Item: SAP Crystal
Rating: 7
Author: Yoni Dvorkis

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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

Return on Investment

It's been the key reason we've maintained a relationship with SAP
The cost is quite high, but it's too embedded in our workflows, so it's challenging to consider switching to another platform at this time.

Alternatives Considered

We've had SAP Crystal for about ten years at this point. We've never really evaluated any alternatives since, as of today, well over 400 reports are being generated in the system, and we've yet to consider switching to a competing product.

Other Software Used

TIBCO Spotfire, RStudio

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

SAP Crystal Reports review

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Crystal