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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Review
December 01, 2020

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Review

Dharmesh Shah | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

We have currently deployed SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform in our company for Analytics reporting on SAP Concur Modules. We also deploy SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform for our customer to address their business needs and provide cognitive analytical solution
  • SOA Service Oriented architecture
  • Architecture scaling and deployment can be managed easily, clustering nodes and servers to give scalability
  • User friendly administration modules
  • User friendly reporting modules like Web Intelligence, SAP Lumira, SAC
  • Strong semantic layer supporting multi-source database
  • Waterfall model design is used
  • Need to compete with Agile architecture and design
  • Quick turn time like Modern BI agile tools
  • We have seen significant ROI, 9-12 months
  • As per license model you can plan your deployment model to justify ROI
  • Tool being in industry for quite long, customer adoption and adaptability brings ROI
MicroStrategy Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics is costlier compared to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform stacks. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform stacks is user friendly, easy to adapt, easy to train resources and get them productive. SOA architecture and platform scalability adds to it.

Do you think SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence's feature set?

Yes

Did SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence again?

Yes

SOA Service oriented architecture, Platform scalability. Strong semantic layer, seamless integration with SAP BW and bex queries.
Good Knowledge base available, good user forum and community.
Best suited for SAP data source. Seamless integration with SAP BW/BEX queries. Integrates with all SAP Modules. Supports all the traditional relational database, big data, data lake.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
9.0
Pixel Perfect reports
10
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
8
9.0
Drill-down analysis
9
Formatting capabilities
9
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8
Report sharing and collaboration
10
9.4
Publish to Web
9
Publish to PDF
9
Report Versioning
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
10
Delivery to Remote Servers
10
8.7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
9
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
8
Predictive Analytics
9
9.3
Multi-User Support (named login)
9
Role-Based Security Model
9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
9
9.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
9
Mobile Application
9
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
9
8.5
REST API
9
Javascript API
9
iFrames
9
Java API
8
Themeable User Interface (UI)
8
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
8

Using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

1550 - SAP Concur, S4 HANA, FICO
700 - 
Function and domain knowledge on SAP modules. Technical skills for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence analytics. Good Administration skills for code pipeline deployment

  • Add more business users
  • Self service BI
  • Self service BI analytics
  • SAP BW and Bex integration
  • Microsoft Office SAP integration
  • Innovative dashboard
  • Collaborate with business users

Evaluating SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform and Competitors

  • Implementation support
Good implementation support and user community
Just love the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence analytics, will continue to explore it further with latest service pack features

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Implementation

Just love the tool, great interface and user friendly
  • Implemented in-house
Yes - Agile framework was used, we planned the deployment in different waves, prioritize the phases.
Change management was minimal - Document well change management to be well prepared
  • Not much challenges faced
  • Seamless installation and backup

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Training

  • Online training
  • in-person training
SAP authorized training is best, Please go ahead with it. Even lot of online training options/videos available for self learning
Well managed online training. Hands on labs well managed and prepared.

Configuring SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

SAP configuration is very user friendly, I really enjoyed working on it
Make it more competitive compared to competitors
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface
Yes - we have added extensive custom code - We have played a lot with SAP BO SDK
BO SDK gives you full control on metadata

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Support

ProsCons
Knowledgeable team
Kept well informed
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Poor followup
Problems left unsolved
Need to explain problems multiple times
Slow Initial Response
Yes - Benefits you get from premium support, access to the latest patches and service packs
Yes - Yes
I've connected with SAP labs and co-workers. I was part of SAP architect team, easy to relate the upcoming landscape. SAP Innovation, collaboration is one of the best in the industry which makes SAP to be in leaders space for so long.

Using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Well integrated
Quick to learn
Feel confident using
Familiar
Unnecessarily complex
Requires technical support
Inconsistent
  • SAP BI BO User Interface
  • Strongly integrated with Microsoft office products
  • Easily collaborate with the users, share the output in various formats
  • Scheduling engine is one of the best in the industry
  • SOA Service Oriented Architecture
  • Waterfall architecture, need quick turn around time
  • Need to move towards agile methodology
Yes - Awesome SAP BI mobile interface. Easy to implement and get it operational in short span of time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform Reliability

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform supports SOA Service Oriented Architecture. You can start/restart/enable/disable all the servers. You can seamless do load balancing and clustering. It supports all leading application and web server. Supports LDAP SSO integration.
People who can work on excel with training they can work on SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, dashboard, Lumira, Information design tool product suite. Tool is very user friendly and easy to learn and implement
We usually use weekend window for all housekeeping activities like Patch upgrades, backup etc. We have scalable architecture to prevent any downtime in real time application. Even if one server goes down, other server takes over.
Architecture deployment plan is responsible for performance. You need to plan well hardware as per the environment, database, users concurrent login. You can checklist from SAP calculator to derive the CPU license needed.

Integrating SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

Easy integration of SAP HANA, BW, Bex query with external Modern BI tools like Tableau, Power BI
  • Power BI
  • Tableau
We query SAP BW/Bex query to pull data in Tableau and Power BI for few of user groups.
  • SAP HANA with Power BI integration is seamless
SAP HANA, BW, Bex query integration with external tool is seamless
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • ETL tools
RestAPI is awesome
Please go ahead with full confidence, integration is easy

Relationship with SAP

Easy access to SAP local Sales team
Good support, queries get addressed as needed
Pricing
Keep on the good job

Upgrading SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

Yes - Yes, LCM tool is awesome. Tool is much mature than what it used to be in past BO5.x series
  • Get latest features offered by service packs
  • Resolved bugs in existing service packs
  • Lots of tool competitor features available in latest service packs
  • Upskill team with the latest service packs
  • User friendly business features