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SAP Crystal

SAP Crystal

Overview

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

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Learn from top reviewers

CRYSTAL CLEAR REPORTING WITH SAP CRYSTAL

Rating: 10 out of 10
January 16, 2024
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Proulx Mfg has utilized SAP Crystal for our reports for several years; We can appreciate SAP personalization to customize the data our company requires from our platforms whic...
Continue reading
Jenny Miranda
Administrator - Manufacturing
Executive Services Administrator
Proulx Manufacturing Inc.
SAP Crystal10 years of experience

It's a great reporting tool for your business!

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 18, 2021
Vetted ReviewVerified User
SAP Crystal is used across the company. It allows you streamline inventory refreshes and the custom ordering process into a single automated report. This helps a lot in preven...
Continue reading
Emeka Opara
Employee - Information Technology
Ambassador for The Technology Innovation Scholars Program
Boston University College of Engineering
SAP Crystal1 year of experience

A essential tool for accurate report export from SAP

Rating: 8 out of 10
July 13, 2021
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
SAP Crystal is an extremely important and critical tool in our business operations primarily serving sales, finance and dispatch departments where bulk of our invoicing, sales...
Continue reading
Issac Paul
Analyst - Information Technology
Officer
TOYOTA TSUSHO INDIA PVT LTD
SAP Crystal2 years of experience

SAP Crystal Report Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
May 1, 2021
Vetted ReviewVerified User
This tool is amazing for reporting. You can generate reports from different types of data sources easily. We are using this tool in the department of computer science and engi...
Continue reading
Akhilesh Arya
Professional - Other
Assistant Professor
Geetanjali Institute of Technical Studies, Udaipur
SAP Crystal2 years of experience

SAP Crystal is excellent for report building and aggregations

Rating: 9 out of 10
April 6, 2021
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
SAP Crystal is being used for many solutions we use that just require some form of static reporting and batch reporting. It is used by managers and operations personnel to rev...
Continue reading
Abdul S. Usmani
Analyst - Information Technology
IO Cloud Solutions Lead
ConocoPhillips
SAP Crystal10 years of experience

Crystal Clear Formatted Reports in Secure environment with sharing/distribution capabilities.

Rating: 9 out of 10
December 1, 2020
Vetted ReviewVerified User
All the divisions where the need of formatted reports was there, i.e. in HR departments to get the complete detail of an employee for all past performances indicators, hikes, ...
Continue reading
Verified user
Consultant
SAP Crystal4 years of experience

First time caller, long time user.

Rating: 10 out of 10
October 25, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use it as our main reporting tool as part of our software application for all internal and external reports.
Continue reading
Verified user
Consultant
SAP Crystal27 years of experience

Effective for financial reporting, which is accurate.

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 19, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Create reports which are customizable to the needs of our organization. User-friendly and very likely the best for our clients. Intuitive and user-friendly interface. Reliable...
Continue reading
Mary Wanjiku
Analyst - Information Technology
System Analyst
SUCAFINA
SAP Crystal2 years of experience

SAP Crystal overall satisfaction

Rating: 7 out of 10
March 31, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
SAP Crystal is being used by my organization to generate all kinds of reports across the entire organization. The company has been using the tool for more than 10 years and is...
Continue reading
Verified user
Analyst
SAP Crystal3 years of experience

Crystal Delivers Thousands of Reports Per Week

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 18, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Crystal Reports to generate over 200 standard reports for various data topics from our record-keeping system. These reports can be for the business or for our customers...
Continue reading
Gene Baker
Manager - Information Technology
Vice President, Chief Architect, Development Manager and Software Engineer
WySTAR Global Retirement Solutions, a Wells Fargo Company
SAP Crystal17 years of experience

Decent reporting tool

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 15, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
I used SAP Crystal for report visualization. The graphs in the tool are outstanding with strong information telling ability combining with tables and images. Apart from the gr...
Continue reading
Verified user
Analyst
SAP Crystal2 years of experience

