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First time caller, long time user.
October 25, 2020

First time caller, long time user.

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

Software Version

SAP Crystal Reports

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Crystal

We use it as our main reporting tool as part of our software application for all internal and external reports.
  • Fairly easy to learn the report designer. Even for people without strong database knowledge.
  • Ability to reuse existing report components.
  • Can design reports targeted for printing (can cleanly handle pagination).
  • Can report from multiple data sources without the need for a data warehouse.
  • Better handling of imported images from a database. Need to maintain aspect ratio.
  • Add option to disable grid lines.
  • Changing data source on same server needs a little TLC. Still have to change each table instead of just updating the connection.
  • Pivot Table formatting.
  • Chart formatting.
  • Importing formatted text from MS Word.
  • Support for HTML text formatting.
  • Provided a platform to enable reporting standards throughout the organization.
  • Did incur a significant cost rewriting / converting all existing reports to Crystal. However, ongoing maintenance has been much better.
  • Software updates are relatively expensive to bring the whole organization up to the current level each time.

Do you think SAP Crystal delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SAP Crystal's feature set?

Yes

Did SAP Crystal live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SAP Crystal go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SAP Crystal again?

Yes

While there is a learning curve of 100 hours. Once the initial hurdle is resolved users of all levels have been able to use Crystal successfully. Dealing with our database structure is a different challenge.
Case response has been good over the years, but fortunately not really needed since the product is very stable.
However, SAP seems to have lost its focus on Crystal and has not made much of an attempt at keeping it competitive with other products. There has been a push to start exploring other options.
Very well suited for customer facing reports like invoices, statements and contracts. Great for listings / rosters.
Fun backdoor functionality to be able to execute stored procedures to updated data within the database and provide results without the need to build custom application solutions.

Not very useful for exporting to MS Word for contracts that need further editing. Pivot tables and charting capabilities are very simple when compared to MS Excel and are only used when basic functionality is needed.

SAP Crystal Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
8.0
Pixel Perfect reports
8
Customizable dashboards
8
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
10.0
Drill-down analysis
Not Rated
Formatting capabilities
10
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
10
9.0
Publish to Web
Not Rated
Publish to PDF
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
Not Rated
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
Not Rated
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Not Rated
Not Rated
Multi-User Support (named login)
Not Rated
Role-Based Security Model
Not Rated
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Not Rated
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
6.0
Javascript API
Not Rated
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
6
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated