Item: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Rating: 7
Author: Phil Hackman, CPA

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Business Objects

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used by the Financial Reporting team to write and burst operating metric reports to chief decision makers who do not want to "touch" the ERP Accounting system. It is used primarily for all producers in the organization and used by the Managing Director team. Addresses issues of usability and ease of use in getting key metrics quickly into decision makers' hands.

Pros and Cons

Pros

It leverages existing data stores well to pull into SAP BO universes.
It bursts reports via email in the form of PDF or Webi files very well.
It is easy to build new reports from the ground up with extensive functionality within the report.

Cons

Would be nice to more easily combine databases from disparate sources together into one universe.
I wish there were more pre-built graphs and charts.
Personalization parameters to filter reports to certain groups of users could be improved upon; kind of cludgy in our version.

Alternatives Considered

Qlikview

Likelihood to Renew

It provides the functionality we need to create management level reporting to our C-level suite of users. Additionally, it is a very stable product and there is ample technical support from the vendor and from third party consultants skilled in the implementation, training and support for this product suite.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's better suited if you have one or two main sources of data. If you have multiple databases (eg. 20) it becomes harder to use. What security levels are going to be used in SAP BO so one can anticipate bursting reports to specific users based on content within the report? eg. I only want "Smith's" reports; is Smith in a certain role and is this in your ERP system?

Comments

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SAP Business Objects: Easy-to-Deploy Great Looking Management-Level and Routine Enterprise-Wide Reporting

Software Version

Modules Used