SAP Crystal Reports review

Rating: 7 out of 10
February 15, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use SAP Crystal to automate and generate a set of reports that are usually exported as PDF files directly to the user's email inboxes. Occasionally users also login to the ...
Continue reading
Yoni Dvorkis
Analyst - Information Technology
Lead Data Scientist
Atrius Health
SAP Crystal4 years of experience

Powerful document and report automation

Rating: 9 out of 10
January 10, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use SAP Crystal to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, invoice, manufacturing documents, and automated shipping labels. The whole org...
Continue reading
Verified user
Professional
SAP Crystal7 years of experience

SAP Crystal Review

Rating: 7 out of 10
January 8, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Crystal is used enterprise-wide for pixel-perfect reporting. We have both on-demand reporting use cases, and scheduled reporting via email or logging in to report inboxes. It ...
Continue reading
Verified user
Manager
SAP Crystal8 years of experience

One of my top rated reporting systems.

Rating: 10 out of 10
December 7, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
SAP Crystal Reports software is used within the organization for creating reports from several hundred external resources. I would not say it is an easy task to do this throug...
Continue reading
Verified user
Administrator
SAP Crystal2 years of experience
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Jenny Miranda
Executive Services Administrator
Proulx Manufacturing Inc. (Executive Office, 11-50 employees)
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Pricing

View all pricing

Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020

$295

On Premise
per single user license

SAP Crystal Reports 2020 64-Bit

$495

On Premise
per single user license

SAP Crystal Reports 2016 32-Bit

$495

On Premise
per single user license

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.sapstore.com/solutions/99013…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Software TRAIL DEMO SAP Crystal Reports 2013

YouTube

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design - Demo video

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

9.3
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

9.6
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9.4
Avg 8.3

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8
Avg 8.0

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.6
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.4
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

6.9
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Server are designed to help users create pixel-perfect, richly formatted, and dynamic reports from virtually any data source – delivered in dozens of export formats, in up to 24 languages. SAP Crystal Reports is a production reporting tool designed to turn almost any data source into interactive, actionable information that can be accessed offline or online, from applications, portals and mobile devices. SAP Crystal Server enables self-service access to reports, dashboards, and data exploration within a secure infrastructure.

SAP Crystal Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
  • Supported: Delivery to Remote Servers

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: Javascript API
  • Supported: Java API
  • Supported: Themeable User Interface (UI)
  • Supported: Customizable Platform (Open Source)

SAP Crystal Screenshots

Screenshot of Pixel-perfect reporting solutionScreenshot of Refresh with a clickScreenshot of Build pixel-perfect documentsScreenshot of Connect to all data sourcesScreenshot of Use drag and dropScreenshot of Build interactive reportsScreenshot of Export to popular formats

SAP Crystal Videos

SAP Crystal Solutions: The Mobile Worker Use Case
SAP Crystal Solutions: Identify and Eliminate Clutter in Your Visualizations
SAP Crystal Solutions: How to Buy SAP Crystal Reports Digitally

SAP Crystal Competitors

SAP Crystal Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Thai, Czech, Hungarian, Slovakian, Turkish, Romanian, Slovenian

SAP Crystal Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

Windward Core, Jaspersoft, and Jet Reports are common alternatives for SAP Crystal.

Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Report Formatting Templates and Drill-down analysis highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of SAP Crystal are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

View all alternatives
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Reviews and Ratings

(556)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Data Accessibility: Users have found the data in their company network to be easily accessible, contributing to a seamless user experience.

Customization Options: Reviewers appreciate the software's easy personalization of data and report parameters, enhancing flexibility in reporting.

Connection Flexibility: Customers have highlighted the software's ability to connect seamlessly with various data sources, improving integration capabilities.

Interactive Report Generation: Users find the automated interactive report generation feature helpful for efficient reporting processes.

Export Formats Variety: Some reviewers like the multiple export formats available, providing options for diverse data sharing needs.

Template Standardization Praise: Users praised the template standardization feature for maintaining consistency in reports across different datasets.

SSO Integration Convenience: Some users noted quick logins and authorization syncing with SSO as a convenient feature that enhances security and access control.

Aggregations Capability Appreciation: Customers mentioned the software's capability for aggregations and output in various formats, aiding in comprehensive data analysis.

