SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Room for Improvement

DS
Business Intelligence Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

BusinessObjects reporting tools have not been perfected yet. However, there are two ETL tools inside the BusinessObjects. They are ETL tools in the schematic between the database and the reporting. 

But if we're talking negative aspects of BusinessObjects, it's like comparing a bus and a bike. If you want to reach somewhere nearby within five minutes, you can use a bike instead of the bus because there will be a lot of traffic and lots of people inside the bus. If you have large amounts of data, then go for BusinessObjects. If you have a light amount of data, it's better to use Tableau or Power BI tools.

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Sumeet  Zalpuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at ASR Nederland N.V.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding. I think SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is already working on that, and they have improved a lot from where they were, but there's still a long way to go.

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Paul Grill - PeerSpot reviewer
President & CEO at Infosol Inc

We would like to see the semantic layer opened up to other popular BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI. This integration makes a lot of sense for most organizations.

We would also like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud.

It would be nice to see some native integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and capabilities to really take Web Intelligence to the next level of Business Intelligence. This could be integrated with existing popular AI tools instead of new development.

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Buyer's Guide
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Joyee Sen - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Service Delivery Manager at SoftwareONE

Some configurations related to business objects are a little tricky. Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex. There's not enough documentation available on the net. 

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Shylaraj AK - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Architect at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

The initial setup could be simplified.

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AP
BusinessObject Delivery Dev. at a government with 10,001+ employees

BusinessObjects originated in France, and then it was bought by SAP, a German company. Some things don't totally fit into the American culture of software development. For example, German software always uses detailed steps, whereas Oracle and Microsoft are very straightforward. Everything in this tool is stepwise. There are so many steps, but it is pretty good functionally. 

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Voravit Jongrugsakul - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development at Bicone

While SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform offers powerful reporting features, I believe there is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options. Currently, users might face limitations and complexities in developing specific use cases within SAP. Unlike other business intelligence tools such as Power BI, SAP could enhance flexibility, allowing users to seamlessly integrate data from various sources like CRM systems, providing a more dynamic and adaptable reporting environment for users.

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Emilio Valle - PeerSpot reviewer
Programmer at Banco de Guatemala

The platform should be a bit more user-friendly. There should be an easier way to use the solution.

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SZ
Data & Business Architect at AME

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. 

I have seen other organizations such as Need4Viz that are creating beautiful charts. They are a partner of SAP.  SAP needs to onboard companies that are developing open-source charts. They need to improve their user experience in terms of dashboarding.

Another thing that I would like SAP to improve is its licensing. Because of their licensing model, they are losing the market.

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Vishal Khare - PeerSpot reviewer
IT manager at Electrolux Home Products

SAP does force users to manage it a certain way. specifically around queries, and does not integrate well with other platforms, or lacks a certain level of flexibility. It needs to be more flexible for the end-user.

For example, we have been using Cognos also for years now, however, if a user has to do a query on their own then it doesn't work. That's why we are now gradually trying to migrate to Power BI. And, while it's easy to integrate on the SAP landscape, when it comes to the flexibility for the user to create a report on their own, there isn't really an option to do that. 

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MV
Software Engineer at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement. The solution's financial area needs to improve because a lot of the segment reports have been working with the finance part, so a lot of projects can be done now that our company couldn't do in the past.

Sometimes, there is a possibility that our company has to share some files with certain external users, and we find it hard to provide them with all the information that they want even after using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

The machine learning part in the solution is an area of concern that should be considered for improvement.

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Sumit Chhabra - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant - Business Development for Travel, Transport and Hospitality unit at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

One area of improvement could be technical support because it is not that great. Specifically, the response time for SAP support is slow.

In the next release, I would like to see additional dashboarding-related features.

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Vedat Gunes - PeerSpot reviewer
BI & Analytics Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved.

In a feature release, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform the visual should improve, such as dashboards. They need to improve the visualization issues. The analytics are a bit behind the sector because alternative tools have integration between other platforms, such as Microsoft Office or Cloud. SAP BusinessObjects is trying to move all the platforms to the cloud, but we couldn't use the cloud and we are in the middle of a division. They don't offer an on-premise solution for the platform.

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TA
Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

It's not like apps. Most of the Apps right now are into dashboarding. This tool, for the Crystal Reports in the phase I'm primarily working on, does not have those dashboarding capabilities, like in the other advanced tools like Power BI or ClickView, and compared to them the dashboard generation is not that great.

