SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs. Zendesk Explore

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Score 6.5 out of 10
N/A
The SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence Platform provides users with ad hoc queries, reporting, data visualizations, and analysis tools. Its integrated, unified infrastructure aims to offer scalability from one-to-many tools and interfaces on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid approach.N/A
Zendesk Explore
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk offers Explore, a business intelligence and customer analytics tool which integrates with the Zendesk suite featuring ticket analytics, custom fields, dashboards, and other features. Zendesk is migrating customers of the BIME analytics product, which is approaching end of support, to Zendesk Explore in 2019.N/A
Pricing
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
Considered Both Products
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
This has the biggest drawback of handling the large data volume which I feel is needed as this is time-consuming and making decisions at the right time is getting harder and we have decided to move to this platform considering the time taken to process the data.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We are using SAC as well but the Schedule part of SAC cannot be compared to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence schedule.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Microsoft's Power BI has certainly gained a lot of attention and became a leader in Gartner's magic quadrant. This is certainly a good product for average data volume which can be handled in the cloud, however, SAP BI is capable of handling much more data with complex reporting …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP Business Objects have better security model than Tableau. One can setup a lot of security permissions as compared to a tool like Tableau. Tableau is good for creating visualizations/dashboards but not very great for operational reporting. Scheduling features are much better …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Other offering include PowerBI and Tableau. Both alternatives have different licensing options to consider, in terms of capabilities, they increase in conjunction with the license price.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
When we get the installation of the SAP BO BI Platform done on one of the BO servers, we get a whole of stacks of SAP BO BI suite tools installed. This is a package that has reporting tools inside it. For instance, web intelligence-rich clients, sap crystal reports, etc. We can …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Board is a great ERP software. Business Objects is more nimble and flexible. Board is good if the Dash Boards and screens are relatively static and have selection/filter options. Business Objects is if you do lots of ad-hoc analysis and reporting on the fly.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
I'd say they are on a par with each other. AppD definitely provides very technical insights, whereas BI provides better business reports.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
MicroStrategy Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics is costlier compared to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform stacks. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform stacks is user friendly, easy to adapt, easy to train resources and get them …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Even though all these tools are very similar to each other, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform does have better integration with the database than other competitors such as Microsoft Power BI. On the side of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SQL Server Integration Services, Tableau Prep and Tableau Desktop
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP BO BI is very similar to Microsoft Power BI. However, SAP BO BI is much stronger in terms of analytics and document management while Power bI is stronger in data visualization and big data integration. SAP BO BI is a great tool within its ally, which is performance analysis …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
There is no special differentiation point. My companies were using SAP as their main ERP and therefore using the SAP BO BI for reporting and analysis purposes. Some reports were defined to be released periodically but these reports were needed for day to day information. We …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Earlier, I used SAP BW's BEx tools for reporting, but it was challenging to format the report data and export to different formats. SAP BEx tools can access data from limited sources where as SAP BO can access data from most of the datasources which is why I prefer using BO …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
An upgrade to SAP BW/4HANA could be considered to get better performance. But if performance is not a huge problem, SAP BusinessObjects BI is a good solution on-premise.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We tried YellowFin BI but it did not work for our business model. It was nice and the user-experience was good but ultimate we sided with SAP Business Objects BI Platform because the visual reports that were produced were simple and easy to understand. We need that level of …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Crystal was part of the platform prior to my tenure. Explorer has always had a limited use case. I helped drive the conversation for Visual Intelligence and by the time we acted, it turned into Lumira which can't hold a candle to Tableau or Power BI.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform is an on premise solution that allows you to display information hosted on an SAP BW / 4 HANA server.
SAP Analytics Cloud is SAP's business intelligence solution that works in the cloud and is complemented by SAP …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
As we have been using SAP ERP, having SAP BI was one of the key factors in our choice. Also design efficiency, variety of data sources' integration and document versioning gave better advantages to SAP BI over others. Also adding SAP BI during the SAP ERP rollout provided …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Crystal Reports has the most features that we need for our custom and purpose built reports.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We selected SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) based on price. It can stack up against others in terms of price and honestly, that's about it. Salesforce Commerce does a hell of a better job at handling it. However, in the space of Business Intelligence, SAP can do …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Sometimes configuration is challenging (unless you are also very familiar with setting up Java VMs). I like the meta-data layer design tool. I like that there are thick and thin versions of the tools users use. Users at this point try to build a report themselves rather than …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We currently have implementations of both Microsoft BI and SAP Business Objects so our enterprise has found reasons for both. Some users prefer BI over SAP and it depends on the department they are working for. SAP was chosen for the more complex tasks that require large data …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
I use the platform as it is all that is available to me. I have no ability to query the warehouse directly probably for good reason. I have been using PowerBI and I know it can connect to the warehouse and do the query and visualization in real time. However, our admins will …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
That was the best alternative that could connect to our ERP instances. The availability of SAP Rapid Marts that could be leveraged to pull data models for specific SAP areas such as Sales tables, Production, Maintenance, and others was also a very important differentiation. …
Zendesk Explore
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore stands out against Freshchat and Freshdesk for it's deeper analytics capabilities and seamless integration with Zendesk ecosystem. While Freshdesk offers reporting, it lacks on the same level of granular insights and customization that Zendesk Explore provides. …
Chose Zendesk Explore
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups.