Limited Design Capabilities: Some users have found the design capabilities of Crystal Reports to be restrictive at times, hindering their ability to create visually appealing reports efficiently. For example, users may struggle with customizing layouts or incorporating advanced design elements.

Report Generation Lead Time and Export Options: Reviewers have pointed out that the lead time for generating reports needs improvement, and they feel limited by the export options being restricted to Excel and PDF only. This limitation may impact user workflow and hinder seamless sharing of information in different formats.

Programming Knowledge Requirement: Several users have mentioned that having some programming knowledge related to SQL and .NET is necessary for using Crystal Reports effectively, which may pose a challenge for those without technical background. This requirement could potentially exclude users who are not familiar with these programming languages from fully utilizing the tool's capabilities.

Reviews

(1-25 of 156)

CRYSTAL CLEAR REPORTING WITH SAP CRYSTAL

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
January 16, 2024
JM
Jenny Miranda
Executive Services Administrator
Proulx Manufacturing Inc. (Executive Office, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
10 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Proulx Mfg has utilized SAP Crystal for our reports for several years; We can appreciate SAP personalization to customize the data our company requires from our platforms which helps target root cause issues by easily using selected parameters that SAP reporting tools provide by showing our financial tools, inventory data, and company performance even at a standard or customization level SAP Crystal Reports is a great insight to our company demands for managing data with ease.
Pros and Cons
  • Accessible data within our company network
  • Easy to personalize data and report parameters
  • Works seamless with our database servers
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP Crystal Reports has work well in cases where our servers are down and even though our database is offline SAP continues to work as if our network is still online cause no disruption to our service or downtime, SAP is extremely dependable for our reporting needs and meaningful data sources

It's a great reporting tool for your business!

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 18, 2021
EO
Emeka Opara
Ambassador for The Technology Innovation Scholars Program
Boston University College of Engineering (Higher Education, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
1 year of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal is used across the company. It allows you streamline inventory refreshes and the custom ordering process into a single automated report. This helps a lot in preventing outages of certain tools or stock.
Pros and Cons
  • It can connect to various data sources
  • Quick logins and authorization syncing with SSO
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP Crystal is used to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, and more.

A essential tool for accurate report export from SAP

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
July 13, 2021
IP
Issac Paul
Officer
TOYOTA TSUSHO INDIA PVT LTD (Automotive, 501-1000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal is an extremely important and critical tool in our business operations primarily serving sales, finance and dispatch departments where bulk of our invoicing, sales order, Purchase order and delivery challans are generated to cater to our clients as well as for internal auditing documents. All templates for each of the documents mentioned above are designed in SAP Crystal and formatted to match our compliance and governance policies. Especially since we are relying heavy on automation these documents are modified for intricate details capture by our automation bots.
There is a good power of customization for end user with the help of SAP Crystal to generate pdf, excel as well JSON format documents easily
Pros and Cons
  • Template Standardization
  • Multiple Export Formats
  • Automated Interactive report Generation
Likelihood to Recommend
Generation of templated reports is the strong suit of SAP Crystal. Allows users to change formats in templates bases on requirement with minimal effort.
Automated report delivery requires the user to be aware of sql which cannot be expected from all users.
Should support more document export formats and improve the UI for SAP B1 Users

SAP Crystal Report Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
May 01, 2021
AA
Akhilesh Arya
Assistant Professor
Geetanjali Institute of Technical Studies, Udaipur (Higher Education, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
This tool is amazing for reporting. You can generate reports from different types of data sources easily. We are using this tool in the department of computer science and engineering in our organization for research purpose. Generally while working on research projects we have some huge datasets and that too from different sources and in different format we have to prepare meaning full reports out of them in order to use them as research findings.
Pros and Cons
  • It can connect to different data sources
  • Generates report with attractive charts and tables
  • Very flexible and easily customize-able
Likelihood to Recommend
1. If you are a researcher and you have to review and prepare reports using datasets this is a really helpful tool for you.
2. For a person working in sales; this will help to generate sales reports.
3. It can be use in the finance and accounts departments also for budget sheets, expense sheets etc..

