SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

• Universe Designer
• Web Intelligence
• InfoView

Able to quickly create and publish reports using WebI. Eliminated most printed reports, they are now emailed or consumed online via InfoView. Has given users the ability to run reports on their own and get the information they need without having to ask IS.

Compatibility of Crystal Reports within BOE, especially when using universes and prompts – the prompts are turned into static values, not generated on-the-fly.

Scheduling functions. We have to maintain separate lists and custom apps of report schedules so that we know what’s scheduled when, and who is getting what reports. If a person leaves and is on distribution lists, we have to manually go through and remove/replace them. There is also no easy way to bulk re-schedule reports.

Report documentation must be manually maintained. Can’t EASILY find all reports using field X.

WebI needs a report template function so that basic re-used elements and formatting don’t have to be re-created with every report. Also need to be able to do more with custom SQL and merged dimensions.

SAP patch methodology is horrific, it was much better pre-SAP. As it is now, if you are on 6.1 and report a bug and it gets fixed in 6.2 you update and confirm it’s fixed. Then, a new release comes out and you update but because its cut-off date was prior to the date 6.2 fix, the fix isn’t included! Imagine trying to manage a system if you are waiting for multiple fixes. You can (we did!) end up with a system where major issues were finally fixed but other major problems not fixed and when the outstanding issues were finally resolved, the other previously addressed problems weren’t included in the newer update! It’s a maintenance and tracking headache.

Approximately nine years -

BusinessObjects Enterprise 3.1 SP6 (CMC, LCM, WebI, CR, Universe Designer, Business View Manager, InfoView)

(previously used XI R2)

Original XI R2 install was done by consultants, the install was a disaster and non-functional and we had to completely start over. Tech support walked us through doing it ourselves and we’ve managed it since. Biggest issue of the upgrade to 3.1 was functionality change in WebI merged dimensions, all reports using them broke and had to be re-written. Looked at upgrading to 4.0 over a year ago and installed in a sandbox, but the product did not function out of the box. It required massive reconfiguration of the default settings to run bare bones and there was no upgrade path to multi-source universes. As a result, we haven’t upgraded yet.

Rarely and was always due to bugs in new SP or FP. Current patch level is very stable.

Customer Service:

In a word, bad. Account reps constantly change and it’s impossible to find out who your current rep is. Phone calls and emails are not returned. At one point we were interested in buying additional licenses, but no one could/would help us. The licensing renewal process is severely lacking. They sent renewal emails to the wrong people, these are non-IS line staff not even on our account, and we have no idea how they even got their contact information. They refused to accept the PO that our accounting system generated, wanting one specially designed for them. Our purchasing agent, literally took a black sharpie and wrote all over the PO to meet their requirements. Who is the customer? Do they really want to make that sale? It doesn’t seem like it. Maybe we are too small for them to bother with?

Technical Support:

First level support is horrible. I avoid opening cases because of the bad experiences. I would typically find myself explaining very basic product functionality to the support personnel and in the end the response is always that they will consult their resources and get back to you. After going around in circles for days or weeks, the stock response is “it’s working as designed,” yet they can’t explain why. If you are lucky enough to get to higher level support (which is rare), they are very knowledgeable and able to quickly help get to the bottom of issues and find real solutions.

No previous solution was used.

Initially a vendor, recommended by BO. They had the product installed multiple times on the server, it was a mess and had to be completely blown away and reinstalled. Since then, we’ve done it in-house.

Web Intelligence for its ad-hoc ability and user interface for allowing business users to create reports without depending on the IT department. The ability to merge data from multiple databases also allows more flexibility and business solutions.

Since SAP purchased Business Objects, they have made some nice improvements, but have still not managed to seamlessly integrate and harmonize the many products they offer.

Life Cycle manager needs to be more stable and easier to use. The Information Design tool could be improved when creating a multi-source universe for improved memory usage and SQL functions available.

? I have worked with the Business Objects tools since 1999, SAP BW since 2006 and SAP Business Objects since 2011 with XI3

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

Customer service for the most part is good and a part of that may be due to the size of the investment the company has with SAP. We were provided a customer advocate on site to escalate issues within SAP as necessary.

Technical Support:

The technical support has been a challenge when it comes to finding the correct support analyst who is familiar with how the various product components integrate. Many times we would get someone familiar with Crystal Reports but not with BW or Xcelsius etc.

Business Objects XI 3 was implemented in house with assistance from various outside consultants. The upgrade to 4.0 was done the same way.

I don’t know the exact cost but one of the reasons the business chose to use Business Objects was that they could reduce licensing costs since it was already an SAP R/3 and BW customer.

Microstrategy and Web Focus were also considered back in 2010 when SAP bought and promoted the product for use with BW (replacing Web application designer). At the time none of the products were determined robust enough to use with BW as an enterprise level reporting tool.

Do not undersize the system hardware. Turn on all functionality for a product when installing – even if not anticipating using immediately. Spend ample time up front planning the security set up and only go with one option whether SAP, Enterprise, Windows AD or LDAP.

Flexibility and 'integratability'.

Can integrate the reference services of a metadata repository. Saves a ton of maintenance and ensures Data Quality.

Performance, but they all have room for this. Nevertheless, performance is highly dependent on data architecture and design as well as server capability. Far less so on the reporting tool that can fetch results; set once and re-use over several 'reports'.

