We performed a comparison between SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and SAP Crystal Reports based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."
"The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries."
"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."
"The solution's user security is extremely effective. You can profile very well. All the users and all the functionality is protected and that includes information and data segregation."
"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good."
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"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 most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"Technical support may not always be timely or effective."
"The admin features for disk space management need work. It's very difficult to manage the disk space by the application; good admin features and not included to allow you to do that. I don't believe that is in the latest version of the product either."
"The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
"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."
"We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."
"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."
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"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."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"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."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 102 reviews while SAP Crystal Reports is ranked 9th in Reporting with 48 reviews. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8, while SAP Crystal Reports is rated 8.4. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP Crystal Reports writes "Helps analyze your data by creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect, and multiple reports from virtually any data source, delivered in over a dozen formats". SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos and SAS Visual Analytics, whereas SAP Crystal Reports is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, TIBCO Jaspersoft, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, IBM Cognos and QlikView.
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