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."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."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's highly scalable and can handle significant data volumes."
"The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs."
"The most valuable feature is building ad hoc reports."
"Through the use of Business Intelligence reporting and scheduling features, reports are generated and automatically sent according to a schedule. This has freed up countless hours spent performing the same tasks, month over month."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."
"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."
"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."
"It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."
"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."
"It can process big volumes of data fast."
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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 solution can be improved by adding more automated options for reporting."
"The challenge lies not in what the tool can do but in how you use it and understand the data."
"Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."
"This solution is complex to configure and administer."
"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."
"It is not simple to use."
"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."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
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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, TIBCO Spotfire and Databricks, 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.