But there are other products, like SAP Analytics Cloud, all of which actually provide this information under the Business Intelligence platform. But I have not used it much because my customer has not moved onto those platforms yet. That may be one thing that may need improvement - the dashboarding side. Also sometimes the performance is not that great when getting millions of records out of it. It'll take its own sweet time to get that report refreshed.

Feature-wise, it's a slightly old technology, so I don't expect anything getting updated much in it, rather just continuing with their current thing.

I'm right now using other dashboarding tools for the dashboarding requirements. As I mentioned, it's not that capable of providing the current dashboarding requirements. I was introduced first to this tool then later to others.

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MM
Data Science Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of what could be improved, 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 (I manage Oracle, as well), because I like that feature with Oracle.

I would like them to implement analytics the same as Oracle does and have the machine learning model within their Web Intelligence.

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JB
Manager Data Analytics and Interfaces at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

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.

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. 

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Narayansingh Bhandari - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT (SAP) at CLASSIC MARBLE COMPANY PRIVATE LIMITED

We are not on the latest patch, the latest version. There are different pain points, such as data loading or inventory issues. It can take a lot of time to load.

The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now.

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YS
Head-IT/SAP at Barista Coffee Company Ltd.

We'd like to have SAP notes better incorporated.

There is a lot of patching.

It could be a lighter solution.

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DM
EAM Executive at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees

As the technology stands, and from what I have researched at this particular point in time, companies that don't have much complex transaction data available on a day-to-day basis, don't need Business Warehouse or Data Warehouse on the cloud. We want to use SAP Analytics Cloud directly and do our data modeling on HANA Data Modular. This would really help because we wouldn't need separate licensing for Data Warehouse and for SAP, etc. We could remove all of this. We could do everything with HANA and SAP.

There should be more integration with other platforms. 

Everybody wants to use SAP Business Intelligence. Because we need a Business Warehouse or a Data Warehouse, we have to create a universe consisting of everything that we'll use as an input in BI. For this reason, we have a lot of dependencies. We require connection with the two different platforms. If we were to use HANA, then we wouldn't need Business Warehouse or Data Warehouse — we could just use SAP Analytics Cloud. We could use SAP Analytics Cloud as a standalone solution for reporting purposes and we could also use Business Intelligence as a standalone solution for reporting. 

This should be fixed so that companies don't require three separate licenses for three separate applications. Not everyone has that kind of a budget. It should be an all-in-one solution — this only turns away potential customers. If SAP provided a feature like standalone BI, we could use it directly, access ERP, get the data we need and start building reports. Single application licensed universities are ready to pay for that. But when it's three to four different applications, it's beyond their budget. 

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it_user431775 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect - Business Objects / Datawarehouse at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

The Dashboard tool Current Xcelsius is not so user and developer friendly and is very bad compared to other vendor products. It has been wonderful but they have to integrate it with the Big Data economy system to sustain it.

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TS
Business Intelligence & Data Management Director at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution.

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AY
BI/BO Hana Application Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to be improved performance-wise. The look and feel of this application also needs improvement.

The scalability of this application has to be improved, and its setup should also be more simplified.

Technical support for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform also needs to be improved.

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it_user440979 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We do not have self-service BI tools which would enable SAP to compete with tools like Tableau and Qlikview. Reports/Dashboards on RDBMS cannot handle or scale the demands of the latest data analytics solutions.

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it_user431760 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. SAP HANA / BI Developer with 1,001-5,000 employees

IDT and Web Intelligence are pretty mature products, and have many features that make them adaptable. Design Studio in combination with SAP HANA as a source can be valuable although when using crosstabs, database calls become costly. I would expect this functionality to change to better utilize returned data sets in the future. Lumira is also a promising tool, but at this point still feels inferior to Tableau. SAP continues to pour money into this visualization solution, and claims that in the near future will be more feature rich than it's competitor.

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SC
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution is pushing too much into the cloud, which is difficult. Reporting is powerful but could be more dynamic, like in Tableau or other front-end tools.

Visualization could be strengthened.

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DD
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Recently, it's become less stable if I am working on Citrix. 

If you want to make a change in one part of it, you cannot track the change. They need something to help track changes. That would make it better. 

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BA
Associate Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The performance could be improved, like when we extract a large amount of data. Especially in the last project, what I've seen is multi-source. If we are developing a universe, based on Db2, SQL, Oracle and SAP BW, and developing a report on top of the multi-source universe, then there are some performance-related issues and data federation service instability.

There is a data federation administration tool, but that configuration is not very easy to use. That needs to be improved.

