Top BusinessObjects Alternatives & Competitors For 2024

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Looking for alternatives to BusinessObjects? Many users crave user-friendly and feature-rich solutions for tasks like Data Management, Reporting, and Data Transformation. Leveraging crowdsourced data from over 1,000 real Business Intelligence Tools selection projects based on 400+ capabilities, we present a comparison of BusinessObjects to leading industry alternatives like MicroStrategy, Domo, Looker, and ClicData.

BusinessObjects Software Tool
Looker 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
read more...

MicroStrategy is a data visualization and reporting platform that deploys on-premise and on the web. The cloud version runs on AWS or Microsoft Azure. MicroStrategy Library is the web edition, while Workstation is the desktop version.

It reigns supreme as the top analytics tool in our product directory and provides 91% of the required features out of the box. Regarding source data integration, it leaves very little to chance, winning our best-in-class award for connectivity. With over 200 connectors, there’s a high chance it’ll satisfy your data needs.

If not, you can build one using a software development kit. SDKs are also the force behind REST and embedding APIs, HyperIntelligence and data visualization. Plus, the semantic layer enables automating data prep and analysis and generating visualizations on cue.

Dossiers in MicroStrategy are like books; they have chapters further divided into pages, and each page has one or more visualizations. Every view is free-form — you can move charts around and organize them as you like. With write-back capability, you can update underlying databases from visualizations.

The vendor launched its unified cloud AI analytics platform, MicroStrategy One, with GPT-4o in September 2024. It’s twice as fast, digging into the selected data to produce dashboard summaries and answer user queries in seconds. Update 12 has auditing capabilities and shows details of active licenses, including their compliance status.

Its heart and soul is an Intelligence Server that manages metadata and processes queries. A mobile app is available. There’s a 30-day trial, but access to group permissions, KPIs and subscriptions requires a paid upgrade.

User reviews mentioned that the solution was effective, but the ecosystem and pricing were complex.

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Domo is a cloud-based analytics platform that integrates end-to-end data management into one solution. Being SaaS, it’s available from anywhere with an internet connection. The vendor offers the best of both worlds — self-serve ease of use and data science.

Domo has a friendly interface aimed at senior management who are hard-pressed to make tough decisions daily. A breadcrumb trail at the top of the workspace will help you navigate between folders. A performant, scalable warehouse supports fast queries with in-memory data.

Domo Buzz is an instant messaging option like Slack with file sharing and is available on the mobile app also. Annotation options allowed me to add comments to my chart and mark data points of interest. If you want something more than what it offers, you can build your own apps within Domo. It’s our analysts’ pick and a user favorite in its category for these and more features.

Domo Everywhere is the embedded version, though it doesn’t offer as many options to design views as some other platforms, such as Dundas BI.

You can use Domo dashboards and reports for several critical tasks. Decide where to reduce spending and identify the factors that affect your business. Forecast demand for your services and products. Predict how unexpected events can impact the economy and your business and do much more.

There’s a 30-day free trial after which you can upgrade to the Standard or Enterprise pricing model. Or opt for the Business Critical edition to get a private AWS link that promises watertight security and reduces latency.

Some users mention performance limitations, which could be caused by shared cloud resources. The vendor offers a consumption model — pay for what you use and add unlimited users at a flat fee of $750.

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Looker is a web-based analytics solution that offers businesses the ability to explore, discover, visualize and share data insights. Enterprises can view data sources and drill down into data to better understand their business and metrics.

Using a simple proprietary modeling language, this system helps define data relationships while bypassing SQL. It facilitates data literacy and accessibility, irrespective of technical skill levels. It was acquired by Google on June 6, 2019, for $2.9 billion.
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ClicData is a cloud-based solution that collects data from multiple sources and delivers insights that are easy to use, embed and access on any device. It enables users to design and share dashboards. It has four different pricing plans with varying levels of functionality: Premium, Team, Enterprise and Dedicated. Users can purchase subscriptions at a yearly or monthly rate.
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Product Assistance

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Product Ranking

#14

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#15

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#25

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#4

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#345

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

we're gathering data
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87
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87
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73
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Availability and Scalability
Data Management
Data Pre-processing
Data Transformation
Data Visualization
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
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Embedded Analytics Capabilities
Availability and Scalability
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Platform Capabilities
Platform Compliance
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
Data Pre-processing
Data Transformation
Data Visualization
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
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Data Visualization

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

BusinessObjects
MicroStrategy
Domo
Looker
ClicData
+ Add Product + Add Product
Advanced Analytics Augmented Analytics Data Management Data Pre-processing Data Transformation Data Visualization Embedded Analytics Capabilities Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting 94 66 100 100 97 100 100 100 100 96 100 87 73 98 94 100 100 86 50 79 100 100 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1869 reviews
Great User Sentiment 973 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1818 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1836 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 294 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.

