Looking for Some Reporting BLING? Try Crystal Reports.
January 22, 2016
Looking for Some Reporting BLING? Try Crystal Reports.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SAP Crystal Reports
We are currently using SAP Crystal Reports as one of several reporting tools utilized by our business intelligence (BI) department. The reports developed by the BI team are accessed by various departments within the organization from operations to finance and marketing. Crystal Reports is our primary "push" reporting tool. This means that we schedule most of our Crystal Reports and output them to several formats.
- Crystal Reports is easy for the BI team to learn and use. A team can get up and running quickly, even with very little reporting experience.
- Individual application licenses are not very expensive compared to other similar tools.
- We purchased a third-party tool that allows us to schedule our Crystal Reports. There a lot of support for such tools which makes our "push" reporting concept easy to implement.
- Reports can be output to a number of formats including PDF, HTML, Word, and others. These report can then be scheduled and delivered to shared network drives and via e-mail. The schedule we use even has an encryption feature to password protect files.
- One of the greatest strengths of Crystal Reports is the formula editor which allows for deep customization of reports. Those familiar with VBA will see some resemblances to how VBA works in programs like Excel.
- Another strength is the ability to group data in a report and have those groups export as bookmarks in a PDF. For push reporting this is an ideal feature that I find hard to replicate in other tools.
- The graphics capabilities of Crystal Reports is a bit limited and dated. The program could use a visual overhaul.
- Although the program is easy to learn, mastering some of the fine details can be a bit challenging with the way SAP labels certain features. Often times I find myself scouring the Internet for solutions to problems that are very easy to solve in other reporting tools.
- Unless you make the SAP Crystal Report Viewer (a separate app) available to all users, the report remains somewhat static in the sense that users can't select different criteria and re-run the report on the fly.
- Working with stored procedures in SQL Server is a bit clunky, but it does work.
- Charting features are time consuming to develop and the intelligence built in to automatic chart layout is lacking.
Crystal Reports fits a niche for us in standard reporting. We don't use it for creating dashboards or interactive data analysis. That's where Tableau excels. For on-demand reports, we prefer Microsoft Reporting Service and Analysis Services. Crystal Report is very good when it comes to pre-built reports that you want to develop as standard output on a scheduled basis.
SAP Crystal Feature Ratings
Using SAP Crystal Reports
45 - We're in the healthcare space, so our users (I'm calling those people who view and interact with reports) range from clinical staff to corporate office users. The initial set of reports focused on operational data and then, as the usefulness of the report [grew], we created financial and marketing reports. To further enhance the user base, we purchased a third-party report scheduler that distributes our reports at various times.
2 - Our BI team is very small. Because of this size, we tend to develop reports that meet specific needs and are intuitive. This reduces that amount of support that is needed. Some of the reports a complex with many parameters, others a design to provide a snapshot of the current business. As you can imagine, the snapshot report tend to require less support.
- More interactivity with the reports. We're thinking about adding them to SharePoint.
- Attempting to transition the reports to mobile platform.
- Training staff to use the tools at a higher level of complexity which would allow us to use advanced reporting features.
- Scheduling of reports.
- Output to specific formats like PDF and HTML where the grouping is preserved and translate to bookmarks (in PDF) or hyperlinks (in HTML).
- The formula editor which lets you write custom code behind the scenes.
- Feeding the output of Crystal Reports to other SAP tool such as Crystal Dashboards.
- Embedding links in the reports the allow user to be redirected to specific records in our web-based application.
- Custom analytics have been developed using Crystal's formula editor.
Evaluating SAP Crystal Reports and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
We were under a tight budget so price was a big concern. Standard, single-user licences are not expensive, even for a team the price is low. The were a certain set of features the product needed to have. We listed those on a spreadsheet then got trial versions of several reporting tools, including Crystal Reports, and compared the tool's feature to our list. We crossed off products that took too long to learn so usability was also key.
Our process of evaluation was good. I like to think that the "devil is in the details", meaning that no matter which tool you buy you'll have to get the data in the correct format for reporting purposes. No reporting tool can replace that step (yet). Crystal Reports tends to be less picking about the raw data than other tools. A good evaluation will take a real-world example and push out a quality report in a short amount of time with very little baseline knowledge of the tool. We were able to show results from Crystal Reporting during the trial period, that was a big selling point for us.
SAP Crystal Reports Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Kept well informed Support understands my problem | Less knowledgeable |
No - There's a strong user community behind Crystal Reports and most of the issues you encounter can be revolved through the SAP community. Also, since we bought single user licenses we do not have a corporate support agreement. SAP support can be a bit sketchy. You can access the SAP support portal to send questions directly to the support team at SAP but the typical response will come back directing you to an article on the community portal.
When we connected Crystal Reports to Microsoft's Analytics Platform System (APS) the database was a beta product at the time and Crystal Reports was not designed to work with APS. However, we contacted SAP and they helped us install a set of drivers that work with APS and described how Crystal Reports function with APS.
Using SAP Crystal Reports
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Simple reports are a breeze.
- Parameterized reports are easy
- Custom layouts and designs are also easy.
- Connecting to data sources that are not SAP systems is a bit awkward.
- Building charts is flat out weird.
- Sub-reporting requires an investment of time to learn.