The solution could be more user-friendly. Right now, there is self-service functionality like how we have in Tableau, and a split view. Whatever the self-service functionalities, that needs to be improved. SAP has apparently improved it in version 4.3, but I haven't tested it.

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KS
Director of Underwriting & Product Development at a non-profit with 51-200 employees

Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using.

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MB
BI | Analytics | Insights | Leadership | Digital | Visualization Composer| Strategy | Design Language | BI Rehab

Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution.

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it_user121866 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Can be a little buggy. As with any system you need to do the work to set up the foundation; nothing is as easy as you install it and all your problems are solved.

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SN
Assistant SAP at ipscnam

The solution is more difficult to use than other products. 

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RK
Application Development Assoc Manager at Eccenture

I want BusinessObjects to have more flexibility like Tableau or Power BI. The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly. SAP could add more ability to design and customize the dashboards.

BusinessObjects is not that user-friendly. They have different tools for designing dashboards like Discovery— previously called Lumira. That isn't as user-friendly as Tableau. 

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VG
Analytics Manager at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

The solution is not good for self-services, they can improve in this area.

We are in the beginning stages of the implementation and once we roll it out to end-users then we will see further improvement areas.

In SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform we use Lumira Designer, or the earlier version is Design Studio, where we create management dashboards. We feel that the tool is very complex in terms of implementing the dashboard. Lots of coding and performance issues. We require particular skillsets and resources, regular users cannot understand it. The management dashboards should be easy to configure. The only option right now is Lumira Designer, but it is complex to implement. Maintaining and supporting it takes time, and something should be done to improve the experience.

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PA
Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools. Web Intelligence is good for reporting and all kinds of stuff, but I would rather have one product. All the reporting features of Web Intelligence should be developed within Lumira.

A lot of predictive abilities have been brought into the cloud version of SAP Analytics. It would be nice to see a lot of newer technologies and AI. Predictive capabilities are becoming a little more standard. Instead of having to get another model, we are just looking for one solution to deal with analytics including predictive.

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HS
Head of BI and Analytics at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future.

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GL
Enterprise Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Their WebGUI presentation layer could be improved. They are still a little bit behind, for example, Tableau and QlikView.

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DH
Senior Business Intelligence Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The biggest area for improvement would be the dashboarding capabilities due to the recent change from Xcelsius to Dashboard Designer. This has created a gigantic ripple in many companies because the skill sets required are drastically different.

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it_user101874 - PeerSpot reviewer
IS/IT program manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Since I started using BO, the desktop version gave way to the web version. The beginning of the web version (Web Intelligence) was a little bit chaotic, with some key functionalities present in the desktop version forgotten in the web version (like custom groupings, double scaling...) However, these functionalities are finally back. I think SAP should listen more and better to its customers.

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it_user6792 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
On the downside, we have had some challenges with upgrades. Be sure to fully test every aspect in your development environment before applying any patches or service packs to Business Objects production servers. SAP was quick to respond to issues, but this still caused problems for users. The bugs we found were deep into software features (displaying column headings, formula logic, etc) and weren’t something we found in our extensive testing. I do admit we pushed the limits and had a lot of custom coding, but we expected these features to work and not break in future releases. View full review »
LH
Global Product Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

According to our experience, SAP BO is too heavy and very difficult for customers with medium, or smaller-sized businesses to install and maintain. It is such a heavy reporting tool.

Even though they provide the business layer, it's difficult for the programmer to create their own business layer. It's too complex for them. They need to simplify this.

The user interface should be easier to use and navigate.

The initial setup is difficult. 

Technical support could be more responsive. 

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PK
Software Engineer at KIS Ltd

This solution is complex to configure and administer. It is even more so, I believe, than it should be, even with such a complex product. As an example it has many server processes (typically 15+). In Windows these are not services rather they are individual processes managed via a single service called the SIA. Each server process can be separately configured and performs a specific set of functions

It uses Java constructions for specific customisations such as default reporting formats and using SSL for burst email reports. This requires a broad set of skills to set-up.

It is rather cryptic in its error handling when there are issues that require trawling through a number of voluminous log files that are accessed from the server.

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it_user362913 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Business Intelligence Analyst at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The dynamic scheduling capabilities, the performance and ability to handle large data sets when connected via BICS to a BW warehouse needs a lot of work. The BW safety belt severely limits the performance of data through the DSL Bridge which makes Web Intelligence appear slow and unable to handle large data sets.

