CRYSTAL CLEAR REPORTING WITH SAP CRYSTAL
Proulx Mfg has utilized SAP Crystal for our reports for several years; We can appreciate SAP personalization to customize the data our …
Starting at $295 per single user license
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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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Popular Features
- Publish to PDF (131)10.0100%
- Report sharing and collaboration (118)10.0100%
- Report Formatting Templates (115)10.0100%
- Formatting capabilities (133)10.0100%
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Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020
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$495
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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
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 Competitors
SAP Crystal Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Countries | Global |
| Supported Languages | English, 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 |
SAP Crystal Downloadables
- Detailed information for SAP Crystal Server 2016’s supported platforms, such as Windows and Linux OS, browser, LDAP and hardware support
- Languages supported with SAP Crystal Reports 2016
- Product features to leverage with SAP Crystal Solutions for the small to midsize business
- Pixel-perfect reports created with SAP Crystal Solutions for small to midsize business
- Business goals to achieve with SAP Crystal Solutions for small to midsize business
- Implementation costs to consider with SAP Crystal Solutions for small to midsize business
- Comparison of features by version for SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Server software
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.
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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Reviews and Ratings
(556)Attribute Ratings
- 10Likelihood to Renew
- 8Availability
- 8Performance
- 9.4Usability
- 8.6Support Rating
- 10In-Person Training
- 8.8Implementation Rating
- 8Configurability
- 7Product Scalability
- 7Ease of integration
- 7Vendor pre-sale
- 8Vendor post-sale
- 7Data Visualization
- 9.2Data Sources
- 8.8Data Sharing and Collaboration
- 8.5SAP Crystal Pixel-Perfect Reporting
Reviews
(51-75 of 156)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
July 17, 2018
Crystal Reports is the future
Crystal Reports is being used by our organization primarily for medical billing statements. It is being used by the whole organization. Crystal Reports generates print files faster than any other program we have tried. It also has a great deal of functionality with regards to formatting and conditional output.
- Crystal Reports is very easy for any user to use.
- It compiles data very quickly.
- It would be helpful if Crystal Reports could output text flowing up instead of down.
July 17, 2018
Crystal Reports is not for casual users, but provides an excellent tool for professional report design.
We use Crystal throughout our organization. Our ERP system serves up Crystal Reports for both analytical and operational reporting. We store our Crystal Reports in an SAP Business Objects repository which is called via Open Document. Users generally aren't savvy enough to generate their own Crystal Reports content, but consume it on a daily basis.
- Crystal is very good at presenting the data exactly how you want it. There is a robust set of options for formatting and presentation.
- It can connect to a wide variety of data sources. We primarily use SQL sources. As a DBA, I generally prefer to have Crystal access views rather than people writing direct queries, but the option is there to do both.
- There are lots of options for data manipulation once the data set is in Crystal. For example, if you pull some raw data out of a sales table, there are a great many ways to calculate, manipulate, and transform the data into whatever you need.
- The learning curve in creating content in Crystal Reports can be steep. This is not a tool that I feel should be wielded by casual users.
- Crystal isn't great anymore for ad-hoc reporting. At one point in my career, I used Crystal for ad-hoc reporting, but with the advent of web-based and visual reporting tools that can be wielded by the general user population, I wouldn't even think of going to Crystal for one-off type reports.
- Crystal Reports doesn't have its own scheduling component. So you'll need to either code up or buy a separate solution for report distribution.
June 26, 2018
Loved by Users and Consultants -- Neglected by SAP
I develop software utilities for Crystal Reports. I also teach undergraduate and graduate business intelligence courses where Crystal Reports is used as one of the main software tools.
- The Crystal Reports Runtime (SDK) is very powerful.
- Crystal Reports itself is very powerful, so the combination of powerful reports + powerful SDK is very compelling.
- The ability to use dynamic expressions to control almost any aspect of report behavior and layout. For example, control visibility, formatting, sizing, and placement of any object or section using dynamic expressions.
