My company's solution is mostly used for operational reporting, like SAP Plant Maintenance, logistics, HR, finance, etc. SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards get used in my company whenever there is a need for detailed reporting. If you use some dashboard solutions, it will provide you with a concise KPI, but if you want to drill down further, then SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can help you.
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An easy scalable, highly stable and user-friendly tool useful for operational reporting
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are its stability and user-friendliness, making it easy to manage. SAP offers stable products, so BusinessObjects Dashboards is a very good solution.
What needs improvement?
The product lacks the ability to manage universal connectivity, so it needs to be made better for users.
I know that everything that is coming nowadays is based on SAP Fiori. Many haven't been exposed to the world of SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4HANA, especially when considering the changes made by SAP. It would be great if SAP came with regular updates to ensure reporting and browser compatibility.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards for ten years. My company consists of developers who are involved with the company's customers. My company is a customer of SAP.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a very stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is an easily scalable solution.
There are more than 1,000 users of the solution in my company.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support is good, but they are currently not providing support for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.2. The support team asks the customers to move to SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.3. I feel the customer support is ok based on the product agreement. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
It is an on-premises solution, so you just need to install it and continuously keep clicking on the next option until the installation is done, making it not so tough. Things work out pretty well as long as the various connections needed for the installation are managed properly.
The solution is deployed on-premises.
For deployment, it takes two to three hours maximum for any kind of new upgrade version.
Two or three engineers are required for the employment process because sometimes you need to take the backup, for which you might have to involve the infra team. In terms of application, we are the only ones who can handle the deployments.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product's pricing falls on the spectrum's cheaper side, excluding its licensing cost. The product's pricing is good compared to other tools in the market. My company makes payments towards the licensing costs of the product on a yearly basis.
What other advice do I have?
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can be easily maintained, but it becomes difficult if you don't have governance and other related stuff. In general, the product is easy to maintain with governance in place.
Those planning to use the solution can go for it, but nowadays, many people are more inclined toward SAP Analytics Cloud. I feel SAP has come up with a new road map for BusinessObjects Dashboards because they might not plan to decommission the product, making it one of the stable and best products for customers who use it for detailed reporting purposes.
I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.
Redwood integration with SAP Business Objects
What do you like best about the product?
The integration of redwood with SAP Business Objects is seemless. The best use-case where i find that redwood is the best tool is to schedule the reports.
So, In our case, redwood can schedule the process chains responsible for reloading the data, which will be an input for report. And later, we can process the reports. In this way, we are able to fulfill the dependency of the report that, first the data loading should take place and then the report should be triggered. And all these things can be managed by redwood itself.
So overall, it's a great tool that can cover various situations.
So, In our case, redwood can schedule the process chains responsible for reloading the data, which will be an input for report. And later, we can process the reports. In this way, we are able to fulfill the dependency of the report that, first the data loading should take place and then the report should be triggered. And all these things can be managed by redwood itself.
So overall, it's a great tool that can cover various situations.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing which I don't like with Redwood & SAP BO/BI integration is , if we have a failure in process chain/report then it gives us very generic error message, which is not near to the actual issue.
My suggestion : We should try to integrate the error message from the integrated system(Here it's SAP BO) and fetch the error message and show in redwood itself.
Because if there is a monitoring team, they might have access to redwood but not to SAP BO. So this will reduce the turnaround time of solving the issue as we can directly know the error from Redwood and start necessary actions.
My suggestion : We should try to integrate the error message from the integrated system(Here it's SAP BO) and fetch the error message and show in redwood itself.
Because if there is a monitoring team, they might have access to redwood but not to SAP BO. So this will reduce the turnaround time of solving the issue as we can directly know the error from Redwood and start necessary actions.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SAP Business objects is a great BI tool which can generate the report in various formats (Webi, Excel, PDF , etc) as per user's expectations.
This tool is easy to handle and gives us many options to deliver the reports to end users.
This can send the reports to various emails.( Stores, Teams)
Also, this can send reports directly to a shared path of client location which can also be a client's expectations.
This tool is easy to handle and gives us many options to deliver the reports to end users.
This can send the reports to various emails.( Stores, Teams)
Also, this can send reports directly to a shared path of client location which can also be a client's expectations.
Easy to set up, good reporting, and very efficient
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case for BusinessObjects today is for comprehensive Business Intelligence reporting. Most organizations using BusinessObjects today primarily use Web Intelligence or Crystal Reports or both for critical enterprise reporting and ad-hoc query and analysis.
We managed multiple BO deployments for multiple organizations, from the local and federal government to healthcare providers and from insurance to manufacturing.
In all these organizations, timely and accurate reporting is essential, and BusinessObjects is solid, reliable, and versatile. You can produce professional drillable formatted reports quickly and either interact with them or publish and distribute them in commodity formats like PDF and Excel.