You need to use another tool if you …
Chose Zendesk Explore
N/A - the company had already implemented Zendesk Explore when I was hired.
Chose Zendesk Explore
What's good with Zendesk Explore is that data is already provided since it's included in the package. We get the data from Zendesk Support and make a report in Zendesk Explore.

It provides suggested templates and report formats also which you don't get on the other platforms. …
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore is more user friendly and the software plus maintenance cost is less. The report section is more detailed and no lag while creating report for a large data source. The report segments and formats are editable which make it more convenient to make a report …
Chose Zendesk Explore
We tried other reporting and Zendesk Explore was by far the best as it was already implemented into our support system we were already using; Zendesk. The main selling point for us, is that all of the reports are customizable and that no coding knowledge is needed to build out …
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore is better than Freshservice Analytics. In Freshservice, even though the interface is more attractive, the functions are not as good as Zendesk Explore. Reports and dashboards are hard to build, and the materials to learn are not as good as the materials on …
Chose Zendesk Explore
For support data, we have only used Explore because it came with our ZenDesk membership. So I can't speak to other solutions! That said, it's awesome to have Knowledge Base and support data in one place.
Features
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8.2
Ratings
1% above category average
Zendesk Explore
9.0
Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.60 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.70 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.20 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.8
Ratings
3% below category average
Zendesk Explore
8.3
Ratings
3% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.10 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.20 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.20 Ratings4.80 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.8
Ratings
6% below category average
Zendesk Explore
8.4
Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web9.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.40 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Versioning6.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.40 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers7.70 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.2
Ratings
10% below category average
Zendesk Explore
7.2
Ratings
10% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)6.80 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization6.80 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Predictive Analytics7.80 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining7.20 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
9.2
Ratings
8% above category average
Zendesk Explore
9.1
Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.60 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.60 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
5.8
Ratings
30% below category average
Zendesk Explore
7.8
Ratings
0% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access6.70 Ratings6.10 Ratings
Mobile Application3.90 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.0
Ratings
11% below category average
Zendesk Explore
5.9
Ratings
28% below category average
REST API6.70 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Javascript API7.20 Ratings5.90 Ratings
iFrames7.20 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Java API7.10 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.20 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)6.70 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
Small Businesses
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.9 out of 10
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Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SAP BusinessObjects Business IntelligenceZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
The proper management of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards requires an expert on the team to manage and build reports. If an organization does not have the proper expertise on board to build and deploy reports it will fail. Data analytics, dropping into excel, and broadcasting of information are major bonuses for the use of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.
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Compared to other analytics functions of other Ticket Management System, Zendesk Explore is the easiest to learn. Moreover, the learning curve is high. Once you pick up the fundamentals, you will be able to create all types of analytic reports. In addition, if you know basic coding or SQL, you can create your own metrics and attributes to capture extremely specific elements such as the tickets that contain a certain word or etc.
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Pros
  • This software is easy to initially learn, and very powerful in producing reusable reports.
  • It is much faster than my company's internal manual queries. The ability to build off of a saved query and share queries to other users is a great positive.
  • My favorite part is that you can run queries in the background and it does not interfere with your current work or slow your computer down.
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  • As with most "suite" products, if you already use other Zendesk features (Chat, Talk, etc), then Zendesk Explore adds an extra facet to the customer experience. The more we know about our clientele, the better we can understand/anticipate their needs.
  • I like that we can get as in-depth as we feel is necessary. For example, is just one customer having an issue? Or are many experiencing a similar problem? We can better rack this type of trend using Explore.
  • Our team can dive deep into the data based on exactly what we're looking for. If the marketing team wants a certain kind of segment, we can give them that info. If we want to sort by date or another set of parameters, we can do that as well.
