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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 …
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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, TIBCO 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)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Issac Paul | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
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..
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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
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 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 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
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
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
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 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
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 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
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
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
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.
Frank Hunt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
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
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 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.
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