SAP Crystal is excellent for report building and aggregations

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
April 06, 2021
AS
Abdul S. Usmani
IO Cloud Solutions Lead
ConocoPhillips (Oil & Energy, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
10 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal is being used for many solutions we use that just require some form of static reporting and batch reporting. It is used by managers and operations personnel to review data and aggregations.
Pros and Cons
  • Aggregations
  • Output in various formats
  • Multiple data sources
  • Summarizing data
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for connecting to multiple data sets, great for reports generation and output in multiple different formats, great for emailing reports to users.

Crystal Clear Formatted Reports in Secure environment with sharing/distribution capabilities.

Rating: 9 out of 10
December 01, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
4 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
All the divisions where the need of formatted reports was there, i.e. in HR departments to get the complete detail of an employee for all past performances indicators, hikes, travel opportunities, PII data or be it on the floor of manufacturing company. In real time replication of data , details of Sales Order/Purchase Orders or internal material movement order were printed in the highly formatted way using Crystal reports detailing each entity/price or other nuance of the type of report it was. Dynamic text of logged in the system was printed in some cases when movement for item was restricted by only some authorized persons so that Security guards can easily check and catch the unwanted movement of product.
Pros and Cons
  • Highly formatted reporting capabilities.
  • Pixel oriented perfect reporting for printing.
  • Embedding of dynamic images/logo or barcodes for customized reports.
  • Easy to share with other users.
Likelihood to Recommend
If your organization is needing such a data intelligence solutions where in data reported is important but the way it is presented is also highly important, without even thinking one should go for SAP Crystal Reports. This tool is capable of providing pixel perfect formatted reports giving a very crystal (justifying its name) clear insight of the information represented in form of data. The reports can easily contain company logos/dynamic images or text as per reporting requirements.
Only in case where you need row columns based reporting where you can see data in excel like formats you should not go for SAP Crystal Reports.

First time caller, long time user.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
October 25, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
27 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use it as our main reporting tool as part of our software application for all internal and external reports.
Pros and Cons
  • Fairly easy to learn the report designer. Even for people without strong database knowledge.
  • Ability to reuse existing report components.
  • Can design reports targeted for printing (can cleanly handle pagination).
  • Can report from multiple data sources without the need for a data warehouse.
Likelihood to Recommend
Very well suited for customer facing reports like invoices, statements and contracts. Great for listings / rosters.
Fun backdoor functionality to be able to execute stored procedures to updated data within the database and provide results without the need to build custom application solutions.

Not very useful for exporting to MS Word for contracts that need further editing. Pivot tables and charting capabilities are very simple when compared to MS Excel and are only used when basic functionality is needed.

Effective for financial reporting, which is accurate.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
April 19, 2020
MW
Mary Wanjiku
System Analyst
SUCAFINA (International Trade & Development, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Create reports which are customizable to the needs of our organization. User-friendly and very likely the best for our clients. Intuitive and user-friendly interface. Reliable with financial reporting, which is very accurate and timely. Great with inventory control and stock control
Pros and Cons
  • Reporting which is timely.
  • Timely with financial management and easy to use.
  • Intuitive user interface and customizable dashboard.
Likelihood to Recommend
Great software with reporting which helps to filter by the month. Really easy to integrate with CRM. Reliable with financial management and easy to make decisions.

SAP Crystal overall satisfaction

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
March 31, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
3 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal is being used by my organization to generate all kinds of reports across the entire organization. The company has been using the tool for more than 10 years and is still using it. The feature to automate and generate reports and sent the result to our client via email is outstanding at the time.
Pros and Cons
  • Clean
  • Connection
  • User-friendly
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP Crystal is well suited for a company with upper management who are only used to old school analysis and the analysts are either not familiar with coding or only be able to write SQL queries. In that case, the tool fits the needs of the company well at a lower cost.