- Dynamic expressions are not limited to a single statement. Can use variables, and control structures. In other words, full programming language (Basic-like) to control report layout and content.
- Beyond hundreds of built-in functions, you can build or purchase 3rd-party User Function Libraries (UFLs) that can extend the power of the tool in useful and creative ways.
- Critical Mass and Network Effects: millions of licenses sold, report libraries integrated into 3rd-party software packages, tech support forums, consultants, training materials ...
- Deployment options: can use as agile solution with direct connectivity to practically any data source or move into Enterprise-level deployments using data and security layers.
- The tension between Enterprise-level solutions and Agile-level solutions for BI within SAP seem to cause feature stagnation. Not much has been enhanced in the last several years even though many opportunities for obvious improvements exist.
- Because of feature stagnation, momentum is shifting to alternative BI tools such as SSRS, Power BI, Tableau, etc.
- SAP seems to like hiding useful tech support information behind a fence. Folks without support contracts can't access KBA Numbers or SAP Note IDs even though they are useful for situations such as understanding recent bug fixes.
June 26, 2018
Simple and practical in its general use
I work with educational institutions across the country and Crystal Reports is a tool that enables me to deliver relevant information to my partners as well as important financial data through simple visualization charts and reports, facilitating the decision-making process of managers and directors. For me, Crystal Reports is important because it is an easy tool to create reports to monitor indicators of each department in companies.
- It enables the creation of reports through a simplified and useful visual interface. During the creation of the reports you can already have a view of what is being set up.
- Ease of reporting, with the possibility of using data of various types of connections to the most varied types of databases.
- It supports large amount of data, processing them efficiently and quickly.
- Its formulas can be easily created, with a language based on SQL its use is very simple.
- It has a good help menu with many examples to use its formulas, which is very useful in several moments of its use and also facilitates its learning.
- The use for graphing sometimes is not simple, since the data type often needs to be very standardized to be accepted in the use of graphics.
- Information on solving more complex problems is more difficult to find among the community of users who use the program.
- The lack of local training can make it difficult to learn advanced items, even though their use is simplified in general.
June 22, 2018
Crystal Reports, still best at what it does
I am a one man shop and I use Crystal Reports to manage many areas of my business.
I have reports that:
- Track activity for new prospective customers
- Analyze sales quantities and revenue over time
- Highlight errors in data entry
- Generate invoices
- Track receivables
- Provide historical analysis of products used for blog articles
- Automate follow-up for newsletter subscribers
- Crystal allows you to connect to virtually any type of data that is available.
- Crystal Reports has a rich ecosystem of third party products that extend its capabilities. My site lists dozens of tools that provide viewing, scheduling and managing reports, along with formula UFLs that can let your report interact with your operating system and other applications and services.
- Crystal, especially the more recent versions, let you create virtually any desired layout with the ability to locate objects anywhere and move them based on conditions in the data.
- Crystal uses the classic "recurring bands" structure for page layout. I find this efficient and very flexible for generating different types of reports.
- Crystal doesn't require that you set up a meta data layer before creating reports. It gives you direct access to your tables and fields.
- The interface in Crystal Reports, while sophisticated, is still primarily designed for end users rather than a programmers.
- Many of us would like to see the RPT Format stored in something open (like XML) rather than in a closed and proprietary format. It would be great for users, but probably not a realistic business decision.
- The charting engine is functional but has been left behind by some of the visualization tools out there. Of course, these visualization tools often can't create classic reports
- Page layout doesn't include the ability to add a structured table object. Tables have to be created with lines and boxes.
March 30, 2018
Good reporting for reasonable price
SAP Crystal Reports are used as a common business intelligence tool, to create various charts and dashboards across all departments and provides great visualized data for analytical staff. Different data sources supported by SAP Crystal reports allows implementation regardless of information systems used in a company, that makes life easier for BI tools development teams.
