SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: Software comparison 2022

When it comes to enterprise software, SAP and Oracle are two of the biggest players, and their BI offerings are the go-to tools for many companies. See how SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI stack up.

SAP and Oracle are known all over the world for supporting business operations, customer service and more through software. As part of their many software offerings, both SAP and Oracle have their own business intelligence (BI) tools. In this guide, we’ll compare SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI in five important categories to help you decide whether one of these is a good fit for your business.

SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: User friendliness

SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI are in a unique place when compared to other business intelligence and data analytics tools on the market. Both of these companies’ BI tools have been largely developed by acquiring smaller software products and integrating them into the SAP or Oracle stack.

While these acquisitions have led to added functionality, they can give the user experience in both platforms a somewhat disjointed feel. Thus, users of both SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI report that the software isn’t the most intuitive, and it can take time to discover where everything is. Users also say that both interfaces feel like a software product that hasn’t been redesigned in years, so they aren’t visually appealing or particularly easy to figure out on your own.

If you already use SAP or Oracle, which most users of these products will, that will lessen the learning curve, but neither of them scores particularly high when it comes to user friendliness. They are enterprise tools meant for people who are used to working with complex software and may require specialists to configure the software before you can even get started.

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SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: Data analysis capabilities

Both SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI get high marks for their data analysis capabilities. Users praise both options for helping them make sense of complex data sets in a way that helps them make concrete business decisions.

SAP BusinessObjects allows you to get pretty technical with your analysis and put together comprehensive reports even without robust knowledge of custom SQL queries. The flexible architecture means that different departments and teams can get the information that they need out of SAP BusinessObjects.

Oracle BI receives similar reviews, with users saying that the data analysis is very advanced and offers a lot of functionality once you get over the learning curve. The BI software helps users quickly find answers to predictive and statistical questions to drive business decisions.

SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: Data visualizations

Both SAP and Oracle offer decent data visualization capabilities, especially for enterprise software. The resulting graphics are clean, simple, easy to read, and offer a certain level of customization. Users especially love the level of graphic visualization these solutions offer alongside their robust data analysis, since some other enterprise-level BI tools don’t always deliver in the graphics department.

However, users of both do note that the visualizations, dashboards and reports don’t quite measure up to some other competitors in the BI market, such as Microsoft Power BI. Indeed, many users of SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI say that they use these tools mostly for informing business decisions via data analysis, and not for generating visually pleasing reports for outside consumption.

If you aren’t committed to staying within the SAP or Oracle stack and really want some stunning visualizations with lots of customization and template options, consider looking into some competitors to get a feel for what’s available.

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SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: Security

As enterprise software stacks, both SAP and Oracle offer pretty extensive security features. Both SAP BusinessObjects Oracle BI utilize a role-based access control model to allow you to easily manage the permissions for large groups of people at once. They also offer other enterprise-level security protocols, such as single sign-on (SSO) authentication. See each software’s authentication and security guides for more technical information on configuring the authentication and security protocols for each BI tool.

SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: Integrations

As enterprise products, SAP BusinessObjects is designed to integrate with the SAP stack, and Oracle BI is designed to integrate with the Oracle stack. SAP offers integration with two of its own data storages, SAP HANA and Data Warehouse, as well as external services like Apache Hadoop, Hive and HBase. Oracle also offers integrations with data storage services, including an SAP S/4HANA Cloud Adapter. In addition, it offers add-in components that allow you to integrate your data analysis into Microsoft Office products.

SAP BusinessObjects vs. Oracle BI: Which should you choose?

SAP BusinessObjects and Oracle BI are business intelligence tools that are primarily designed for enterprise clients that already use the rest of their respective software stacks. If you use SAP or Oracle across your whole organization, you will likely enjoy the robust data analysis capabilities that each has to offer, as long as you can get past the steeper learning curve and standard visualizations.

Do note that both SAP and Oracle offer a suite of different BI and data analytics tools, only two of which were mentioned here. If you want something that works seamlessly within your existing SAP or Oracle framework, but the two options compared here don’t quite fit your needs, definitely check out what else they have to offer to see whether some other software would be a better fit.

If you don’t use SAP or Oracle currently, explore some of the other options on the market, including Microsoft Power BI, Zoho Analytics, Domo and Dundas. There are many BI tools available for everything from small businesses to enterprise companies, and lots of them are more user friendly and offer better interfaces and visualizations than either SAP BusinessObjects or Oracle BI.