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Simple yet Robust BI reporting tool!
Updated January 28, 2018

Simple yet Robust BI reporting tool!

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

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Crystal

Basically the SAP Crystal Reports license was provided by the client side as far as my project was concerned. So the bank (client) uses Crystal Reports, across all its units, for its reporting needs. Although they use other reporting tools as well in some cases.

SAP Crystal Reports helped us in delivering highly formatted, quality reports that were based on an operational (transaction) database.
  • Supports a variety of data sources. One could even use and Excel spreadsheet as a database!
  • Provides the option for writing custom SQL command for fetching report data. This is one of the most powerful features as you can tune your SQL, make enhancements to the report or do any other changes to the SQL, when there's a need, without having to modify the actual data tables or database elements.
  • Its ease of use.
  • Adding sub reports makes the reports run very slow. It basically affects the performance of the reports. This should be improved.
  • An option for version control can be provided as part of the suite.
  • Not used by many companies. When you compare the job openings for other reporting tools such as Cognos, SSRS, SAP Webi, Tableau etc., with this tool, there are less openings for SAP Crystal Reports. They should focus on marketing the product to many companies so that the people with technical skills in Crystal do not migrate to other skills.
  • Better exporting results for reports using Excel outputs.
  • SSRS
  • The support provided for variety of databases, since SSRS only supports SQL Server.
  • The look and feel, and ease of use of the software.
Well Suited for:
  • Reports using operational data.
  • Reports that require high formatting needs.

SAP Crystal Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
8.3
Pixel Perfect reports
9
Customizable dashboards
8
Report Formatting Templates
8
8.3
Drill-down analysis
8
Formatting capabilities
8
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
9
8.3
Publish to Web
9
Publish to PDF
9
Report Versioning
6
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
8.0
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
9
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
8
Predictive Analytics
7
9.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
9
Role-Based Security Model
9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
9
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding ()
Not Rated

Using SAP Crystal

Crystal reports is very easy to use and give great results at the same time. It has solid set of features that can achieve a range of needs.
Also, It is comparatively a cheaper tool.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Reports that can achieve pixel perfect formatting requirements.
  • Report expert functionalities ( select expert, sort expert etc.,)
  • Built-in and easy to choose code environment for coding formulas. Automatically makes all the functionalities available in categories and loads their syntax.
  • Easy to link data-sources either with a database driver like ODBC or via direct connection.
  • Sub-reports is a useful functionality but is a bit complex to for a novice or business user for that matter. It also hits the report performance directly.
  • If one is technically well-versed in SQL, I would suggest to use other ways by manipulating the query to achieve same results than to use more sub-reports.
  • The reports occasionally crashes without any warning and I had to redo all the changes from scratch.
  • Not the best tool in market for adhoc-reporting as you have SAP Web-intelligence and other leading tools that are specifically meant for adhoc data analysis and visualization.
Yes, but I don't use it