- Ability to build a lof of informational reports, which being finished once, could be executed and refreshed with just a single click
- Integration with lots of third-party products. We are using it in conjunction with Microsoft Office
- Does not requires a deep knowledge of the system to start developing simple reports
- Customer support could be better
- Complex reports require a lot of time to find the cause of errors because error messages are not very informative
- Creation of complex reports is not very straightforward and could be tricky
January 29, 2018
Crystal Reports and Sage
Crystal Reports (CR) is used with two of the software products we use. One is a construction management software and the other is accounting. We use CR to customize certain reports and to create forms within these products.
- Crystal Reports pulls from existing data sets to minimize the redundancy of data entry.
- With Crystal Reports we can customize forms and create templates to be used over again across different departments.
- Creating custom reports helps us with analyzing expenses and work flows as well as the budget expenditures.
- Crystal Reports is a powerful tool, therefore requires advance skills of how to use the software properly.
- With its versatility, it is difficult to learn how to use as it applies specifically to our products. For example, we use CR on 2 different products (accounting and construction management). Training for report writing in the product does not transfer over to use within the other.
January 28, 2018
Simple yet Robust BI reporting tool!
Basically the SAP Crystal Reports license was provided by the client side as far as my project was concerned. So the bank (client) uses Crystal Reports, across all its units, for its reporting needs. Although they use other reporting tools as well in some cases.
SAP Crystal Reports helped us in delivering highly formatted, quality reports that were based on an operational (transaction) database.
SAP Crystal Reports helped us in delivering highly formatted, quality reports that were based on an operational (transaction) database.
- Supports a variety of data sources. One could even use and Excel spreadsheet as a database!
- Provides the option for writing custom SQL command for fetching report data. This is one of the most powerful features as you can tune your SQL, make enhancements to the report or do any other changes to the SQL, when there's a need, without having to modify the actual data tables or database elements.
- Its ease of use.
- Adding sub reports makes the reports run very slow. It basically affects the performance of the reports. This should be improved.
- An option for version control can be provided as part of the suite.
- Not used by many companies. When you compare the job openings for other reporting tools such as Cognos, SSRS, SAP Webi, Tableau etc., with this tool, there are less openings for SAP Crystal Reports. They should focus on marketing the product to many companies so that the people with technical skills in Crystal do not migrate to other skills.
- Better exporting results for reports using Excel outputs.
January 24, 2018
Report generation for businesses of all sizes
SAP Crystal was being used across the entire company in order to pull reports for things like system usage, product enrollment, user loyalty, lead sources and annual revenue by product. It is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes because it allows you to consolidate all of your data and pull reports for basically any metric you can think of. It was used primarily by our IT group to gauge system usage, but once our sales team became aware that we had implemented Crystal reports, they were anxious to have reports pulled to help with various lead gen activities as well.
- SAP Crystal has the ability to look across multiple data sets and pull together intuitive reports based on designated criteria.
- Once the report attributes are assigned within the system, it is easy for users to create custom reports and save them for the future.
- It makes analyzing large amounts of data easy by clearly organizing everything according to custom labels you have applied within the database.
- I found that, while this was extremely easy for me to use since I have a technical background, it was difficult explaining the process to non-technical users. More in-depth training material might be helpful.
- This is not about the usage of the product itself, but in regards to pricing- it seemed the packages were all or nothing, and It would have been nice to pay per individual user license.
- I would love to see a better way to access Crystal reports on the go. This would be especially helpful when traveling to client and partner meetings.
January 17, 2018
Crystal Reports is your friend!
Most departments use Crystal Reports in one way or another. Crystal Reports enables custom reports to be able to be pulled from the database, making formatting and custom calculations fairly easy. Our demands on complex reports are hefty, and Crystal Reports allows us to meet pretty much all of these complicated demands from departments across the organization.
- Custom calculations and filtering - it can be complicated to program, depending on how your input tables are linked, etc., but pretty much anything is possible.
- Design - Most of our reports are fairly simple, but you can get pretty complex with the display of reports, with spacing, page breaks, color, etc.
