SAP BO - Top rated BI system in a multinational organization
February 23, 2019

SAP BO - Top rated BI system in a multinational organization

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

I have used BusinessObjects for over 2.5 years now. It is great tool for scripting and developing reports. It has easy drag and drop options to select what variable you want in your final report. If you have large number of facilities and have data stored in multiple universes, it allows you to create a combined query and get final report from multiple universes. You can send your scripts to other individuals within your team. For any recurring reports, you can schedule them and they run whenever you've set them to run. It has some amazing quick filters that can be used while writing your script that allows you get tailored results.
  • This software is easy to initially learn, and very powerful in producing reusable reports.
  • It is much faster than my company's internal manual queries. The ability to build off of a saved query and share queries to other users is a great positive.
  • My favorite part is that you can run queries in the background and it does not interfere with your current work or slow your computer down.
  • There is a learning curve to understand how to use the queries/objects and decide which data to pull, so there is training required.
  • Some of the "result objects" also do not pull data but that is likely due to our internal data, not Business objects itself.
  • The tool's license are expensive but you get what you pay for. SAP's business tool licenses in general have never been cheap but that ensures you get proper product support whenever needed.
Sometimes configuration is challenging (unless you are also very familiar with setting up Java VMs). I like the meta-data layer design tool. I like that there are thick and thin versions of the tools users use. Users at this point try to build a report themselves rather than immediately asking me to do it (which is a small miracle). I did end up having to use a third-party tool to make me feel safe about backups and versioning (because at the time I started using BusinessObjects, there was no recycle bin or version management) but in general I'm happy with the product and am not looking for a replacement solution.
One of the things I like about BusinessObjects is that, as a BI manager, I can help varying levels of users. For example, if I have a user that has no interest/technical skill, I can build up a universe, create an InfoSpace, and design some view sets. If the user is more advanced, maybe I just need to build the universe and let them play with the view sets. Users can insert themselves in the BI process where they feel comfortable.

I dislike that there has traditionally not been a good method of restoring a single item when a user accidentally over-engineers it or deletes it altogether. And until recently, there hasn't been any kind of versioning. If there is much customization of the environment, it takes a little more effort to upgrade an existing environment or stage a new one.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
8
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
8
Drill-down analysis
7
Formatting capabilities
9
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8
Report sharing and collaboration
9
Publish to Web
8
Publish to PDF
Not Rated
Report Versioning
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
6
Delivery to Remote Servers
9
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
9
Predictive Analytics
7
Multi-User Support (named login)
8
Role-Based Security Model
8
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
8
Single Sign-On (SSO)
9
Responsive Design for Web Access
8
Mobile Application
9
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
9
REST API
8
Javascript API
8
iFrames
7
Java API
9
Themeable User Interface (UI)
9
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
7