We performed a comparison between Microsoft BI and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft BI comes out on top in this comparison. It is reliable and easy to use. In addition, when compared with SAP BusinessObjects, it is easier to set up, less expensive, and has better customer support.
"The dashboard features are really valuable, you can connect to multiple data points."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the visual aspect and the DAX capabilities to virtually do anything."
"It's quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly."
"The drill-down capabilities and automatic charts are the best ones. The visualization is also very good. In terms of visualization, no competing product, such as IBM Cognos or any other product, has the same capabilities."
"The initial setup is relatively simple."
"Considering that it's Microsoft, it can be integrated with the Power Platform, which is also Microsoft-based, like SharePoint, Power apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, which is the most user-friendly."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that we are able to build all dashboards with self-service BI and are able to provide our business users with self-service BI. We are building a repository on top of our data warehouse and building all the dashboards and KPIs."
"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"The reporting features the solution offers are excellent."
"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the SAP BW, which is a warehouse tool. Additionally, it is an easy tool to use."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"Ease of report development is a key feature."
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pros →
"Drill-down in dashboards needs to improved. The capability only works in Power BI Desktop today. We need to have an alternative approach today."
"My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack."
"Microsoft is behind IBM when it comes to security features."
"Real-time updating needs improvement."
"I would like it to be a little bit more secure when I'm using the design feature on my desktop. For example, to have the ability to set up security passwords for opening the file. Currently, they don't have that. Tableau, for example, has a visual way of doing data processing steps, whereas the Power BI system still has some code, although it is very low code. It would be great to have the kind of view that Tableau has."
"I believe there is room for improvement in terms of authentication and certain functionalities in Power BI. For instance, adjusting the width of columns is not easily done, as there is only an option to enable or disable automatic adjustment. This can be a significant drawback for clients who desire more flexibility."
"Some kind of expression wizard, where the user can build a complex expression without any knowledge of DAX, can be a good addition to the product."
"I would like for there to be some type of user manual that shows steps on how to navigate the solution."
"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."
"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."
"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."
"This solution is complex to configure and administer."
"Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."
"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."
"The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Cons →
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 297 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 102 reviews. Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform writes "Web intelligence will work with any amount of data even if you have 10 million rows". Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and Qlik Sense, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos, Looker and Oracle Essbase. See our Microsoft Power BI vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report.
See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
All the traditional BI platforms including Business Objects and Microsoft Reporting services and Analysis services require IT involvement almost at every step in preparing the data and report.
Self serve BI is the promise to these business analysts without technology background. However following characteristics are a must to meet the self serve BI dream.
- BI tool should be capable of reading data from its source without a dependency on ETL or a warehouse.
- While a dimensional model gives most flexibility for ad hoc data analysis, it brings a overhead of consistent modeling mindset requiring very technical background.
- Ability to convert grid data into visualization and vice versa with few clicks
- Ability to mashup multiple analysis from multiple sources on to a single screen.
- Finally a framework that let's end users seamlessly build their analysis while IT can throttle, govern, audit and scale end user data needs with a great amount of automation behind the scenes as a continuous process as opposed to be a pre process.
Two such platforms I have come across are
1) Tableau
2) CarbonBI
These solutions seem good for Visualizations. I like Pentaho personally. Wondering why the this suggestion hasn't been made??
Sap business objects can provide a sophisticated self service solution that is very easy for the end users to engage with for both ad hoc analysis and report writing and distribution. However as with all Bi solutions the back end data warehouse must be designed intelligently and business objects universes configured correctly. The same thing really applies no matter what toolset you select. If you already have business objects then it makes sense to ask IT to set it up as a self service solution rather than look for another technology. If IT do not have the skills then look for a good consultant to perform a review of your BI solution and make recommendations.
Nick,
Good comments similar to the points I was making. I think that it is still
important to consider how much data you expect to be dealing with, the
tool's analytical architecture (ROLAP or MOLAP), the sophistication of your
analyst end users, and how complex your reports are likely to be. If you
or the analysts expect that solution development is going to be in the
hands of the analyst, then the tool needs to be relatively easy to learn.
On the last point, if you expect a lot of slicing-and-dicing you need an
architecture that will support the high indexing load. Anyway, success and
use acceptance is not just a question of apparent simplicity and seemingly
low cost.
regards,
Keith Breedlove
Polyglot Analytics, LLC
Groveland, FL
I suggest Power Data, the new Microsoft develop.
Try Tableau.
I would suggest looking at Tableau for requirements of self-service nature. The success factor for a self service tool depends on the ease-of-use for the end-user who is less proficient in IT skills and the range of tasks it allows the end user to accomplish. Tableau scores highly on both these parameters. Backed by a well designed data mart, Tableau can be the solution that pretty much allows the end user to replace the need for IT. It has excellent training materials available in one-click and many forums where people are ready share their cool experiences. Developing a report in Tableau for me was more like playing a video game, a throughly enjoyable experience to get to a cool end-product. You want the end-users to cherish the process of creation and Tableau does that with ease.
I would focus on Tableau and MicroStrategy (we went with MSTR several years ago to supplant BO), although QlickView has its proponents for ease of use...