- Coding - The formulas use a SQL-based language, which is fairly easy to navigate. There is also a UI that enables users to create formulas without direct language of code, but familiarity definitely helps.
- The newer version (XI) stalls when it processes multiple "gift summary" fields from Raiser's Edge. I'm not sure if this problem exists when connecting to any other software, but we had to re-code a number of our reports so that these "gift summary" fields were used in sub-reports, then fed back to the main report. Once we did that, the report ran instantly and didn't stall.
- The UI is not very user-friendly for non-coders. I think it's fine, but there is a pretty steep learning curve for new users.
- There are very few opportunities for training on Crystal Reports at an advanced level. If you want to learn more about the program, and you already have an intermediate level of experience with it, you'll basically just have to teach yourself.
January 17, 2018
Review from User with Simple Needs
We're small; the whole org uses it. Helps translate data from an older database into files/data we can use.
- Translating data into formats we can use
- Makes reports easily repeatable
- Still not very user-friendly when trying to build a report
- No great info on how to use
January 16, 2018
SAP CR: A narrow but positive opinion
We use Crystal Reports internally to aggregate large amounts of data into a few important outputs. The analysis we get from CR is hugely important to the service we provide to our clients. Without CR, we would be spending 10x or 20x the time getting crude data from Excel. CR helps make us efficient.
- Customizable form appearance
- Allows you to write complex functions
- Reads multiple data sources
- Can't use a "lookup table" - have to join/link data sources
- Sometimes will misread the data type from a source table
- Not compatible with .xlsx format
January 16, 2018
SAP Cryststal Report
I use SAP Crystal Reports on a daily basis to help automate company wide reporting. Combined with Logicity Pro, I can easily create a report, and automate it to be emailed to the required group. I can build it, set it up, and forget it. It saves countless hours of redoing the same reports over and over again every week, and users get them on time every time!
- Simple to build reports
- Can be easily automated
- Saves a lot of time
- Keeping database connections in favorites doesn't work very well
- Ability to force links when Crystal doesn't want to link certain fields even though data is identical in both fields but formatting is not
- Easier way to transmit data between sub-reports and main reports
January 15, 2018
SAP Is a very good product for creating reports
SAP Crystal Reports is used to create custom reports for our inventory tracking system. All of the reports must be edited and maintained using SAP Crystal Reports.
Each custom report is used by one or more users at the company. SAP makes it very simple to create and maintain our customized reports for our inventory system.
Each custom report is used by one or more users at the company. SAP makes it very simple to create and maintain our customized reports for our inventory system.
- The program is pretty intuitive to use
- There is a really good tutorial section on the website
- Integrates well with our inventory system
- Adding a new table from a database could be a little easier
- Moving data around reports tends to take a little more effort than what seems necessary. I do like that I can move by using arrow keys, just don't like the way things sometimes snap into position
January 15, 2018
Crystal Reports - give it a go!
We recently changed from an older accounting system to an ERP system to help us streamline our business processes and operations. We use Crystal Reports to customize the reports we need in the new system. We have been able to manipulate the reporting process to give us the information we need and to exclude any items which do not add value to the particular report. Furthermore, we have been able to enhance the aesthetic appearance of our outbound documents with our company logo and a visually appealing format.
- I like the fact that I can do a lot of cosmetic changes to the reports without having to have in-depth developer training.
- Crystal Reports connects to a wide range of data sources, including OLE DB, which makes it widely usable.
- Crystal Reports also integrates with a wide range of technologies such as Java, therefore it makes it easy for developers to write code in a language they are use to.
- In order to obtain features such as mobile access or scheduled notifications, one would have to upgrade to Crystal Reports Server, which increases its cost.
- In order to take advantage of the advanced features of Crystal Reports, a developer is needed, thus further increasing the cost.
Crystal Training Source teaches, consults, and develops Crystal Server and Crystal Reports for various companies throughout the U.S. and Canada. We help potential/current users learn all of the functions and /or features within SAP Crystal Server to greatly improve data traffic and sharing within their organisation.