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it_user415908 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI & Data Lead, Reporting & Analytics Center of Excellence at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees
  • Reusability of the reports and tables from between the different tools
  • Improvements needed in charting
  • Direct and easy integrations to easily bring in data from other applications across all the tools like Salesforce, reading RSS streams etc. and not just other databases
  • Big data source support across all tools.
  • Bringing Predictive Analysis to the main stream
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it_user26124 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Objects Admin/Developer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Compatibility of Crystal Reports within BOE, especially when using universes and prompts – the prompts are turned into static values, not generated on-the-fly.

Scheduling functions. We have to maintain separate lists and custom apps of report schedules so that we know what’s scheduled when, and who is getting what reports. If a person leaves and is on distribution lists, we have to manually go through and remove/replace them. There is also no easy way to bulk re-schedule reports.

Report documentation must be manually maintained. Can’t EASILY find all reports using field X.

WebI needs a report template function so that basic re-used elements and formatting don’t have to be re-created with every report. Also need to be able to do more with custom SQL and merged dimensions.

SAP patch methodology is horrific, it was much better pre-SAP. As it is now, if you are on 6.1 and report a bug and it gets fixed in 6.2 you update and confirm it’s fixed. Then, a new release comes out and you update but because its cut-off date was prior to the date 6.2 fix, the fix isn’t included! Imagine trying to manage a system if you are waiting for multiple fixes. You can (we did!) end up with a system where major issues were finally fixed but other major problems not fixed and when the outstanding issues were finally resolved, the other previously addressed problems weren’t included in the newer update! It’s a maintenance and tracking headache.

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it_user176949 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior BI Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Since SAP purchased Business Objects, they have made some nice improvements, but have still not managed to seamlessly integrate and harmonize the many products they offer.

Life Cycle manager needs to be more stable and easier to use. The Information Design tool could be improved when creating a multi-source universe for improved memory usage and SQL functions available.

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it_user5691 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Performance, but they all have room for this. Nevertheless, performance is highly dependent on data architecture and design as well as server capability. Far less so on the reporting tool that can fetch results; set once and re-use over several 'reports'. View full review »
EY
Head of Data Management & Analytics at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features. The UI is not user-friendly and it is not easy to navigate through.

I would like to have better integration with other options or third-party products. This will provide a better user experience.

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SK
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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.

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it_user434979 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

There are definitely some areas of improvement (i.e. interface, etc.), just as every product needs improvements to meet changing demands over time.

When you test and find a bug, you raise a ticket with SAP - which gets fixed by support either because you don't know how to apply the features or it gets fixed with the next patch from their product development team. Also, apart from this, every quarter service pack enhancements come onto the market.

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it_user87981 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The calculation engine requires some improvement.

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VP
Applexus Technologies at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

In Design Studio version 1.6, when creating a custom geo map component, we are not able to associate a shape layer with data sources.

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Shahid Latif - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Analyst at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

SAP should work on performing the deployment and-post implementation support, a bit easier . I believe that would be a solid enough ground for this product to gain more pieces in the pie (market share). Also, they need to have more "Step-By-Step" documentation available for consultants, similar to what others have e,g. IBM.

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it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

1. SAP BO/BI

  • Visualization

2. Tableau

  • Scalability

3. IBM Cognos

  • Ease of use

4. MS BI

  • Visualization
  • Ease of use

5. Pentaho

  • Ease of use
  • Semantic layer

6. QlikView

  • Scalability

7. OBIEE

  • Visualization
  • Database connectivities
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TA
Gerente de BI at a government with 201-500 employees

The basic components of the solution could be improved.

The UI could be updated a bit.

I can't think of any features that are currently missing from the product at this time.

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it_user494013 - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Business Objects Architect at a tech company with 51-200 employees

I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement. Most of the other parts of the tool are fairly easy to get going and it would help getting user buy-in if they could extend that across the entire platform.

Like we always say, the tool is only as good as the person using it. But SAP sort of dropped the ball with their 4.x release, leaving out features that we had become used to with 3.1, which was stable.

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it_user240060 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Data Warehouse Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees
  • Better community support
  • More support resources should be available
  • They need to make it possible to rename data stores once they are created.
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KB
Managing Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers. 

There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies. 

As far as additional features, SAP needs a BI analytics solution. I mean, a fully integrated BI analytics suite. 

We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money. 

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TT
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau. Currently, for data visualization, you need to spend more money to buy another solution such as Power BI or Tableau. 

It is also very hard to integrate it with other third-party solutions. Its integration with other solutions should be improved.

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LJ
Team Leader at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that.

In addition, we would definitely like to be able, through the tool, to show more metadata, and access a data dictionary directly from the tool.

Also, a user should see data lineage, because we have found out that the abstraction being done in the Universes is sometimes too much for the more specific kind of users. They want to see the origin of the data.

