ThoughtSpot vs BusinessObjects

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Our analysts compared ThoughtSpot 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.

ThoughtSpot Software Tool
BusinessObjects Software Tool

Product Basics

ThoughtSpot is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform that empowers users of all skill levels to explore and analyze data through a search-driven interface. It leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing to simplify data analysis, making it accessible to a wider audience. ThoughtSpot is particularly well-suited for organizations seeking to democratize data access and promote data-driven decision-making across various departments. Key benefits include ease of use, accessibility from any device, and the ability to connect to diverse data sources for real-time insights. Popular features encompass interactive dashboards, AI-powered insights, and natural language search capabilities.

In comparison to similar business intelligence tools, ThoughtSpot stands out for its user-friendly interface and emphasis on search-driven analytics. While some users find its pricing to be on the higher end of the spectrum, many appreciate the platform's ease of use and the value it delivers in terms of improved decision-making and operational efficiency. ThoughtSpot's pricing structure typically involves annual subscriptions based on the number of users and data volume.

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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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24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Ease of Use: Make self-service analytics available to all via search-engine style natural language querying, intuitive and descriptive dashboards and visualization recommendations. Access data anywhere and everywhere through mobile support.
  • Data Security: Keep data safe from hacking and accidental leakage by restricting access via granular user privileges. Make onboarding easy by integrating with other single sign-on solutions and offering native support for company directories.
  • System Monitoring: Offer total visibility into the health of the system, including real-time and triggered alerts via pre-built administrative dashboards. Stay in the loop at all times by setting alerts on mobile devices or via email.
  • Collaboration: Easily share graphics, communicate about trends and discuss data models within the organization or with clients in real time via the one-click sharing feature.
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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 Connectors: Draw data from a range of data sources via native connectors or by leveraging an existing ETL solution. Load large datasets at speeds of up to 1 terabyte per hour.
  • Embeddability: Deploy as a stand-alone platform or embed into other business software applications, such as CRMs or ERPs. Draw data and interact with it without switching interfaces to a separate login page.
  • Distributed Cluster Manager: Optimize workload distribution and scale it as the organization grows. Retain data and system usability at all times with built-in replication features, data redundancy assurances, as well as automated backups and node failovers.
  • Visualization Suggestions: Offers suggestions for best-fit visualizations based on data characteristics. Create intuitive graphics that help communicate patterns and draw insights.
  • Automatic Search Index: Indexes search history and data, then caches it for easier search performance. Provides search suggestions based on each character typed into the search feature.
  • In-Memory Engine: Performs all calculations in-engine. Assure query performance with built-in search result caches and retrieve results across various sources and records almost instantaneously. Organize data for efficient data exploration and retrieval.
  • Search Inspector: Explains how search terms are transformed into queries. Gain more transparency into the data exploration process.
  • Real-Time Calculations: Reduce the wait for insights; calculate answers in real time. Automatically joins, aggregates, filters and groups data into analytical results.
  • Drill-Down: Get a micro or macro view of data on an ad-hoc basis by drilling up or down across a data model without predefined drill paths.
  • Reusable Templates: Offers pre-built templates for data worksheets. Create and save a data model once, then recreate it for recurring reporting needs.
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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

#17

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#14

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 492 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1869 reviews
89%
of users recommend this product

ThoughtSpot has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 492 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.

4.2 (14)
n/a
4.3 (145)
3.8 (237)
4.0 (2)
n/a
4.0 (2)
4.2 (158)
4.6 (162)
4.2 (722)
4.4 (167)
3.9 (752)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Analysis: Citing the power of AI-driven natural language searches, approximately 86% of users say that this platform enables efficient self-service data visualization and analysis for better insights into business data.
Data Integration: Around 77% of users who review data source connectivity say that the solution integrates well with databases and data warehouses, both on-premise and cloud-based.
Functionality: Approximately 80% of users say that they are satisfied with the platform’s capabilities for fast and accurate self-service data analysis to display actionable insights.
Ease of Use: Approximately 94% of users reviewing its ease of use say that this solution is user-friendly and intuitive.
Speed and Performance: Citing speed and efficiency in handling large amounts of data, 96% of users say that they are satisfied with the tool’s performance.
Service and Support: Around 87% of users who mention customer support say that they are responsive and knowledgeable, and that the vendor is receptive to user feedback on new features and improvements.
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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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Data Visualization: Around 61% of users reviewing this feature say that customization options for features such as fonts, layouts, colors and graphs are limited.
Training: Around 50% of users who mention training say that additional learning tools and best practices documentation would help in driving user onboarding and retention.
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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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ThoughtSpot is a powerful and reliable solution with the capability to deep-dive into data with an impressive level of granularity to perform business data analysis. With its AI-powered offering, SpotIQ, this platform enables easy data querying with intuitive drop-downs and suggestions to retrieve relevant business data for analysis and presentation. In addition, users can save and share their queries with other users with one simple click. In-memory data caching makes for faster data retrieval and creation of data visualizations on the fly, though some users feel that the platform should have more formatting options for better dashboard customization. With the capability to transform massive amounts of data sets into real-time analytics in seconds, this platform has a user-friendly interface that affords even non-technical users the autonomy to use data to discover anomalies and trends with minimal effort. Astutely recognizing the latency inherent in moving data between data sources and analytics platforms, the solution now offers direct querying into the in-cloud data warehouse Snowflake via its offering - Embrace. Users praise the pricing model of this tool since the cost incurred depends on the storage space consumed, not the number of users. The solution does have its limitations, though. Quite a few users say that implementing natural language processing (NLP) requires a lot of pre-work and that AI-powered searches can slow systems down. Data models have to be specifically tailored to the platform, which makes them inflexible for reuse. Though the tool is supported by all major browsers, users can face UI or performance issues with using it on Internet Explorer. As uploading Excel files is still the best way to push data into the platform, data import can be time consuming. Users feel that updated technical documentation and reporting tool tips for the dashboard UI could help shorten the learning curve. Deployment can be challenging for small businesses without IT support. Some users who reviewed it based on cost feel that this tool can be expensive for mid-level businesses. To summarize, businesses can leverage ThoughtSpot’s excellent AI-powered capabilities to share dynamic, real-time data analyses with employees and clients to drive effective decision-making within their organizations.

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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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