Crystal Reports - An Older Tool that is Still a Great Choice for Non-Bleeding Edge Environments
Software Version
SAP Crystal Reports
Overall Satisfaction with SAP Crystal Reports
At my company (Engineer to Order Manufacturing/Capital Equipment) we use Crystal Reports as our primary tool for operational reporting and some executive dashboarding. This is in combination with SAP's Business Objects platform which provides on-demand web delivery as well as batch scheduling of the reports.
Primary resources for report development/maintenance reside in IT (two developers) but there is also a cadre of power users who have been trained to use Crystal. These power users are seeded throughout the organization and are backed up by the IT staff.
Our organization utilizes an overall ERP solution (Oracle's JD Edwards/EnterpriseOne) as well as other packages such as Microsoft's Dynamics CRM, EtQ's Reliance Quality Management system, etc.
Rather than have a separate reporting mechanism native to each application we have chosen to follow a path of using one tool (Crystal) that is capable of working with the data from all of our applications and that can integrate data across applications/databases.
With Crystal/BusinessObjects we deliver information to internal staff as well as deliver information to customers and suppliers.
It provides a means of crafting pixel-perfect forms and reports that support the professional image we strive to convey.
- Combine data from multiple data sources.
- Truly database agnostic - SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, Access, Teradata, Essbase, Excel files, etc.
- Formatting allows very detailed control of how data is presented on the screen/page.
- Extremely flexible in data selection.
- Complex requirements can be met/satisfied (depending on knowledge/capability of the designer).
- Drill down capability.
- Multiple delivery options/formats (native, PDF, Excel, Word, CSV, etc.).
- Needs easier means to access Cloud Data.
- Current version still only has partial support for reading/exporting to Microsoft Office's latest formats.
- Current owner of Crystal Reports has not improved its feature set significantly for some years now. It's actually in a "maintenance mode" in my opinion.
We selected Crystal Reports almost 20 years ago due to its feature set, flexibility, and cost.
The only other reporting tool evaluate at that time was Cognos and it was much more expensive then.
17 years ago we spent a few thousand dollars on some developer/designer licenses and built our own Fat client based presentation and batch reporting mechanisms (Fat client runtimes were free).
Key issues for us were:
1. Universal Access/availability. Financial analysts should be able to run and view Financial Statements and a Machine Operator should be able to see his monthly performance report. Everyone in the company has access to some reporting - limited by who they are/job position.
2. The tool needed to be a universal reporting tool - not constrained to one application platform/database.
10(?) Years ago we moved to web-based delivery (using SAP's Business Objects Edge Platform). Higher cost but still only low 5 figures. Compared to alternatives such as Oracle's BI offerings its been a steal!