BusinessObjects vs Infor Birst

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Our analysts compared BusinessObjects vs Infor Birst based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Business Intelligence Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

BusinessObjects Software Tool
Infor Birst Software Tool

Product Basics

BusinessObjects is a suite of business intelligence (BI) tools that helps organizations collect, analyze, and visualize data to make better decisions. It's most suited for large enterprises with complex data needs, as it offers a wide range of features and capabilities. Key benefits include improved data visibility, enhanced decision-making, and increased productivity. Popular features include data modeling, reporting, ad hoc querying, and dashboards. User experiences highlight its ease of use, robust functionality, and scalability, though some note its potential for complexity and higher learning curve. Compared to similar products, BusinessObjects often stands out for its comprehensiveness and integration capabilities. Pricing is typically based on a per-user or per-named-user basis, with annual subscription fees.

Pros
  • Easy to use
  • Robust features
  • Scalable
  • Comprehensive
  • Integrates well
Cons
  • Can be complex
  • Steeper learning curve
  • Costly
  • May require training
  • Can be resource-intensive
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Infor Birst is a cloud-based analytics software tool that aims to help users discover insights without the need for analyst input. It unifies IT-managed enterprise data with user-owned data, supporting the blending of both in a top-down and bottom-up manner. It uses consistent business metrics to structure raw data into organized sets and visualizations. It helps users identify patterns and better understand their organization’s KPIs.

It offers a seamless, integrated UI that allows users to perform every step of the data analysis process in a single interface, enabling a smooth experience. It can be deployed either from the cloud or self-hosted on-premise.

Users can purchase it in three available formats: per-user fee, by department or business unit or by end-customer in embedded scenarios.

To explore other popular solutions that Infor offers, visit our Infor company page.
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$5,000 Annual
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$2,500 Monthly, Quote-based
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Product Insights

