationships must be clearly defined for the drag and drop to work. This makes sense, otherwise, how would the tool know what the relationships are?
We have used this as our reporting solution for 18 years. We have reviewed other technologies like Tableau and Jasper Reports. We found Crystal the easiest to use for our environment. We create all of our reports in the same format using a stored procedure to gather the result set. We do this so that we can control the SQL and validate the performance. The downside to this is we can't do the drag and drop reports and have to rely on the assistance of a SQL Developer to code the stored procedure for us. The upside is once the proc is coded and tested, it is tuned for performance so that the reports execute efficiently without causing negative issues on the system for transactional queries.
February 15, 2020

Decent reporting tool

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used SAP Crystal for report visualization. The graphs in the tool are outstanding with strong information telling ability combining with tables and images. Apart from the graphs, it is designed to be very interactive so you can drag and drop directly to control and tailer the shape of the graph to your needs.
  • Integration
  • Connection
  • Hard initial setup
  • Unstable
SAP Crystal is suitable to connect with a single source of data such as ODBC, XML, Excel, etc. but it has difficulty when you try to connect different sources of data at the same time through this channel. Some other tools might be more usable in that situation such as Qlik that I reviewed before.
Yoni Dvorkis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SAP Crystal to automate and generate a set of reports that are usually exported as PDF files directly to the user's email inboxes. Occasionally users also login to the Business Objects Server to access their reports in that format. We run Business Objects scheduler to schedule the reports to refresh usually once a week.
  • Clean format for PDF is nice
  • Connects to database to refresh queries
  • It's quite clunky setting up a page footer or report footer.
  • Headers are similarly hard to set up
Automated report generation and refresh sent as email is useful for any reports that typically involve manual effort. The typical use case in MS Excel is when reports need to be updated. There generally is a large amount of copying and pasting data into charts. In SAP Crystal, the formatting is done once, and then the automated feature always brings in new data.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SAP Crystal to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, invoice, manufacturing documents, and automated shipping labels. The whole organization uses crystal reports in a way because it links into our ERP system. We no longer need an external company to do our documents, reporting as we now have the ability to do it in house. Crystal Reports allows us to produce highly customizable documents and reports for any business case.
  • Advanced formulas.
  • Producing automated PDF documents.
  • Lining up formulas with database fields.
  • Occasional crashing.
SAP Crystal is well suited for organizations that have a need for automated documents and reports. I'd recommend having a few Crystal Reports writers within a company and Crystal Reports viewer for users who don't need to create them. Even better if your ERP/System supports crystal reports in the browser like Sage whereby no viewer is needed. It wouldn't be suitable for companies not making use of databases or with little knowledge of such.
January 08, 2020

SAP Crystal Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal is used enterprise-wide for pixel-perfect reporting. We have both on-demand reporting use cases, and scheduled reporting via email or logging in to report inboxes. It is used against multiple source systems for all areas of the business, including clinical, financial, and operational. We generate PDF, Excel, and CSV based outputs.
  • Pixel perfect reporting.
  • Enterprise grade stability.
  • Dated technology.
  • There's a lack of web-based development for Crystal reports (though it exists for WEBI and the like).
Crystal can help manage pixel-perfect based reporting for your enterprise, but unless you are using the entire SAP analytics stack, it is tough to manage governance without a strong data warehouse. Pixel perfect reporting also has its place, but most enterprises are moving to more interactive self-service dashboarding and drill down tools, and that capability is limited in Crystal (albeit, it was not developed for that use case).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal Reports software is used within the organization for creating reports from several hundred external resources. I would not say it is an easy task to do this through the software. However, the contribution level of the system's ease of use to our research process is really huge and we really don't have any alternative. We are not even searching for one.

All of the reported materials are tweaked, edited, gathered, modified in the system itself. The formatting and the conditional output of the reports are really good and we could find no equal software to this from the perspective of the reporting. All in all, this is a well structured and easy-to-use system with extensive functionalities which can help in crucially reducing work-time by managing some necessary reporting tasks.
  • Easy to use UI. Basically, even a non-technical user can learn to do everything in a week.
  • The speed of compiling the data.
  • Useful templates.
  • Easy interface for integrating the data in the system from external sources.
  • Scheduled reports.
  • There are some specific points in the system which might become buggy or not easy to use, thus, require support.
  • A lot of functionalities to learn for new users.
The system can be used for basically any purpose in any business niche for creating reports. There are no limitations. Thus, if it's business, medicine, logistics, etc.. industry, the system can be extensively used for reporting purposes and highly effectively. The provided templates, as well as the possibility of creating the reports from scratch, can be chosen for reporting. The system can also be used for scheduled reporting which saves a lot of time according to your business needs.
Jesus Chacon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used as a tool to visualize reports that are generated in our developed applications. It facilitates us to be able to display rich information with images, tables, colors, and graphs. It has an excellent form designer by using drag & drop controls to give the shape we want to each of the reports. The viewer also allows us to print the information or export it to other common formats such as PDF. It integrates very well with Visual Studio IDE.
  • It has many interesting tools and functions when used with Visual Studio IDE. This allows us to integrate many features of the IDE to design each visual element using drag and drop controls to customize reports
  • We have been able to make successful connections to diverse data sources including SQL Server, MySQL, local and in the cloud
  • You can perform complex queries by incorporating SQL statements
  • There are no limits as to the type of data or objects that I can use. I can format the changes, add mathematical and logical functions, also add images configure the color fonts, all in design mode
  • There is no backward compatibility with versions of previous reports. Some updates could cause data loss
  • New versions take a long time to arrive
It is excellent as a solution for reports because it has its own functions to ensure that the information shown is presented in a clear and professional manner. We can format the output of the fields used in the uncovered functions of the Crystal reports.