I have been using the solution since 1998.

Confessions ... this is hardware and networking and unix. All of the server based reporting products are complex to install and beyond my skills. Adapting these products to the foundational environments is always adventure-prone but most vendors provide substantial help in installing.

With most of these products, BO, too, instability arises often when resources are challenged. So, in general, planning for capacity processing is a good way to keep systems stable.

BO has had 1000's of individuals in organizations running BO when they want to. Most toolsets address scalability.

I am a consultant; even if I advise changing BI reporting toolsets, I do so reluctantly. It is more involved than at first glance, particularly if you have a user base. To date, I have not encountered a situation where I would advise changing BI toolsets that have some traction in the organization. At least not without a plan.

Strongly recommend a vendor team for the initial period. Make sure they interface heavily with network, DB and DW folks.

ROI for the reporting product alone, as a component in a whole stack of things contributing to ROI, is in my view a minor contributor. How reports are developed and cast, the underlying data structures, data quality efforts, etc... these are the major contributors to ROI, not to mention the comprehension of the report viewer.

This can vary from site to site. Depends greatly on folks at the company and on the licensing deal worked out.

Category leaders have their strengths and weaknesses but as seen from the lens of the person using the tool. Some may want ease of use ... others a full-blown suite of DML tools. From this perspective, BO is as good as any of the other leading tools for reports. If anything, BO is great at controlling the user's interface eg highly user friendly capable. It does not come out of the box that way, but a competent BO wizard can make that happen on balance easier than other products. Finally, BO supports conserving server resources better than most. BI solutions are not about the tool. Any solution concerning the presentation of information has to focus on the business requirements and then a corresponding data foundation. Getting these is often a challenge at several levels and so I understand that there is this hope that maybe the toolset can make up for a lack of clear specifications. Bottom Line: Get the data foundation in shape first prior to implementing a reporting tool.

In general, we use BusinessObjects for extensive reports. BusinessObjects reports have several pages. Our users prefer BusinessObjects over Microsoft Excel because Excel is limited in its data files and all that. 

We are using SAP BusinessObjects because its scheduling capabilities are more powerful than those of other tools. 

It is limited for us because SAP is shifting toward the cloud, and we can't use a cloud solution for SAP BusinessObjects. SAP introduced a product called PlusTimes one or two years ago and another one that I believe was called Automatic BI. This tool is more powerful than BusinessObjects and other tools because it's provided in the cloud.

I've been working with BusinessObjects for about eight years.

BusinessObjects is scalable, allowing us to work with many pages. 

We are thinking about switching to Power BI. I think we will no longer use SAP BusinessObjects after one or two years.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects seven out of 10. However, I can't recommend BusinessObjects because its usage is limited, and it can't provide a new solution for end-users.

It provides every feature you're looking for to perform OLAP and OLTP-based transactional and analytical reporting.

We've used it for some time now, and it's an SAP product that gets more and more mature with each new upgrade or version.

There are definitely some areas of improvement (i.e. interface, etc.), just as every product needs improvements to meet changing demands over time.

When you test and find a bug, you raise a ticket with SAP - which gets fixed by support either because you don't know how to apply the features or it gets fixed with the next patch from their product development team. Also, apart from this, every quarter service pack enhancements come onto the market.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

• Way of creating reports
• Ease of use
• Can connect to any database
• Create models with ease.

In our organization, they chose this product mainly due to its ease of use. They were also able to generate high revenue by identifying their backlog areas.

The calculation engine requires some improvement.

For eight years.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

A 10 out of 10.

I would say it's mostly straightforward, because it has a wide range of compatible operating systems and also it was easy to install. The whole software is bundled and provided to the consumer.

It's the best product in the market when it comes to reporting technology.

• Design Studio is very flexible because we can use JavaScript.
• We can use CSS styles for stunning visualization.

• Design Studio is a highly optimized tool for integrating with SAP BW and SAP HANA. Obviously, that increases reporting performance.
• Complex requirements can be met using JavaScript.
• The CSS editor saves time.

In Design Studio version 1.6, when creating a custom geo map component, we are not able to associate a shape layer with data sources.

We have used all the business objects tools, but this one satisfies all of the business requirements in an optimized way.

It’s a straightforward and simple tool to install.

It was a simple to implement after we met the prerequisite before installing it.

The features that I think are valuable in SAP Business Objects - BOBJ (WEBi, BI Launch Pad, Rich Client) are the drill down capabilities to the nitty gritty lowest level, and perform an in depth analysis from different angles. Other products may also have this, but I believe with BOBJ, it is a lot better.

By giving more options of looking at the same scenario, in various forms, I can perform reliable satisfactory work for my clients with minimal errors. I believe this product has gained the market share well enough to call itself, the market leader.

SAP should work on performing the deployment and-post implementation support, a bit easier . I believe that would be a solid enough ground for this product to gain more pieces in the pie (market share). Also, they need to have more "Step-By-Step" documentation available for consultants, similar to what others have e,g. IBM.

7+ years.

No.

None, for the most part.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

N/A

Technical Support:

N/A

I have also used Bi-Query, Micro Strategy, Cognos, Tableau, etc. I like SAP BO better than other ones.

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

None.