SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs. Tableau Public

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.

Tableau Public is great, especially if you're new to the platform or considering implementing it within an organization. The Public version has most of the capabilities of the full version, with extensive community documentation to troubleshoot issues you may run into. Additionally, there are many resources to check out Public workbooks from other users and communities: a GREAT learning resource to figure out new, innovative ways to visualize and present data. It is perfect for evaluating public datasets, for doing exploratory data analysis, or contributing to cross-organizational or extracurricular projects that may benefit from more sophisticated data analysis and exploration. Tableau Public, because it stores to the cloud and has limitations on connectivity (ie, cannot connect to SQL servers) is not suited for confidential, financial, PII, etc., data, and care should be taken to avoid including sensitive data in any of the Tableau Public workbooks used by an individual or organization.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Tableau Public can work with data that are differently formatted, such as MS Excel, .txt file, Google Sheets, not sure about MS Access.
• GUI interface of Tableau Public is not that hard to start working on; Also, it can generate codes for the operations and so it is relatively easy to visualize and correct mistakes.
• Lots of Tableau Public users upload their work to the online community, users can easily find very good figures/graphs that are similar to their problems and so they can use these figures/graphs as templates to modify and make their own ones.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The biggest drawback to the Public version of Tableau is that any data used in the program is 'public' and therefore not secure: workbooks are saved to the cloud, rather than locally
• Tableau Public limits data ingestion to 10 million rows per source
• Limited connections - can't connect to SQL databases to ingest data (must be through CSV, Access, TDE, or text files)

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It's free, right? I'll keep using the free version. So the real question to ask is this? Will I pay $999 for the Personal version or $1,999 for the Professional? Yikes! That is a big stretch. I'm not sure about that. The product comparison chart is at: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/comparison

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.

Incentivized

Tableau public is a great training tool to understand the basics of Tableau before buying it. A great tool to extend Excel's visualization and to publish data for others. Not useful for anything you need secure. No ability to access databases. Static information only.

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

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).

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.

Incentivized

I have not yet required to contact support as the documentation and help i found online has always worked so far

Incentivized

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.

I haven't used it or got feedback from the end user.

Content looks to be pretty detailed. Focused on SQL but not BW.

I found it sufficient, and fast. I could easily "kick the tires" with Tableau on my data so I got up and running fast.

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.

Incentivized

Start at the end and work backward. Identify the business case / issue and questions the end users have, then identify the data needed, and where to get it.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Tableau public is Free and no subscription is required whereas Tableau Desktop is a paid subscription. if there is no private or confidential data it's easy to Tableau public and share reports with people. Tableau public has same features and options same as desktop. its easy for students or beginners to signup and start learning/build reports.

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

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• We have saved costs on Dashboarding tools thanks to the free tools within Tableau Public
• Streamlined reporting
• Time saved with easier data preparation features
• Professional looking dashboards and visualisations

Incentivized