I do not recommend it for temporary use or small projects.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal Reports is used throughout our company. It allows us to present consistent and branded reports to all of our internal and external clients. It also allows us to have standardized cost reporting. Prior to implementing SAP Crystal Reports, we had different sites presenting clients with their own custom cost reports. Many of these were done in Excel and there was no consistency across our organization. SAP Crystal Reports has replaced those and now we provide one consistent and branded report.
  • Crystal Reports allows us to create a consistent template for all of our reports.
  • Crystal Reports and Server allows us to house a repository for all of our reports to make them easy to find and update when necessary.
  • Crystal Reports can connect to a wide variety of data sources.
  • Crystal Reports can be a little daunting when first implementing. There are a lot of nuances in learning how to truly master this software and it can be frustrating at times.
  • There are a lot of features in Crystal Reports that do not always work as expected. You may find yourself searching the Web for how to get the results that you want.
  • Crystal Reports does not provide updates on a regular basis. New concepts and ideas may be a while in implementing.
  • The initial setup can be frustrating. There are times when you need to go outside of the install package to make it work with particular data sources, etc. It is not always a 100% install.
If you want easily controlled and formatted reports to provide a consistent platform across your organization, Crystal Reports is an excellent program. You will need to be willing to put in some effort up front for install and learning the program, but once you are up and running, it does provide a great way to provide standard reporting. It gives you the ability to allow all of your employees access the same data, in the same format at any time.
Miguel De La Garza Rodriguez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal reports is naturally embedded into SAP B1, we use it across the organization and have over 100 different reports created at the time, all these fill our departments with crucial information about their KPIs, we use Crystal for lot of different reports from a range of very visual reports with charts and colored graphics thru text/numeric grids filled with information, all are viewable from our SAP client.
  • Excelent integration on SAP B1 client install
  • Very easy for the user to access / export reports data
  • User permissions/controls to enable/disable unwanted users to access the reports
  • If IT department has no previous knowledge of crystal reports they will need training in order to start using it
  • It would be great to have objects integrated on the reports
To have reports on sales / buying side as well as inventory reports, pretty much every data stored in a SQL Database can be pulled to create a crystal report, in the case when used with SAP B1 every SAP module can have at least 1-3 crystal reports to control each module
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Many custom reports are developed by our IT department to serve our various departments. At this time, it is largely used for legacy reporting and for personalized, highly formatted emails. Many of our older reports are written using Crystal Reports. We are gradually phasing out those reports and moving to SSRS.
  • Page formatting.
  • Query generation.
  • Capturing requests at runtime.
  • Connecting to the database is complex and error-prone.
  • Scripting is done in Visual Basic for Applications, and can be hard to debug.
  • Changing the database underneath it can lead to problems getting back in sync.
It can connect decently to an ODBC data source. If you need to create a highly formatted report, with a lot of graphics and careful field placement, it can do that well. On the other hand, if you are generating a run of the mill business report, you can do better with SQL Server Reporting Server.
September 03, 2019

