We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, Oracle OBIEE, and SAP Crystal Reports based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in Reporting."When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"I have not personally used any such products related to this service, however based on the popular opinion, Microsoft Power BI is more popular. We have never switched from this software due to infrastructure and license related costs. However, my team acknowledges that the Power BI is much more enhanced and includes features that are easier to use, including its drag and drop features. I am not sure, if OBIEE has these features, due to lack of updated versions."
"It has helped to consolidate data and report on a single version of the truth."
"Inter Process Communication."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE, for me, would be the Web Catalog. From a development perspective, I do not need any client or any software to be installed on my laptop or desktop. Everything is browser-based, so I just open the browser and start development."
"The main features of this solution are that it is easy to use, intuitive, and user-friendly. When I retrieve the data from the database it is in a very raw form, then when I use the Oracle Report Builder it has advanced intelligence features to allow me to view and make changes to the data easily."
"I like that Oracle OBIEE comes with more options. For example, more options with data security, user security, and other security. It's more complicated than Microsoft, but it gives you more options. They also added the part for machine learning, which is good."
"Some of the dashboard capabilities are good. The dashboard capabilities that tell you what kind of reports are available and provide you a summary of the reports are valuable. It is easy to navigate and easy to download reports into Excel to utilize them."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"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 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 initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The main problem we face is migrating all of the reports into the solution."
"When a large number of queries are running at the same time, the report fails."
"The performance could improve and in a future release, they could provide more virtualization options."
"Oracle OBIEE only displays KPIs, but it does not include strategic objectives or display risk in a strategic map."
"One feature I would definitely like to see is the ability to provide the in-memory data. Oracle might have some plugins but, as of now, that feature isn't available out-of-the-box. You might have to purchase that feature."
"Expanding beyond pure data reporting and into analytics, or expanding data science, would be areas for improvement."
"Setup and migration are very complex. Technically, Oracle accessory is extremely complex. These days, the industry demands a kind of Excel analysis, which is very easy to install, set up, and it's very developer-friendly as well as end-user friendly. OBIEE lacks all those features."
"Its overall organization as an analytical tool, the layout of OBIEE, is not very good."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"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."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"The financing part needs improvement."