It addresses the issues experienced by inferior products not being able to share, distribute, and run needed reports (high volume) on a daily basis.
It addresses the issues experienced by inferior products not being able to share, distribute, and run needed reports (high volume) on a daily basis.
- You can easily navigate within the Central Management Console to access a plethora of very powerful functions i.e. (Security, Users, Groups, Scheduling, Distribution, Delivery Formats, Business Views, Triggers, etc.)
- In my previous experience outside of SAP a lot of products are very difficult to learn and apply. SAP Crystal Server is laid out in a very intuitive way and it makes learning and application fluid.
- End users can easily access the end user portal and view, schedule, run, and distribute reports with the click of a mouse. This allows data to flow much more efficiently throughout the organization.
- SAP Crystal Server allows a seamless connection to your organizations production data which allows for a smooth transition from basic reporting to publication in a few short steps.
- I would like to see graph features to be improved. SAP has made leaps and bounds over the years and I know they will get there.
- I would like to see SAP products bundled for a more turn key solution.
January 15, 2018
Crystal is the industry standard
Crystal Reports is being used to provide reports to our entire organization. It is used to summarize data according to different business needs, including by department, geographic region, product type, or officer. Reports are scheduled to run automatically at different time periods, including: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Reports can also be kicked off manually, with some allowing parameters to be entered at the time they are run.
- Filters can be built within reports to allow the user to provide parameters.
- Reports can be built in such a way that there is a summary of the information. Then when a portion of the information is clicked on, new pages will display that show the detail for the summary.
- Available through a browser
- It is very difficult to get ahold of support.
- It is very difficult to get ahold of sales to purchase more licenses.
- There are bugs that have been there for months, are known, and have not been addressed.
January 10, 2018
Crystal is it for pixel perfect, not so much for exports.
Crystal Reports is used for management level reports, forms replication such as state insurance forms, and for check printing. It solves reporting issues across the departments served, especially when pixel perfect results is required. [It's] Not so hot on exporting data, more on this later I'm sure.
- Pixel perfect output. We're capable of replicating complicated forms, writing checks using MICR font, etc. If it has to look good, it's Crystal Reports.
- The formula editor is very powerful. Some more expensive solutions, including those from SAP, don't offer the power that Crystal Reports offers out of the box.
- Portability of format. For the first 10 years or so of Crystal Reports, you had to be on the same version of Crystal Reports as your target audience. This has since been corrected and now you don't have to wrestle with having a client on an old version while you are on a newer version.
- Exporting is a big problem. Going to Excel is a common request, but the default of making it look like Crystal Reports isn't what the clients want, and the "data only" format is limited as to what it can do. Overlapping fields cause exports to fail badly.
- The Crystal viewer (which I'll include as part of Crystal here) has flaws, such as growing fields longer than their length in Native Crystal.
- Subtotalling and running totals still don't support everything I need to do, so we fall back to manually adding a variable, incrementing it, printing it, and clearing it, all manually. They both work fine for standard numeric fields, but not so well for formula results.
We build Crystal Reports that are used in a third party software to extract data via the GUI from our SQL database. The reports themselves are being managed by one department (me) but are accessed by the whole business. We use Crystal Reports to generate client forms.
- Easy formatting, drag and drop.
- Relatively similar GUI to Word, very developed GUI.
- Well-documented, easy to Google.
- Not intuitive - steep learning curve.
- Need to be able to have a sub-report within a sub-report. This is a major missing piece.
- Need to be able to copy sub-reports and paste.
January 09, 2018
A great reporting product.
I have used and designed SAP Crystal Reports for some different companies. I have tried and used others report products too, but I think that this software is really good. With Crystal Reports I have created a lot of reports for different departments, (financial, IT, direction, sales), you need to study just a little bit before starting to use the product and to be completely autonomous, but in not too much time you can get excellent results.
- Grouping sections are really useful.
- The grid in the designer report is perfect.
- You can modify the report directly on the preview tab.