  • Real-Time Analysis: Connects to a range of data sources, including other SAP applications, to deliver real-time data and up-to-the-minute updates, so users are never behind the times. 
  • High-Volume Delivery: Distributes content over a large organization to ensure all users have real-time access to data, visualizations and collaboration. 
  • Extensive SAP Ecosystem: Integrates and connects seamlessly with other SAP tools through built-in APIs. This extends usability and draws data directly from a range of SAP systems. 
  • Self Service: Users of all technical levels can manipulate data, explore trends, create visualizations and share them with others without waiting for a data scientist to deliver insights. 
  • Enterprise-Grade: As one of the largest software providers in the world, it offers a robust solution that can handle the largest, most complex data sets for any size enterprise. 
  • Intuitive Visualizations: Create a variety of intuitive visualizations from data, making patterns and trends more apparent and transferring information more efficiently than numbers or text reports. 
  • Better Business Decisions: Historical patterns and data tracking helps identify trends and make accurate predictions for the future. Make data-driven business decisions and implement proven best practices. 
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  • Scalability on Demand: Prevents data bottlenecks caused by data loads that exceed capacity as business grows by scaling as needed through a multi-tenant architecture across a multi-node environment.
  • Faster Results: Delivers faster analytics across the entire organization by utilizing automated data analysis technology, cloud architecture and reusable metadata.
  • Data Clarity: Promote data clarity and reduce ambiguity by offering unique views into data to help everyone, regardless of technical expertise. Better understand the meaning of individual KPIs via the semantic layer, a set of shared business definitions.
  • Self-Service: Gives employees at all levels of technical skill self-service tools, such as drag-and-drop, to explore, analyze and visualize data through the user-oriented UX.
  • Informed Decisions: Make more data-driven business decisions by better understanding operations. Identify trends in business data by collecting, organizing, exploring and visualizing data.
  • Predict Future Outcomes: Generate actionable insights by leveraging AI to analyze historical data and improve business moving forward.
  • Intuitive Visualizations: Easily interpret trends by cleaning data and building understandable visualizations through machine learning.
  • Networked BI: Builds collective intelligence. Combines IT-managed enterprise data with user-generated data and eliminates data silos, unifying data from every part of an organization.
  • Certified Security: Secures data at every degree of detail, down to the row and column level. Employs strict data security protocols and procedures to protect data in  processes and data centers, which are certified for ISO27001 and SOC II, TYPE II standards and compliant with EU Safe Harbor laws.
  • Free Trial: Try it hands-on via a free trial.
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  • Native Mobile Apps: Take visualization features like charts, reports and more on the go with native iOS and Android apps. 
  • Pre-Built Data Connectors: Draw data from over 25 pre-set sources such as SAP HANA, Apache, Hadoop, Hive, Cloudera, Impala, Amazon, IBM and many more. 
  • Integrations: Provides powerful integration capabilities with other applications such as CRM, ERP, web applications and more. Includes SAP tools and others like the Microsoft Suite. 
  • Data Discovery: Collects, cleans and analyzes data from a variety of sources to help users identify trends and patterns. 
  • Data Transformation: Converts data between formats and structures — organizes and structures unstructured data into usable information. 
  • Visualizations: Generates graphical data visualizations such as bar charts, pie graphs, scattergrams, line plots, maps and more. 
  • Secure Collaboration: Users can securely share visualizations with team members, clients and others through email, web embedding and other platforms. 
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  • Automated Data Refinement: Automatically merge data from different sources into one user-ready data storage and optimize it for analysis. 
  • Semantic Layer: Boosts trustworthiness of data and reduces data anarchy by adding an agile semantic layer between the user and data. Work with data privately while staying connected to the network via a virtual tenant space.">
  • Real-time Access: Directly query on-premise data sources in real-time, eliminating the need to first extract and then upload data to the cloud.
  • Adaptive UX: Create reports and dashboards without coding knowledge via intuitive drag-and-drop tools. Supports different analytic styles, such as visual discovery, and mobile, and third-party tools such as Excel, R and Tableau. 
  • Reusable Rules: Automatically generates a common architecture based on a reusable set of business definitions without manual intervention.
  • Interactive Dashboards: Explore data even further via interactive dashboards that have drill-down capabilities such as lasso filters.
  • Multi-Tenant Cloud Architecture: Scales vertically and horizontally with a multi-tenant architecture built on a multi-node environment. Speeds insight generation by reducing the overall time spent on repetitive on-premise tasks. 
  • One-Click Data Connectivity: Access existing data with one click via its extensive library of pre-built connectors.
  • Embedded Analytics: Scale with clients’ businesses via flexible deployment options including embedding, APIs and localization capabilities.
  • Machine Learning: Recognizes patterns in data via Smart Analytics and automatically builds visualizations based on predictive analytics. Learns over time, and remembers previous search queries, past visualizations and more.
  • Deployment Options: Deploy as a SaaS through the cloud or go hybrid, keeping data in-house but running analytics through cloud-based servers. Or, deploy through a virtual appliance that delivers all the benefits of a traditional cloud-hosted SaaS while being locally hosted on-premise or in a private-cloud.
  • Mobile App: Access reports and dashboards via its native mobile application for iOS and Android.
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Product Ranking

#14

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#22

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1869 reviews
Great User Sentiment 560 reviews
81%
of users recommend this product

BusinessObjects has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 81% when considering 1869 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

82%
of users recommend this product

Infor Birst has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 82% when considering 560 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

