Item: SAP Crystal
Rating: 3
Author: Andrew Kessler

Overall Satisfaction

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ability to merge data from multiple sources with ease
Ability to create sub-reports is very helpful.
Ability to export as a PDF is a big plus.

Cons

Licensing fees are excessive
Did not want to connect to our server without extended 3rd party help.
Laying out the reports can be quite tedious and needs to have functionality improved

Return on Investment

real-time reporting is very helpful for employees and decision making.
Very expensive to implement.
Licensing fees make us wonder if there is a better alternative.

Not really my decision, but I feel there are better alternatives out there. If I had my way I'd go for an open source program that would have the ability to connect to multiple data streams with a lot less hassle. I'd also like to have a better WYSIWYG interface.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would tell the colleague to look into another option first. If they had no choice, be sure to read a couple books or take some classes to better understand how Crystal Reports functions. I also found online forums to be of help, but the differences between versions caused some headaches receiving help.

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Better Alternatives To Be Found

Software Version