84%
of users recommend this product

MicroStrategy has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 973 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

87%
of users recommend this product

Domo has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 1818 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

88%
of users recommend this product

Looker has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 1836 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

92%
of users recommend this product

ClicData has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 294 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

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Awards

we're gathering data
Analysts' Pick Award
Data Pre-processing Award
Embedded Analytics Capabilities Award
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Platform Capabilities Award
Integrations and Extensibility Award
we're gathering data
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 Visualization: Users were satisfied with its powerful dashboards and personalization options for self-service analytics.
Functionality: Reviewers praised the platform for delivering on capabilities and scaling with their data needs.
Ease of Use: User reviews appreciated its reusable objects and semantic layer for automating data wrangling and visualization workflows.
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Source Connectivity: About 86% of users citing data integration said they could connect to their preferred sources easily.
Ease of Use: Around 82% of users discussing the interface said options and tabs were straightforward and intuitive.
Data Visualization: About 74% of people who reviewed Domo for graphics appreciated the ease of creating and sharing data stories.
Functionality: Around 73% of users who mentioned features said Domo performed as expected.
Support Services: About 71% of reviews discussing assistance praised the support team for being helpful and responsive.
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Reporting: Looker features strong reporting features that offer a degree of granularity and scheduling that 100% of users who mention reporting evaluate as a strong benefit.
Support: Of the users who say they’ve contacted customer support, 95% say the team’s quick and informative responses are a plus.
Data Accessibility: All users who mention accessibility to data say Looker does this well, distributing insights to employees across departments and teams with ease, with 100% of users mentioning this feature believing it is a benefit.
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Visualization: About 89% of users who reviewed visualization mentioned the system’s ability to create beautiful, unique dashboards.
Ease of Use: Approximately 73% of users who referred to user-friendliness said that the solution is very intuitive and easy to navigate.
Customization: All users who talked about customization liked that they could customize anything in the system.
Customer Service: ClicData provides very positive and outstanding customer service, according to about 56% of users who reviewed support.
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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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Cost: A majority of the users found the platform to be expensive.
Adoption: Most reviews said the platform had a steep learning curve.
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Speed: About 78% of users discussing speed said the platform lagged sometimes.
Cost: Around 89% of users discussing price termed the platform as expensive.
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Learning Curve: About 74% of users who touch on the platform’s ease of use say that the confusing documentation, lack of training opportunities and difficulty of using programming language make Looker a tough tool to pick up as a beginner.
Setup: Of the users who mention implementation, 81% say that setting up the platform is difficult, with integrations not being as plug-and-play as competitors and assistance from IT necessary to the setup process.
Speed: Approximately 87% of users who comment on the platform’s speed say that it is slow to render certain queries and often takes a while to load.
Functionality: About 78% of users who talk about Looker’s features say that they are left wanting many functions and find the ones that it does have limited in customization or too complex to use easily.
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Connectivity: The solution lacks plugins to pull data, according to approximately 58% of reviewers commenting on connectivity.
Learning Curve: All users who mentioned a learning curve related to understanding the product said that it was difficult to master, especially for non-technical users.
Updates: All users who talked about updates complained about fixes taking too long to get done.
Features: About 67% of users who spoke about features said that features are limited, and many important ones are unavailable, especially for the cheaper plans.
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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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MicroStrategy is a patchwork quilt of products on the web, desktop and mobile. There’s MicroStrategy Library where you can access published content and Auto Express for dashboarding and bot creation. Anyone with basic data skills can feed information to a bot and gain insights in seconds.You don’t need a credit card to sign up for the free trial, but you won’t be able to publish content to the server without a paid upgrade. As for choosing which edition to use, there’s the web and the desktop instance. Which one will suit you? Maybe both?MicroStrategy Workstation is for developers and data analysts and is more robust for manipulating data. It provides administrative control, even when offline, and helps prototype content before it goes live. Combining multiple visualizations on a single page provided me with more context for the same data.On the other hand, the Workstation version lacks the same level of natural language processing as the web version.MicroStrategy Web is for delivering content to your clients. Being online, it’s open to seamless upgrades and customization, and identity management and collaboration are built in. If you have a small organization, the web version might suffice, but you might want to consider going for both if you deal with large data volumes.Metadata mapping was immensely useful to me when designing a bot using MicroStrategy Auto Express. All I needed to do was feed it the data, and it generated a slew of questions I might want to ask.With a semantic layer, Microstrategy is among the BI tools that work best with large data warehouses. If you’ve just started in business or haven’t got large data volumes yet, you might want to consider a simpler tool.An oft-repeated sentiment in user reviews was that this motley crew of products — web, desktop and mobile — didn’t always sync. The vendor positions MicroStrategy One as a unified solution that’ll, hopefully, eliminate these annoyances.On the flip side, quite a few users said it could be clunky for inexperienced users. Also, some reviewers said it slowed on occasion. Most people said the solution was expensive and found its learning curve quite steep.In summary, MicroStrategy is worth considering, especially if you’re a medium or large-sized company looking for a web reporting tool with a user-friendly interface.

