Know why customers go for Business Objects
February 22, 2016

Know why customers go for Business Objects

Priyanka Musale | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Business Objects

SAP Business Objects is used by data stewards in following departments: Marketing, Finance, Business Development, Corporate etc. It is used across the whole organization. It provides data for functional and operational decision systems.
  • Various tools to implement end to end BI, for example: ETL, Reporting, Dashboarding
  • Good connectivity with CRM, ECC and other SAP systems etc
  • Data Security, Visually intuitive, Ease of use
  • Webi, Rich Client, SAP Dashboard, Crystal Reports reporting tool to cover needs of a variety of users
  • SAP should provide free software and licenses for students
  • SAP Extractors are designed by third party, so no support for those
  • Reporting with no semantec layer
I have used Data Stage; plug and play extractors help to fetch data from SAP CRM/ECC. It reduces the ETL job design efforts.
I have used Tableau, the SAP dashboard provides more options in designing legends on charts, in-built hide/show features in charts.
SAP Business Objects is suitable for enterprise level implementation because of the variety modules available to cover all aspects of business intelligence and most of the reporting is based on semantic layer. It is less suitable for small sized organizations because of implementation/support cost.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
7
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
8
Drill-down analysis
8
Formatting capabilities
8
Integration with R or other statistical packages
9
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Publish to Web
9
Publish to PDF
9
Report Versioning
8
Report Delivery Scheduling
10
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
6
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
9
Predictive Analytics
4
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
10
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Responsive Design for Web Access
8
Mobile Application
8
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
9

Using SAP Business Objects

2000 - Financial, Marketing, Business Development, Internal Analysts.
12 - 2 Administrator for a 1000+ BO users, and double it if a business is all over world, 24/7 support.
Individual Application with 20+ users, 10+ reports need application support developer.
  • Replace SSRS/SSIS with Business Objects so that there is single BI tool and lower cost of BI implementation.
  • Replace manual Excel reporting with BI reporting.
  • Connectivity with SAP CRM, ECC
  • DS free with BOE licenses
  • Need of ETL and Reporting in business functions
  • SSIS doesn't have connectivity with SAP CRM/ECC so DS helps to ETL data out of SAP CRM/ECC
  • Custom SQL allowed in reports helps SSRS developers to develop reports easily and include trigger and inputs in query

Evaluating SAP Business Objects and Competitors

  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
  • Analyst Reports
I am a SAP Business Objects certified professional, so I understand business objects tool in and out. My own experience with tool helps me go over a customer's requirements and suggest to them how this tool will provide a solution to their needs.
More specific questions than open ended questions. I am not sure if you will be able to understand my evaluation of this product. 80% of the questions should be in a check box, or drop down. There should be options to select the specific SAP Business Objects module from the enterprise suite.

SAP Business Objects Implementation

Hire specialists and experienced staff. Mix some beginners so that everyone is not a leader but a learner too. Plan well; architect well; break down implementation in small steps and move towards larger steps. Create a centralized and authorized SAP Business Objects implementation team.
Yes - Evaluation, architect, implementation, Phase 2, Phase 3, continual support, maintenance.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Creating awareness about what is driving organizational change is important. Involving everyone rather than invasive approach works better. Demo and show rather than letting staff figure things on their own.
  • Silos in the product documentation from vendor
  • SAP support not guiding in the implementation because of their product support policy

SAP Business Objects Support

Knowledge articles help me to remediate things on my own, But L1 and L2 support and 24 hours support from Asian countries does not help at all. They are not proactive or mature in their approach.
ProsCons
Good followup
Kept well informed
Slow Resolution
Problems left unsolved
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
Support doesn't seem to care
Slow Initial Response
No - To keep cost of operations low. Plus, Premium support, regular support is all same when it goes into the queue.
Yes - No, getting a local fix is too hard and almost impossible. Waiting for a new patch makes things difficult to keep providing a business with what they want.
Years ago SAP support provided exceptional support for Business Objects on Unix OS. Bug fixes were faster and engineers were knowledgeable. SAP helped to retrieve lost DB password, which is not supported anymore, SAP helped to recover server from backup. SAP helped to create Query builder queries to fetch the encoded data but those days are gone. SAP support no longer go out of their way to help customers.

Using SAP Business Objects

I have been creating SAP software solutions successfully since past 10 years and SAP BO's popularity and demand is still strong in the market.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Requires technical support
Lots to learn
  • Report development
  • ETL job development
  • Administration
  • Content Security management
Yes - Fiori is newly introduced, SAP Business Objects has mobile server components available but report needs to be configured for mobile devices.