n/a
4.3 (7)
3.8 (237)
3.9 (92)
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4.08 (49)
4.2 (158)
4.1 (50)
4.2 (722)
4.1 (176)
3.9 (752)
4.2 (186)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Ease of Use: It is a straightforward and easy to use platform, as noted by over 65% of reviewers who mention ease of use.
Flexible Reporting: Around 84% of the reviewers who specify reporting state that it offers a flexible reporting feature to fit individual needs.
Integration: It enables integration with SAP products and third-party software, as observed by 89% of the users referring to integration.
Customization: It provides highly customizable tools and options, as noted by 88% of reviewers who specify customization.
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Data Integration: About 80% of users who mentioned its data integration capabilities said that the platform, powered by built-in connectivity tools, connected well to many types of data sources.
Data Visualization: Approximately 81% of users who reviewed visualization said that the tool provided attractive and intuitive data presentation options for at-a-glance data analysis and trend charting.
Ease of Use: The platform was user-friendly and intuitive, according to around 77% of users who reviewed the interface.
Functionality: Approximately 68% of users who reviewed functionality said that the platform provided strong capabilities to streamline preparation and consumption of data for developers and end users alike.
Data Management: Automated data warehouse creation made data modeling a breeze, around 65% of users who reviewed the platform’s data management system said.
Setup: Around 69% of users who mentioned implementation said that the solution being cloud-based, coupled with excellent onboarding support from the vendor, made deployment easy.
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Learning Curve: It involves a steep learning curve for beginners, as stated by 80% of the users mentioning the learning curve.
Implementation: Over 80% of reviewers who discussed implementation report that the process is cumbersome.
Pop-ups: Error messages and pop-ups are technical and hard to decipher, as observed by 100% of reviewers who refer to pop-ups.
Performance: Around 86% of the users who specify performance report that it becomes slow and crashes at times when multiple prompts are opening.
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Performance: Approximately 87% of users who reviewed the platform’s performance said that it was slow and inconsistent in data processing and data refresh.
Learning Curve: About 81% of users who mentioned the learning curve said that documentation was often insufficient and incorrect, and that the platform’s use of proprietary language made the learning curve quite steep.
Service and Support: About 46% of users who reviewed this feature said that support was poor and turnaround times were painfully long, extending up to several months.
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User reviews for BusinessObjects paint a picture of a powerful BI tool with both strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, users praise its comprehensive features, enabling them to tackle complex data challenges. "It's like a Swiss Army knife for data analysis," one user says, "from basic reports to advanced modeling, it's got it all." This feature depth is often contrasted with simpler competitors, with users appreciating the ability to handle diverse needs without needing multiple tools. However, the learning curve can be steep, especially for non-technical users. "It's not exactly drag-and-drop for beginners," another user admits. This complexity can lead to frustration and require investment in training, which some users find less intuitive compared to competitors. Despite the learning hurdle, many users highlight BusinessObjects' scalability and integration capabilities as its main differentiators. "It seamlessly connects with our existing systems," one user notes, "saving us time and effort." This smooth integration is often lacking in competitors, making BusinessObjects a preferred choice for organizations with complex data ecosystems. Overall, user reviews suggest BusinessObjects is a powerful and versatile BI tool best suited for organizations with complex data needs and the resources to support its learning curve. Its comprehensive features and integration capabilities set it apart, making it a strong contender for those seeking a robust BI solution despite the initial investment required.

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Infor Birst is an integrated cloud-based end-to-end solution for sourcing raw data, and extracting, warehousing and reporting for enterprise data analysis. With built-in tools for data integration and strong embedded analytics capabilities, users leverage its data visualization capabilities to create and share metric-specific dashboards and reports. Users who reviewed data management said that automated data warehouse creation was a strong feature of the platform, as well as its user-friendly interface. Many users who reviewed its functionality said that, equipped with a powerful ETL and efficient ODBC drivers for integration, the platform was flexible and scalable with a multitude of features for data discovery and analysis. Around 69% of users who reviewed ease of implementation said that deployment was easy with the integrated cloud platform, though some users said that the setup processes were unclear and they required in-house IT support for onboarding. On the flip side, users who mentioned performance said that the speed of data processing and data refresh was slow and this impacted report generation capabilities. Documentation was inconsistent and often incorrect, and the use of proprietary query language made the learning curve quite steep, many users who reviewed this feature said. Support turnaround times were woefully long, even extending up to several months as reported by a number of users. Some users who reviewed functionality said that the code was buggy and the platform stalled often when processing data for ad-hoc reporting. Many users complained that these bugs were not addressed for years, and new releases often impacted pre-existing features. Possibly because of its performance issues with large amounts of data, quite a few users rate it as a good BI tool for small and midsize companies that require less complex data analysis, rather than larger enterprises. In summary, Infor Birst is a BI ecosystem with a networked approach to data visualization and predictive analytics that eliminates data silos and serves as a single source of truth for enterprise data.

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