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Domo has everything data teams could wish for — self-service ETL, advanced analytics and data science. Its rich set of connectors makes users happy as they praise its robust integration APIs. Its scripting language is similar to Power BI, and knowing SQL will shorten your team's learning curve. The vendor offers daily refreshes, currently capping them at 48.On the flip side, the interface seemed a bit clunky to me. Dashboards don’t display in the edit mode by default, which was a tad annoying. The Getting Started documentation is dated and doesn’t match the new interface. I could find my way around with help from user forums.While the vendor earns praise for releasing frequent updates, quite a few users say some much-needed features lack depth. According to our research, Domo offers only 64% of the required functionality out of the box, which is much less than what Power BI and Tableau provide. It also underperforms in data querying, scoring only 53 in our analysis.Some reviews mention bugs and that performance can lag when handling anything complex than simple visualizations. The slowness could be due to the multitenant SaaS model that provides shared computing. As for the mobile app, it didn’t work in the offline mode for me. I should mention here that I had opted for the trial version. A proof-of-concept will help you check if the issue persists in the paid edition.Domo’s pay-as-you-go model is great for estimating usage but be prepared to pay more for workload spikes. According to our research, about 89% of users who reviewed the price found Domo’s consumption model expensive. Small organizations working with a lean team might find it challenging to handle billing.Here’s what’s great about subscribing to Domo. You can create as many reports and dashboards as required — there’s no limit or additional cost. Plus, Domo allows adding an unlimited number of users. Domo accepts external data models from OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Hugging Face, Databricks and Jupyter Workspaces.Despite a competitive market, Domo is an excellent product for organizations seeking data visualization and strong integration. Its flexible pricing model and recent AI updates make it a strong challenger to leading data platforms.

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Looker is a forerunner in the business intelligence field for a reason; it generates reports that include easy sharing via link, automatic scheduling and a level of granular detail that allows for deeper analysis below the surface. It excels in its filter and drill-down features and creates unique URLs when users make changes to data, leading to enhanced sharing. However, one of its biggest strengths could also be considered one of its biggest weaknesses: its proprietary programming language, LookML which is used to construct SQL queries in the platform. While a flexible and powerful data querying language, of course, LookML isn’t the most accessible to non-technical users, which means that Looker requires an IT or data team to access its full capabilities and has a steep learning curve. Users also note that its data visualizations, while simple and easy to understand, are quite basic and lacking in customization options, particularly in comparison to competitors. Some users say that it may be more appropriate for internal reporting than presentation to shareholders and end-users because of its bare-bones visualization options. However, Looker truly shines when used by enterprises, with its scalability and data accessibility making it a stellar solution that can align departments and provide thousands of users access to data insights. Its price point reflects this, with its pricing being prohibitive to startups as about 88% of users who comment on its cost remark. Overall, Looker is a solid pick for larger businesses that have a team of power users who can maximize its functionality and set it up to deliver to employees across an entire organization.

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Clicdata is a robust platform with a multitude of data manipulation options and robust data processing capabilities. The cloud-based system is simple enough to get the results businesses need. Readymade connectors are available to connect and fuse data from multiple data sources. However, some users complained about connectivity issues with third parties. Users also complained about the lack of API integrations and plugins to pull data. Visualizations are stunning with customizable dashboards that are quick and easy to set up and have a great set of widgets. Users were generally happy with the customer service, stating that they were positive and reactive. Video tutorials and documentation could be improved. Some important features, such as roll back and database editing, are not available for all plans. Learning and getting used to the system can take time for the non tech-savvy. Overall, it’s a flexible, intuitive and cost-effective tool to visualize business data.

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