We performed a comparison between Information Builders WebFOCUS and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Predictive Analytics solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable feature is building ad hoc reports."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's highly scalable and can handle significant data volumes."
"It stands out for its ability to work across different platforms, support mainframe data, offer cloud integration, automate report scheduling, and provide a robust scripting language."
"The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is definitely scalable."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform's most valuable features are it has a great presentation layer. We can develop the presentation layer with drag-and-drop capabilities. For end-users and for our interns in the company can create reports and do their data analysis processes or works by using the objects that we created on the presentation layer by themselves."
"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."
"BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting."
"BusinessObjects can handle a lot of usage on the front end, and many users can view these reports. It's a relatively stable and secure tool."
"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."
"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."
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"If there were to be any improvements right now, their documentation needs to get in sync with their product."
"When it comes to customer support, we don't always reach the right person. Sometimes, we get junior-level reps who aren't as knowledgeable as we are."
"The challenge lies not in what the tool can do but in how you use it and understand the data."
"The solution can be improved by adding more automated options for reporting."
"I really want SAP to focus on the dashboarding side. Based on what I have seen in the past 10 years, dashboarding has captured a lot of markets. Executives at the top-level want data that is summarized, looks good, and tells you a story. That's where Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI have an upper edge. It doesn't mean SAP doesn't give you dashboarding. They do have a dashboarding solution, but Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are more intuitive and more attractive. I would like SAP to capture the dashboarding market as well, wherein they give at least some competition to other competitors. Presently, Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are leading the market."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."
"Technical support may not always be timely or effective."
"The UI could be updated a bit."
"I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement."
"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."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved."
"Factoring in total implementation and maintenance costs, SAP BusinessObjects is too expensive. If you deal with a huge amount of data, you can go with BusinessObjects. However, if you are a medium-sized company with a modest amount of data, you can opt for another solution."
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Information Builders WebFOCUS is ranked 6th in Predictive Analytics with 18 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 102 reviews. Information Builders WebFOCUS is rated 8.8, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Information Builders WebFOCUS writes "A flexible mainframe product with unique file features and a rock solid scheduling feature". 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". Information Builders WebFOCUS is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Alteryx, Databricks and TIBCO Spotfire, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos and MicroStrategy. See our Information Builders WebFOCUS vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report.
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I have not used BusinessObjects since the acquisition by SAP, but had experience using Crystal Reports and been\seen many SAP presentations regarding BusinessObjects.
Big positive and negative for WebFOCUS is that everything is programmable, we used it in a procedural language type of way and everything can be a variable which is nice when you need to program a complex solution. Can be a real headache when you need to debug/troubleshoot/maintain.
The FocalPoint community for WebFOCUS is very strong and probably IMHO one of the greatest strengths for WebFOCUS.
Weaknesses, the toolset has not kept up with other IDEs in regards to change management, version control and DEBUGGING - most times at our company, you are better off programming in Notepad and keeping copies of the file and "print out" a debug statement.
That's from experience. From a tool vs. tool perspective, I'd say they are very close.
What might put you in favor of one over the other will be BusinessObjects. If you have an SAP ERP - likely you have a jumpstart with pre-delivered content that you can build upon or enhance.
From WebFOCUS - customization and freedom in development (programming flexibility, D3, jquery integration)
I have to apologize as I don't have experience using WebFocus.
However, I did find a few articles that you might find interesting (related to WebFocus):
1. www2.microstrategy.com
2. ikax.net
3. www.technologyevaluation.com
4. www.webfocusexpress.com
5. www.ncat.edu
Yes, I can help you. Feel free to send me a message.
I can provide some feedback on WebFOCUS, and have SOME experience in BO. What questions can I answer for you?
I could answer the Business Objects questions ... Webfocus is not my expertise.