SAP Crystal is a life saver

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal is mainly used by only 2-3 people within my company. It helps me tremendously tweak Viewpoint reports just enough to get them to include all the info we need when we need it. I have used Crystal at least once a day for almost 5 years now. If not every day, then at least once or twice a week. As far as our business problems that it helps address, it has helped us save a ton of money on not having to request custom reports through Viewpoint. We are able to take a canned report out of Viewpoint, add a new data line, or remove or even combine data to show it the way we need it. It has saved me a ton of time, and I would recommend it to anyone. I am excited to learn more about Crystal and how it can continue to help me grow and excel.
  • SAP Crystal is easy to use and easy to learn it makes pulling data out of Viewpoint easy and quick.
  • SAP Crystal has a ton of strengths when comparing weaknesses. One of its strengths is the speed of it. It pulls data super quickly.
  • SAP Crystal has a little room for improvement in combining data tables and making it a little less confusing.
Crystal reports are well suited for pulling information for a SQL database. It is also a platform that helps in the scenario of decision making.
Frank Hunt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal reports help us to pull automatic reports out of various databases directly (without importing into Excel first and running pivot tables) and display relations in the data. As long as there is a common data field (a campaign ID, for example), the reports are done in seconds across all the connected data sources. This exact process used to take at least an hour when done manually.
  • Seamless parsing of data across different data sources.
  • Ability to create sub-records and drill-down feature for granular data analysis.
  • Complex queries or SQl statements are done in seconds.
  • The export of reports to Excel is very cumbersome and the results are difficult to format.
  • The design of reports and the graphical features (e.g. charts) feel quite rigid.
  • The learning curve for a non-programmer is incredibly steep, making Crystal a specialty tool.
Crystal reports is a great Business Intelligence tool for any midsize business that prefers to keep its data in-house instead of in the cloud. The learning curve for parsing data source and creating first reports could be a bit steep at the beginning, but then the cost savings are invaluable. The reports generated by Crystal are easily manipulated according to different requirements and further analyzed by the recipients.
Rohit Narang | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Crystal reports in our credit risk reporting function within the IFRS9 accounting standard to pick up specific delinquency reports at a customer level which needs to feed into disclosures on a quarterly basis. The idea is to receive canned reports by monitoring the amortization profile of customers and which goes as a feed to risk managers in creating early warning list by using specific credit utilization behavior.
  • Great visualization for static format & precise tasks: For presentation to senior management /ex-co/vendors where concise decisions need to be made, Crystal is a nice choice to slide data into presentable views.
  • Diverse data source connect: We have used it to write reports using data from DB2, SQL, Progress, Excel spreadsheets, XML data, Access, and Lotus Notes databases. It can also be used to join different database types together in one report.
  • It uses the "recurring bands" structure for page layout which is efficient and fungible for generating different types of reports. Crystal doesn't require that we set up a metadata layer before creating reports and provides direct access to tables and dimensions.
  • It is not very user-friendly for learning as during designs and debugging the error decryption is tedious and hard to figure out.
  • When using sub-reports embedded in the main reports for different views of the same data sourced from multiple tables, this makes the process crazy slow. This is annoying and needs severe improvements.
  • The visual capabilities need to seriously catch up with respect to market competitors. Security is also a concern at times while accessing data.
With department's organizations having precise and periodic (fixed data/views) requirements, it turns out to be a great tool for doing BAU (business as usual) reporting. During agile environments, where bespoke cuts of data are required or frequent changes are the need of the hour, the effort and skills going into designing reports is a serious trade-off since the availability of skilled resources are limited to other market BI tools.
February 27, 2019

Review Of Crystal Reports

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Crystal Reports to track and report on many types of data, but primarily to track expenses related to open cases of our law firm. Accounting uses it to report on case expenses like copy costs, long distance charges, travel expenses etc ...) These reports then accompany the final cost leger for each client.
  • SAP Crystal Reports has great 3rd party support that extends its out of the box capabilities
  • SAP Crystal Reports can connect and use almost any data type
  • Crystal Reports connects to all ODBC or OLEDB data sources. You can also connect to older mdb files and even allows you to get data from windows file folders
  • Crystal Reports charting engine is ok but compared to some other visualization products available it is behind the times.
  • Crystal Reports uses a proprietary format for its data storage, using an open format (like XML) would be much better
  • You cannot add add a structured table object to the page layout, you can only use lines and boxes
In my opinion Crystal Reports does well with almost any type of report including simple listings, sic summary reports, pro forma financial statements, multi-section reports and reports that export to an Excel spreadsheet. I think it has room to improve by integrating some collaboration features in upcoming releases.
Jane Kabochi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAP Crystal reports is an integrated business intelligence platform that allows users to write reports, display KPIs and other metrics from data preserved in your database. SAP Crystal is used by various departments in our organization such as research and development, operations and human resource departments. The software has streamlined our decision making process and it has helped us make meaning out of our preserved data.
  • Customer support is available 24/7 helping new users embrace and learn how to use the software efficiently.
  • The reports generated are usually in many formats from formulas, cross-tabs and sub-reports thereby helping us understand our data.
  • Can generate reports from data obtained from any virtual source
  • The one-time fee paid per user is a bit high and may discourage small and mid-sized companies with many users not to acquire the software.
  • A stable internet connection is required for the software to function well.
  • There is no free trial plan of the software and it ought to be available to help in piloting purposes.
SAP Crystal is a platform that helps in the scenario of decision making, forecasting and strategizing in a company where it will help provide and generate reports, metrics and KPI Insights that will inform and help in basing your decision. It will help ensure that your decision and forecasting solutions are empirical and informed by data and insights.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Crystal Reports is used for creating reports and graphs working synchronously as a team. I and my team analyse and fetch data from various clients for which we have setup and installed networks for as a part of projects. After that we send all the data to technical team and data analyst to log it into crystal reports. We then analyse and create reports in Crystal reports. It is really helpful if we want to manage a lot of data. It makes easy for us to give presentation on projects.
  • Merge and log data very easily.
  • User interface is good.
  • Different types of fonts and graphs and charts to analyse data easily.
  • Hard to learn. It took a lot of time to learn this software.
  • Database used as a source is quite difficult. We always have to contact technical team for that.
Well these are quite useful for technical people who also know how to import data directly from database, and as their mind is technical so it will be also easy to understand it.
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