SPSS Statistics vs BusinessObjects

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Our analysts compared SPSS Statistics vs BusinessObjects 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.

SPSS Statistics Software Tool
BusinessObjects Software Tool

Product Basics

IBM SPSS, or Statistical Product and Service Solutions, is a data analysis platform that provides advanced statistical insights to propel business decision-making and research by crunching large datasets. With a user-friendly interface, it empowers everyone from basic users to experienced data scientists to perform statistical analysis. Scalable and agile, it is suitable for companies of all sizes.

Users can purchase it through an on-premises license or a subscription plan to a hybrid SaaS. Users who choose either monthly or annual subscription receive access to the base version and can choose which of three optional add-ons to include, if any, between Custom Tables and Advanced Statistics, Complex Sampling and Testing, and Forecasting and Decision Trees.

Perpetual and term licensees can choose between four editions that offer different levels of functionality: Base, standard, professional and premium. It was first launched as Statistical Package for the Social Sciences by three Stanford students in 1968 and later acquired by IBM in 2009.
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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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$5,000 Annual
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Increase Reliability of Analysis: Data analysts and scientists can reach more dependable conclusions and ensure high accuracy, backed by numbers and models made from their data.
  • Assists in Decision Making: Organize and analyze data sets in order to draw conclusions, glean insights and make data-driven business decisions.
  • Statistics with Speed: Maximize productivity by quickly crunching data sets. Handle complicated tasks in a third of the time of many non-statistical programs.
  • Data Management: Remove manual work, as the system does all the legwork in preparing and organizing data sets for analysis. It estimates and uncovers missing values, improving the accuracy of reports.
  • Ease of Use: According to the IBM website, 81% of reviewers rank SPSS as easy to use. A point-and-click interface and natural language processing allow analytics capabilities to be accessed by those without coding skills or advanced statistics knowledge.
  • Scalability: Built to scale and work with large volumes of data, supporting anything from basic descriptive analytics to advanced statistics simulations. Purchase as many licenses as needed, ensuring cost-efficiency for small businesses as well as robustness for large scale enterprises.
  • Customized Predictive Analytics: Tailor predictive analytics to unique needs and perform ad hoc analysis to find the information needed, making better predictions over time.
  • Free Trial: Access all capabilities with a free 14-day trial period.
  • Academic Versions: An academic version is optimized for higher education and research. Program availability varies based on user roles, including students, teachers, researchers and campus-wide administrators.
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  • 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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  • Data Source Connectivity:  Enables reading and writing data from a wide spectrum of file formats and sources. These include ASCII text files, spreadsheets and databases like Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access, as well as those from other statistics packages. 
  • Data Preparation: Streamlines the data preparation process. Identify invalid values, view patterns of missing data and automate data preparation to analyze and clean up large data sets in a single step. Validate the accuracy of analysis with a thorough, efficient data conditioning workflow. 
  • Point-and-Click Interface: Allows users without coding knowledge to leverage point-and-click data analysis with drop-down menus and drag-and-drop functionality. 
  • Automated Analytics: Automate common tasks with syntax and create customized data analyses that run using algorithms. 
  • Comprehensive Statistical Analysis: Perform many kinds of statistics tests, including but not limited to linear and non-linear models, simulation modeling, bayesian statistics, custom tables, complex sampling, advanced and descriptive statistics, and regression.
  • Ad Hoc Analysis: “Slice and dice” data by creating customized tables to dig deeper and improve understanding.
  • Predictive Analytics:
    •  Uncovers complex relationships between variables with functions like time series analysis, forecasting, neural networks and temporal causal modeling. 
    •  Simulates values and accounts for the uncertainty of the future using probability distributions. 
    •  Improves predictive models with multilayer perception and radial basis function. 
  • Geospatial Analysis: Explore the relationship between data points that can be tied to specific locations.
  • Direct Marketing: Improve campaigns and target key customers. Conduct advanced statistics analysis of customers or contacts with RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis.
  • Open-Source Integration: Enhance syntax with programming languages R and Python through a library of more than 100 free extensions on the IBM Extension Hub, or opt to build programs.
  • Export with Ease: Export data to a proprietary file format. Can be exported to a variety of widely accessible formats such as text, Microsoft Word, PDF, Excel, HTML, XML, XLS and more. Export to a variety of graphic image formats.
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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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Product Ranking

#86

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Business Intelligence Tools

#14

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Business Intelligence Tools

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1881 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1869 reviews
87%
of users recommend this product

SPSS Statistics has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 1881 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

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.

4.3 (18)
n/a
4.2 (712)
3.8 (237)
4.51 (528)
n/a
4.5 (425)
4.2 (158)
4.6 (40)
4.2 (722)
4.2 (158)
3.9 (752)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Research Analysis: It’s easy to analyze and interpret large and complex datasets to generate insights, according to 96% of reviewers who mention this feature.
Ease of Use: The platform is user-friendly and easy to navigate as observed by almost 95% of reviewers mentioning ease of use.
Interface: The interface has a clean layout and visually appealing design according to 75% of users referencing it.
Syntax: It’s easy to use (copy and paste) and proof syntax, and save for later, as noted by 95% of reviewers who talk about this feature.
Resources: Of users mentioning support, 93% agreed that access to various support manuals and courses, as well as an extensive user community, was helpful.
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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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Learning Curve: It needs extensive learning to understand advanced tools and different aspects, as observed by almost 75% of reviewers mentioning training.
Cost: More than 90% of users referencing the price remarked that the product is a bit expensive.
Slow Operation: The system runs slow at times while using huge or complex data sets, and needs to restart, as observed by 92% of reviews on this topic.
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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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SPSS Statistics is a point-and-click data analysis software that allows non-technical users to leverage advanced statistical analysis. Users praised its user-friendly, visually appealing interface. Many reviews also appreciated how easy it is to use and proof syntax, along with the extensive help documentation available for better understanding. Despite its ease of use, a majority found that using advanced tools involved a steep learning curve. Additionally, its cost runs on the high side and processing large amounts of information slows down its performance, as observed by most reviewers. It’s a good fit for students, data scientists and companies that want to analyze data sets but don’t have the technical resources and expertise to use a more advanced tool.

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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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