BusinessObjects vs Toucan

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Our analysts compared BusinessObjects vs Toucan 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

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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Toucan Guided Analytics (formerly branded as Toucan Toco) is a cloud-based platform consisting of two unified offerings that deliver data analytics and storytelling, as well as embedded analytics. Through data storytelling, it empowers businesses to explore their insights through visualizations and interactive dashboards. It centralizes information from disparate data sources and has a guided framework to help enterprises tell compelling stories with their data. Accessible to all, it encourages live collaboration throughout the analytics process to drive data-informed decision-making throughout an organization.

In its embedded analytics form, it allows customers to extend these accessible and actionable insights to their clients through an intuitive front-end experience.

Though it was built cloud-first, businesses can choose between the SaaS deployment via a private cloud, or an on-premise installation through Docker Image technology. It is suitable for small, medium and large businesses, and supports Windows, Mac and Linux.
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$5,000 Annual
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$1,000 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Accor
Allianz
BNP Paribas
Carrefour
Deloitte
L'Oreal
PricingHub
Renault Nissan
Sodexo
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Product Assistance

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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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Platform

  • Centralize Business Data: Helps teams get on the same page by creating a single source of truth. Connects to the cloud, on-premise databases, spreadsheets and more to collect all of an organization’s data into one centralized hub.
  • Speed Up Queries: Optimize data processing by minimizing queries through cache engines and custom indexes that accelerate webpage performance.
  • Automated Reporting: Takes the heavy-duty work of development, design and maintenance out of data analytics with automatically updated data and scheduled reports. 
  • Ease of Use: Explore and understand business insights through an intuitive UI – without requiring training, tutorials or coding experience. Caters to people who may not have the technical knowledge or programming skills to handle a more complicated BI tool.
  • Accelerate Adoption: Educates and guides teams on how to create compelling data stories. Encourage autonomous, skilled data analysis with self-learning tools such as a glossary and contextual tips that help in data comprehension.
  • Improve Data Literacy: Makes information accessible by displaying it visually, enabling transparency across departments and empowering all stakeholders to take BI into their own hands.
  • Made for Collaboration: Interact with other teams and share power in decision-making through workspaces. Improve communication between departments and help them align with each other by annotating, discussing, exporting and sharing dashboards. 
  • Never Say “So What?”: Support decision-making through data-driven strategies with built-in calls to action and adaptable recommendations. 
  • Fast Implementation: Save more time and resources for analysis and data storytelling by accessing on any device through the web – nothing to install.
  • Security: Protect data through no-code row-level security, custom user filters and granular permissions management for apps, dashboards, stories and datasets. The solution is hosted in a private cloud with SSL Grade A+ security certification and an infrastructure compliant with all RSSI expectations and RGPD standards. 

