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Fast, Accurate, and Effiencient (but not so user friendly)
May 30, 2014

Fast, Accurate, and Effiencient (but not so user friendly)

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Business Objects

SAP business objects is used for financial reporting at our firm. It is primarily used in the finance community at Citi. It allows us to get financial data that we are not able to get in other financial systems. We specify the parameters and it provides us with a large data set, with which we can pivot the information. It works seamlessly with Excel.
  • Works seamlessly with excel
  • One of the few financial systems that allows our team to retreive a large amount of financial data
  • Great data accuracy
  • The program can be hard to use at first as some of the controls are not intuitive. Would recommend that SAP create a tutorial for new users.
  • Creating the layout of the report can be glitchy at times - sometimes it allows you to create a report, other times it doesn't.
  • Increased employee efficiency - SAP BO allows employees to quickly run one report in a timely manner
  • Increased data transparency - provides accurate data to the lowest level detail
  • Versatile - integrates well with other systems
If I compare SAP Business Objects with Oracle Essbase, I would use SAP BO if I'm looking for very detailed reports. Oracle Essbase is an add in into Excel and therefore is very easy to use as it is available every time I open Excel. I use Oracle Essbase if I need to retrieve something quickly. On the other hand, I use SAP Business Objects if I want to get more in depth reports. It is not as user friendly as I have to log on to a website and then export the report to Excel. But it is better in the level of detail of the reports and its efficiency.
I am satisified with the use of SAP Business Objects and therefore have no need to switch to another software (not to include the cost of moving to a new software). It is fast, accurate, and efficient so there is no reason for us not to renew the product. The product also works well for our company as we often have internal reorganizations and have to change the parameters of our data.
It is well suited for retreiving large amounts of data. Other systems may work better if you're trying to pull just a few line items. You should be familiar with excel pivot tables if you are thinking of purchasing this product. It is great if you have to do deep dives into financial data, it is not that beneficial if you just want top of the house, or aggregate data.