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it_user430596 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. System Analyst at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It needs some improvement in its performance. It handles our data great as we do not process much data daily, but we are going to process huge amounts of data. I don't think it can handle well when compared to other ETL tools. I would like to see its data handling improved.

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it_user651837 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Applications Team Leader at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

More thorough testing of Service Packs before release.

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it_user494061 - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Certified BI, BOBJ, BODS Consultant at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

I would like to see the capability to directly access social media data.

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GE
Manager of Architecture/Design at a government with 501-1,000 employees
  • Better visualization
  • Better portal
  • License price is prohibitive should go back to CPU based
  • Improve customer service.
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RM
Strategic Account Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

The solution can improve by having more analytical features.

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it_user73041 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert with 51-200 employees

Java Applet still relying on the quirkiness of Java VM, and potential version mis-matches.

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KS
Technical Consultant at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of improvement, some reports need more customizations. Customers request reports that need more customization.

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MC
Business Intelligence Functional Manager BU SAP at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not so user friendly.

SAP's current strategy consists in keeping the reporting part On premise and delegating the Analytics part to the Cloud. You are therefore involved in a hybrid scenario.

The complete environment setup is pretty complex.

To carry out a real project that presents erp / business data on "Cloud Story Telling" you need more specialist actors who manage issues such as: Analytics and Data architecture, Data source identification, System Compatibility, Connectivity and Security.

These aspects are certainly also required on other vendor BI solutions.

On the SAP front, we are certainly trying to improve and complete the On Premise / Cloud integration, with the latest version SAP BO 4.3.

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it_user181065 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Objects Developer at a aerospace/defense firm with 51-200 employees

The development of the Design Studio to be ready for prime time. It is pretty well ready now just needs a few points finished to make it completely ready.

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it_user434961 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I encountered an issue with security. When I promoted the association between the CMC security profile and the Security Universe profile as I took our application from dev to test to production, I noticed that the associations were lost. This forced me to newly associate all over again.

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it_user430635 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Managing Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Of course every product needs some room for improvement but currently nothing is coming to my mind. However, because SAP lacks a professional services offering, we had issues with deployment, stability, and scalability. Also, the initial setup had a medium level of complexity, so it should be done by someone with relevant knowledge.

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it_user543585 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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it_user265632 - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Business Objects Lead Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration.

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it_user413388 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Application Consulting Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
  1. Annotation in the BI Launch pad. Previously there was the Discussion board function, but it was not good and no one used it. If SAP could create a functionality like annotation just like when we open in SAP BI Mobile application, it would be a great boost of functionality and collaboration feature.
  2. Clear roadmap, they need to simplify the tools and features
  3. Speedometer/Gauge in SAP Lumira
  4. Integration of Lumira with SAP BI Platform on a non-Windows OS
  5. Ability to Visualize in a browser SAP Lumira when it is uploaded into BI Platform
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it_user591984 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a consumer goods company with 501-1,000 employees

The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint.

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it_user456411 - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP BI AMS Lead at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It needs to be more user friendly for web use. Its integration into social media platforms needs to be easier.

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it_user426543 - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP BW on HANA/BO Consultant at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It needs to become more user friendly. Currently, it is very cumbersome to use.

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it_user494226 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees

Of course, there is always room of improvement:

  • The SAP BOBJ suite needs to be more stable and seamlessly integrated with SAP BW and SAP HANA (one-time variable creation, etc.).
  • I would like to see one tool that combines all of the capabilities, be it ad-hoc, formatted, dashboarding, etc. I guess SAP Design Studio is that right tool.
  • More OLAP functionality should be added, so that adding key figure characteristics can be done directly on the reporting side.
  • Also, I think one major confusion that all customers have is what tool to use and when? It would be a good idea to slim down the options to make customers’ lives easier.
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it_user115764 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
it_user252576 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence and Decision Support Team Leader at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Data mining and more visualized reports are the next steps.

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it_user825429 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Analyst, Big data at a manufacturing company

It should have a better integration with Excel. Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts.

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VG
Sr. Software Engineer at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

They need to improve the processing of software as it has lag when it initially starts.

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it_user415707 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The Events feature needs to be improved, and I have already suggested this in the SAP Ideas portal. It is related to BOBJ.

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DB
Entrepreneur at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.

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it_user489897 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant BI at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Maybe they can improve some features in report designer, like the possibility of associating colors with the dimensions. For example, if you could associate blue with the dimension "France", red with "United States", etc.

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Buyer's Guide
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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