Embedded Analytics

  • Build Once, Deploy Anywhere: Design one app for all devices and deploy anywhere to anyone in minutes, whether on the standard platform or as an embedded analytics product.
  • Preserve Brand Identity: Maintain business branding through full customization and white labeling options, while offering the power of data storytelling and analytics to clients. 
  • Multi-Tenancy: Handle who can see what by managing access to each embedding with granular control.
  • Focus On What Matters: Saves the company time and money by helping teams focus dedicated efforts on products, alleviating the burden of developing analytics from scratch.
  • Empower Non-Technical Teams: Build and deploy apps with a guided framework, even without coding experience.
  • No On-Boarding Necessary: Boost adoption and customer retention through a client experience that feels familiar, with access to actionable insights from day one.
  • Accelerate Time to Value: Empowers businesses to roll out robust solutions to clients in just two weeks. 
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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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  • Connect Any Data Source: Connect to cloud and on-premise databases, cloud data warehouses, third-party BI solutions and REST APIs via over 100 built-in connectors, or create custom ones with an open-source library. Easily set up connectors to data sources, no programming knowledge necessary. Some supported connections include SAP, MicroStrategy, Google BigQuery, Oracle, SQL Server, Google Analytics, Salesforce and more. Pull data from CSV, Excel and static files to transform it into dynamic data.
  • Keep Data Up-To-Date: Refresh data on demand, automatically on a regular basis with a scheduler, or request it in real time. Define which sources to refresh and how often to refresh them through batch processing. Blends live and loaded data sources, tracking changes and debugging datasets with its Storytelling Tracker.
  • Integrated ETL: Extract, transform and load data, collecting it in an embedded data lake and cleaning it up before integrating it into the solution. Query data on the fly with Weaverbird, the vendor’s built-in, open-source no-code visual query builder. Integrates with existing ETL tools such as Talend, iPython, Notebook, Dataiku, Denodo and more, and is designed to be compatible with all information systems. Perform joins, slices, pivots and melts seamlessly, without the need to code. Supports ad-hoc transformation for evolution computation, date aggregation and other critical statistics.
  • Interactive Dashboards: Display KPIs in the form of an interactive story with the aid of graphic messages on ergonomic dashboards. Add additional context through comments, sources, captions, glossaries and more.
  • Toucan Toco Studio: Focus on the data story rather than design mechanics. Create charts, layouts and stories faster through guided design without needing technical skills. Add context and generate visualizations with a few clicks, all the while becoming more data-literate.
    • Data Visualization: Highlight key-value elements and add color and context to information through visualizations. Display data in visually appealing ways by creating more than 20 kinds of charts and graphs. Give context by including definitions and data sources in visualizations and annotating specific elements. Collaborate with others within the platform or in tools like Slack and MS Teams. 
    • App Gallery: Jumpstart the business by building dashboards in minutes from pre-designed templates. Choose from a gallery of ready-to-go applications; preview apps with a single click, then use as-is or customize as needed. Leverage sample data to view what the final product will look like, then download and populate data models with custom data. 
  • Collaboration: Drive action by continuing the conversation through annotations and comments on dashboards, and exchange ideas with others through the live chatbox. Ensure privacy by making direct comments visible to specific groups only. Export and share insights with others inside and outside the organization through tools like Slack and Teams.
  • Calls to Action: Decide exactly what to do with proprietary information through a built-in decision-support system that gives relevant recommendations, links to relevant insights and proposed next steps. 
  • Alerts: Add, edit and configure rules and conditions for email or push notifications through a dedicated notification environment.
  • Presentation Mode: Empower data-driven meetings by sharing insights with others in a presentation format. Schedule presentations with calendar events and invite people from anywhere to follow the data story. Identify metrics and interact with the dashboard in the presentation mode, and create a dialogue with the presenter through a chat box. 
  • Role-Based Administration: Maintain granular control of permissions across the organization. Ensure that roles and responsibilities are clear by defining roles like App Builder, App Validator, Viewer, Data Manager, Full Administrator and more. 
  • Mobile Access: Access proprietary information on any device — even on those that aren’t connected to the internet, thanks to an offline mode. With a mobile-first strategy, the vendor prioritizes the mobile version of a site and then adapts it for larger screens.
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Product Ranking

#14

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#98

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1869 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 178 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.

97%
of users recommend this product

Toucan has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 97% when considering 178 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

3.8 (237)
4.9 (84)
n/a
5.0 (8)
4.2 (158)
4.7 (23)
4.2 (722)
4.8 (62)
3.9 (752)
3.5 (1)

Awards

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Toucan stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

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 Storytelling: Almost 96% of the users who mention data visualization say that they can create high-quality, interactive dashboards seamlessly.
Integrations: All users who discuss the tool’s integration capabilities say that it connects seamlessly to tools in their existing tech stacks, including cloud databases.
Ease of Use: The software’s intuitive interface offers an excellent user experience for report builders and consumers alike, according to all users who review its ease of use.
Support: Technical support is responsive and competent, as discussed by all users who mention support services.
Functionality: Around 56% of the users who review the solution’s capabilities say that it reduces the time to insight and embeds into enterprise applications seamlessly.
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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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There are no cons for this product at the time of publishing this review synopsis.
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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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Toucan Toco is a cloud-based data communications tool that provides analytics and storytelling capabilities to enterprises. All users who discuss integration say that the tool aligns with their organizations’ cloud-first strategies, integrating with their existing tech stacks with ease. All users who review accessibility are unanimous in their reviews that its user-friendly interface provides an excellent user experience. All of the users who say they’ve contacted customer support say the team’s quick and informative responses are a plus. Almost 96% of users who review dashboarding say that they can create interactive and easy-to-understand data stories through its visualization module, Toucan Studio. 56% of the users who mention functionality say that the solution has a rich feature set and the vendor releases weekly updates, astutely incorporating users’ feature requests. In summary, Toucan Toco helps businesses increase revenue opportunities for businesses to differentiate themselves in the market through data visualization.

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