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Cons
  • The installation can be very complex and time-consuming, it requires a lot of planning and foresight as to what role the software will play in the organization.
  • The software has a relatively large learning curve that takes dedicated users months to get comfortable with, the UI is a bit intimidating for new users.
  • SAP could organize their help better, it can be difficult to find dependable solutions to issues via their website and support channels.
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  • More detailed pieces of training on where to find datasets/queries.
  • Have demo reports to do live trainings; instead of watching videos.
  • Have a key as to what all of the datasets mean.
  • Have a pop-up that analyzes the data "looks like your csat dropped this week!" etc...
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Likelihood to Renew
The institution has decided to move in a different direction, and will be using MSBI for reporting. I have been very happy with the Business Objects suite of tools, and will continue to use them heavily until we make the transition.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
SAP Business Objects is a great tool for operational reporting. It provides a lot of capabilities for scheduling the reports for end users as well as for Adhoc data analysis by business users. One can easily format a report in SAP BO. The tool is not very difficult to learn for both End users and Developers.
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I rate Zendesk Explore 8 out of 10 for it's overall usability because it offers powerful reporting and analytics with an easy to navigate interface and intuitive dashboards. It helps improve customer satisfaction by providing valuable insights into ticket handling, agent performance and customer satisfaction. Though the complex query builder can be challenging for non technical users.
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Reliability and Availability
When we implemented 3.1, we had a tough time managing the system: It took almost a year to stabilize.

With 4.0, we want to roll out to more users, and are holding back because of fears about the performance issue
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Overall, the tool (Web Intelligence 4.2) is fast and solid. One issue is a dependability on JAVA for a full feature report creation/edit capabilities (as opposed to limited HTML option). Second, planned end of JAVA support by major browsers (Chrome is already not supporting JAVA applet).
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
We are getting the BI support from our SAP support company. Although they are good at some basic staff, they are unable to answer our questions for some complex structures. Sometimes we got the feedback that our request was not possible to implement, however later we found there were some methods available.
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Zendesk Community is extremely useful for Zendesk Explore beginners. The live support provided by Zendesk will also help a lot. If you don't know anything you can ask live support right away. However, one drawback of Zendesk Community and Support is the creation of complex reports on Zendesk Explore. Zendesk Community and Support cannot really help you much if you are trying to build a complex report as they are not a complete expert on it as well.
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In-Person Training
This is more a function of the training I received from the systems experts in my organization, not training from Business Objects/SAP. The training was rushed, without an agenda, and didn’t meet my needs as a user.
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
I haven't used it or got feedback from the end user.

Content looks to be pretty detailed. Focused on SQL but not BW.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Hire specialists and experienced staff. Mix some beginners so that everyone is not a leader but a learner too. Plan well; architect well; break down implementation in small steps and move towards larger steps. Create a centralized and authorized SAP Business Objects implementation team.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
This has the biggest drawback of handling the large data volume which I feel is needed as this is time-consuming and making decisions at the right time is getting harder and we have decided to move to this platform considering the time taken to process the data.
Read full review
Zendesk Explore stands out against Freshchat and Freshdesk for it's deeper analytics capabilities and seamless integration with Zendesk ecosystem. While Freshdesk offers reporting, it lacks on the same level of granular insights and customization that Zendesk Explore provides. Compared to Freshchat which focuses more on live chat and conversational analytics Zendesk Explore excels in historical trend analysis and comprehensive dashboarding. We choose Zendesk Explore for it's robust reporting and drill down capabilities.
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Scalability
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform supports SOA Service Oriented Architecture. You can start/restart/enable/disable all the servers. You can seamless do load balancing and clustering. It supports all leading application and web server. Supports LDAP SSO integration. People who can work on excel with training they can work on SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, dashboard, Lumira, Information design tool product suite. Tool is very user friendly and easy to learn and implement
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • SAP BO BI Platform has a good positive impact on the overall business of any organization. It helps in important decision making, planning, and analyzing the growth of the particular organization
  • Another positive impact is that users get hold of data very easily and in a user-friendly manner. users can even interact with reports to get the meaningful data filtered out of that.
  • The negative impact can be on licensing costs and buying this software box. This in turn will add to the cost of expenses of a particular organization
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  • Positive impact of around 5 hours/week in Dashboard building and visualization
  • 10 hours from Product to review dashboards and find potential patterns
  • Enabler to find opportunities based on agents´ occupancy rates
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ScreenShots