Great capabilities but complex and the future will soon make it obselete
March 26, 2018
Great capabilities but complex and the future will soon make it obselete
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is being used to host reports created in Lumira and Analysis for Office, to enable the creation, storage, and sharing of data and reports. Our most comfortable state is having someone centrally refreshing reports, saving them to a share point and then sending the link to their organization, so the BI Platform has a big opportunity for productivity savings and a better UX! It's being used globally across all areas of Business Planning and some accounting.
- The fact that you are able to work offline on creating reports and then, within the local client, be able to upload it to the BI Platform and continue editing from the local client, while connected to the BI Platform
- Separation of end user (BI Launchpad) and management/administration (Central Management Console) access points
- Interoperability with other SAP products (e.g. Lumira, FIORI, AA)
- The "FIORI-fied" BI Launchpad still has limited functionality which causes us not to leverage it. It is important to have a consistent UI look and feel for our users but we cannot sacrifice functionality. Therefore we don't have users access the BI Launchpad, we just link them from FIORI, directly to the reports.
- We've found it very hard to find answers to very simple questions (e.g. what is the best approach for security model, bearing in mind the size of our organization). Both directly with SAP and via third-party contractors, we have struggled to find answers quickly, and sometimes at all...
- As with all SAP products, they constantly change their recommendation. One minute, the BI Platform is the way forward and we should invest everything into this, and then the next it is SAP Analytics Cloud, and BI Platform will become obsolete.
Some organizations use Spotfire which is far more advanced in terms of its analytical capabilities vs. Lumira/PA etc. but the sharing/storage side of the BI Platform is far superior and much better managed. The ability to create user groups, access levels etc. on BI Platform helps to keep the platform secure.