We performed a comparison between SAP Crystal Reports and Windward Core based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in Reporting."The most valuable feature is that from a user's point of view, it is easy to use and requires just a simple click to generate a report."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"SAP Crystal Reports offers a plethora of features, many of which were available much earlier than in the Crystal Reports we previously used. We extensively use its capabilities for generating general reports, working with Kaspersky data, and even incorporating images into our reports. The range of functions available in SAP Crystal Reports is diverse, and we leverage them across various systems for our needs."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"Managing templates through MS Word, as non technical users can manage output."
"From an integration perspective, they provide the code for you to easily integrate with existing applications."
"It has the ability to easily integrate into existing apps with little code. If you know how to use MS Office, you can create a report."
"The two features that I like the best are the ability to generate Word and Excel documents, and the ability to create my templates directly inside those software sets. It's absolutely critical for me as a user to have design and layout control, because all of my reports are very, very customized. I have to have control over the ability to generate and to control what they look like."
"Technical support is very good. They reply immediately and follow-up with any questions."
"The ability for users to have design and layout control is also critically important. Without this ability, procuring report designs would represent a huge bottleneck. Report design tools also enable upsell opportunities for customized reports, with quick turnaround times."
"The usually the response is within one hour. The technical support will WebEx with you. I rate them as a 10 out of 10."
"One of the things they added in the last two or three years is PODs, Portable Object Doclets. One of our clients said they wanted to use PODs. They're a good way to make some constructs modular and keep things in one place."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"The only thing I can think of, that we'd like it to do, would be the ability to "burst out" reports, meaning one section of a report could be sent out as an email to a manager of a department, say, without having to run multiple reports to do it. As it sits now, we have to do multiple reports to do it."
"I have to deal with VERY long lists of properties contained in our XMLs and it would be nice if Windward offered a way to alphabetize this property list."
"Is there any way to avoid AutoTag loading in Word/Excel each time? I need to use it from time to time - quite rarely. AutoTag affects performance of Word/Excel. I do not want to install/uninstall AutoTag each time I need it."
"One thing that frustrated us a little bit is that we have to use the Office PDF generation, because the native PDF generation is always slightly different compared to the one in Office. The formatting is just a little bit off here and there... This means that we need to have Office installed on the server to be able to generate these documents via API."
"They're not a gigantic company, so they just don't have all the capital to do whatever they would want to do. That's the only reason I would hold back even that one point. I know that if I do ask for something, I'll get it. I just know that it will take some time."
"They could make the document creation performance faster. I'm not saying it's slow but it takes time to create the PDFs. If they could make it faster, that would be one area for improvement."
"Regarding AutoTag, we do notice that when you want to refactor a little bit of your template design or when you want to implement changes, sometimes you need a lot of clicks to get the change done. For instance... it would be helpful to be able to find all the identifiers with the old name and replace them with the new name. We haven't found a way to do that with the find-replace tool. Throughout the user-interface of Windward, you need a lot of clicks to get that done."
"There are some Excel formatting things that you lose when you implement a template: some default Excel validation scripts, macros. You could create them in Excel if you were just using Excel, but in creating a template that generates a report, some of those validation things are lost."
Earn 20 points
SAP Crystal Reports is ranked 9th in Reporting with 48 reviews while Windward Core is ranked 24th in Reporting. SAP Crystal Reports is rated 8.4, while Windward Core is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of SAP Crystal Reports writes "Helps analyze your data by creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect, and multiple reports from virtually any data source, delivered in over a dozen formats". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Windward Core writes "It has streamlined a lot of our reporting processes". SAP Crystal Reports is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, TIBCO Jaspersoft, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, IBM Cognos and Alteryx, whereas Windward Core is most compared with Docmosis, Nintex Document Generation and OpenText Magellan BI & Reporting.
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