How has it helped my organization?
They've made it more efficient and able to respond to both report and ad-hoc requests in a timely fashion.
The world still runs on reports. Reports are needed for financial statements, compliance, auditing, and dozens of other areas.
BusinessObjects has proven to be a report engine powerhouse where we can quickly create these reports and get them to the right destination in the right format.
The speed of turning around report requests has really had the most impact on the organizations we manage.
What is most valuable?
The semantic layer or BusinessObjects universe behind the Web Intelligence report provides the ability to create contexts and calculations that can be easily shared across multiple reports.
The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great.
The new features in BI 4.3 that allow you to use a Web Intelligence report as a data source have helped to create "master" reports that can be delivered to casual users, who can then create their own derived reports from this "master" report.
Shared Elements allow commonly used charts, tables, and graphs to be saved and re-used in other reports.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using BusinessObjects almost as long as the product has existed - 30 years, believe it or not. The most current version BI 4.3 has been out for just over 18 months and is currently at Service Pack 4 (SP4) which was released in December 2023.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. After 30+ years of development, this is a very solid platform.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
BusinessObjects scales all the way from one or two users to global enterprises with hundreds of thousands of users.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is not bad. Sometimes the responsiveness could be better. Once someone is assigned to the call, it is handled well.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is straightforward after you have done it at least once. You would need some hand-holding the first time.
What about the implementation team?
We are the vendor team that helps with implementation.
What was our ROI?
We saw an ROI within six to 12 months.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Very reasonable compared to other BI solutions/tools
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Tableau, PowerBI
What other advice do I have?
The next release BI 2025 became available in March 2025 and has even more features and functionality. Evaluating it now
SAP Business onjectives review
What do you like best about the product?
SAP business objects business intelligence is user friendly, it's easy to make a manual out of it!
What do you dislike about the product?
I think because of it's integration with accounting systems to different locations, there are functions that blocked by another user and cannot be used by another user.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It's very helpful when it's comes to analysis especially when the data is with complexity. It's easy to determine and to present data which can be understand by the users of the information.
Pretty Decent for Business Reporting
What do you like best about the product?
Robust software with multiple features relevant for business reporting.
Software supports automated delivery and auto refresh. BO supports large reports too.
Software supports automated delivery and auto refresh. BO supports large reports too.
What do you dislike about the product?
BO has a very small community, and most of the support you find online is pretty outdated.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Solving large reporting delivery. The feature related to publications is very handy.
Simply to Use
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to use and search for exactly what you want and need. The system uses excel as a base and functions similar to a pivot table so it's relatively easy to manipulate data.
What do you dislike about the product?
You have to be quick to export data. You can't leave the system open because it can cause other issues. Simply go in and get the data you need and copy and paste it into another worksheet.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
There's some software issues where I've had issues clicking through the screens requiring me to use the tab button and enter key instead. It's a work around but highlights other issues the system has.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) good experience
What do you like best about the product?
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) good software which supports management reporting and make analysis reports to make decisions fastly in any organization.
What do you dislike about the product?
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) did not identify any dislilke but some configuration are very technical and need to experience staff to monitor this configuration with SAP integration.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
In our organization, we are using SAP S4/Hana and we have utilized BOBJ for management reporting after integration with SAP. We present dashboards and pad reports for managment.
Good base analytics tools
What do you like best about the product?
The ease of dragging and dropping in the system is great for a base user. The ability to write custom SQL is awesome for higher-level users for customization for what is needed.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is a lack of new features and more analytical-driven tools. The company is looking for more dashboard orientated, real-time embedded tools, and this is lacking.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Extracting data from our core system, data mining/validation, automated reports that are scheduled for our end users and clients. Automation of company reporting.
A little difficult to use but reliable
What do you like best about the product?
This is very helpful for pulling various customer sales metrics, including dollar revenue, units, and volume. There are various other universes that you can use to get accurate data cut by timing, customers, etc.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike that this system is not super user friendly in terms of trying to learn how to use it. There are several steps to starting a report, and I think there could be improvements in design of the pages.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I have used this to solve problems related to diving into low sales for certain products or geographies, and looking into what the best selling items are so we can make recommendations for customers.
Easy quick reporting
What do you like best about the product?
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) is an easy method to create reports with tables and charts from a database. The reports can be easily set up to run automatically, so no further manual handling is required once the report is set up.
What do you dislike about the product?
Although SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) in general works quite well, it can be a bit difficult to get the reports to output in excel correctly. In addition, it would be nice if it was easier to copy over information and tables from one report to another report.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) to quickly create reports to respond to urgent questions and to send out reports automatically to colleagues.
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