- I had some problems with the display incorporating reports on web pages.
- Graphs can be more attractive.
- Renew a little the designer mode.
January 09, 2018
A must have in the Data Industry
Reports take a long time to run during the day. We would run the reports after hours to avoid any server issues. The search criteria is easily used and able to print and export data as needed from the reports. Today's industry cannot function without repository for reporting.
- Ease of use in search criteria retrival process
- Information is shared easily
- Actionable data
- Time constraints of running reports
- More customized features
- More accessible access
January 08, 2018
SAP crystal reports - easy to use and share"
We use SAP Crystal reports for our BI Reporting tool. My organization is hugely data dependent so we needed a tool to support the reports and accurate data.
- The easy report handling feature
- Reports can be very specific
- Very powerful and fast
- Too many updates, versions and a number of features and it is hard to keep track of new updates
- Can lose work if you don't save constantly
January 08, 2018
SAP crystal reports - easy to write, share and use
We have both pre-defined as well as self service Crystal Reports for informed decision making within the business. The output format is flexible and hence users like this.
- Revenue reports
- Expense reports
- Summary level operational reports
- Would be great if it could support noSQL databases too
January 08, 2018
SAP Crystal: Flexibility, Customization, and Ease of Use
SAP Crystal was being used mainly by one department within my organization, that being the Online Brand Protection Department. It's a fantastic tool for report generation and data aggregation in that it is fully customizable and allows for various users and vendors to access the system to both feed and retrieve information. We needed something that would give us flexibility and also allow multiple users to access the data at the same time.
- Customized reports are great because they not only allow you to tailor the data and results to you needs but also allow the flexibility of changing reporting structures if needs change.
- Multiple user access and permissions are essential to control who has visibility to what data as well as providing a common hub for everyone to collaborate and communicate about the data.
- Relatively inexpensive compared to other products out there. This really goes hand in hand with their customer support because you feel like you're getting a much more expensive product for the quality of the program as a whole.
- Although the reporting structure is highly customizable, it is essential to have a developer who is well versed in coding the reports for you in SAP Crystal Server. This isn't so much a problem with SAP Crystal because in order to get customizable reports, you really need to know how to work the system which is very flexible.
- Data security needs to be tweaked within each report for different audiences and so if you need different vendors or deliverables to have different security settings, then you need to set this up within each report that you generate.
- From what I hear about how the licensing model is set up, there is a bit of layering confusion. Apparently, once your business licenses the software, you must then create different licenses for various users and vendors. I could see this getting confusing especially with different add-ons and multiple users.
January 08, 2018
Crystal Reports - A solid performer for data analysis
As a healthcare organization, analytics is extremely important as well as data mining. Our electronic medical records and practice management solutions were lacking so we used Crystal Reports to fill the gaps. Crystal Reports is only used by me for design, but several of our staff use the report runner feature to just update parameters and run the reports. We are able to dig deep into practice performance by creating our own reports that pull in a much larger scale of data than what is allowed by our medical records system. We also can create detailed exports for patient mailings based on specific criteria requirements such as certain diagnosis codes in conjunction with billing procedure codes.
- Crystal Reports is extremely flexible. You can connect to pretty much any type of database as well as multiple databases at one time as long as there is a field to join the two sets of data.
- The layout is easy to use and extremely versatile. You can insert tables, grouping, color changed headings and background. There is a multitude of charts, graphs, and tables that can be inserted to make reports more visually appealing.
- Data can be displayed in many different ways using formulas, charts, colors, images, etc.
- While the layout is easy to use, it should be improved to work with touchscreens. Some of the fields are small and with many laptops, tablets and touch-enabled PCs in the workplace today, it would be nice to not need a mouse.
- Exporting is a bit bulky. There should be some options for quick exports to common types like pdf, xls, etc. I would frequently export to xls, so a saved preference that allows me to click that button and auto-export would save time when creating multiple exports.
- Sharing can be bulky as well. I typically download reports and email. An integration with Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, etc would be helpful.