Crystal Delivers Thousands of Reports Per Week

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
February 18, 2020
GB
Gene Baker
Vice President, Chief Architect, Development Manager and Software Engineer
WySTAR Global Retirement Solutions, a Wells Fargo Company (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
17 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Crystal Reports to generate over 200 standard reports for various data topics from our record-keeping system. These reports can be for the business or for our customers. We generate thousands of reports each week that are then delivered to our clients. Crystal is used within our organization. The enterprise has a variety of reporting tools in use. We have been using Crystal Reports for over 18 years on our team.
Pros and Cons
  • Complex queries are supported through the use of stored procedures. Because of this, we are able to create very complex reports to satisfy consumer needs.
  • User-friendly formats are supported and we can display these reports online.
Likelihood to Recommend
We have used this as our reporting solution for 18 years. We have reviewed other technologies like Tableau and Jasper Reports. We found Crystal the easiest to use for our environment. We create all of our reports in the same format using a stored procedure to gather the result set. We do this so that we can control the SQL and validate the performance. The downside to this is we can't do the drag and drop reports and have to rely on the assistance of a SQL Developer to code the stored procedure for us. The upside is once the proc is coded and tested, it is tuned for performance so that the reports execute efficiently without causing negative issues on the system for transactional queries.

Decent reporting tool

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
February 15, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I used SAP Crystal for report visualization. The graphs in the tool are outstanding with strong information telling ability combining with tables and images. Apart from the graphs, it is designed to be very interactive so you can drag and drop directly to control and tailer the shape of the graph to your needs.
Pros and Cons
  • Integration
  • Connection
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP Crystal is suitable to connect with a single source of data such as ODBC, XML, Excel, etc. but it has difficulty when you try to connect different sources of data at the same time through this channel. Some other tools might be more usable in that situation such as Qlik that I reviewed before.

SAP Crystal Reports review

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
February 15, 2020
YD
Yoni Dvorkis
Lead Data Scientist
Atrius Health (Hospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
4 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use SAP Crystal to automate and generate a set of reports that are usually exported as PDF files directly to the user's email inboxes. Occasionally users also login to the Business Objects Server to access their reports in that format. We run Business Objects scheduler to schedule the reports to refresh usually once a week.
Pros and Cons
  • Clean format for PDF is nice
  • Connects to database to refresh queries
Likelihood to Recommend
Automated report generation and refresh sent as email is useful for any reports that typically involve manual effort. The typical use case in MS Excel is when reports need to be updated. There generally is a large amount of copying and pasting data into charts. In SAP Crystal, the formatting is done once, and then the automated feature always brings in new data.

Powerful document and report automation

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
January 10, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use SAP Crystal to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, invoice, manufacturing documents, and automated shipping labels. The whole organization uses crystal reports in a way because it links into our ERP system. We no longer need an external company to do our documents, reporting as we now have the ability to do it in house. Crystal Reports allows us to produce highly customizable documents and reports for any business case.
Pros and Cons
  • Advanced formulas.
  • Producing automated PDF documents.
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP Crystal is well suited for organizations that have a need for automated documents and reports. I'd recommend having a few Crystal Reports writers within a company and Crystal Reports viewer for users who don't need to create them. Even better if your ERP/System supports crystal reports in the browser like Sage whereby no viewer is needed. It wouldn't be suitable for companies not making use of databases or with little knowledge of such.

SAP Crystal Review

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
January 08, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
8 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Crystal is used enterprise-wide for pixel-perfect reporting. We have both on-demand reporting use cases, and scheduled reporting via email or logging in to report inboxes. It is used against multiple source systems for all areas of the business, including clinical, financial, and operational. We generate PDF, Excel, and CSV based outputs.
Pros and Cons
  • Pixel perfect reporting.
  • Enterprise grade stability.
Likelihood to Recommend
Crystal can help manage pixel-perfect based reporting for your enterprise, but unless you are using the entire SAP analytics stack, it is tough to manage governance without a strong data warehouse. Pixel perfect reporting also has its place, but most enterprises are moving to more interactive self-service dashboarding and drill down tools, and that capability is limited in Crystal (albeit, it was not developed for that use case).

One of my top rated reporting systems.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
December 07, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal Reports software is used within the organization for creating reports from several hundred external resources. I would not say it is an easy task to do this through the software. However, the contribution level of the system's ease of use to our research process is really huge and we really don't have any alternative. We are not even searching for one.

All of the reported materials are tweaked, edited, gathered, modified in the system itself. The formatting and the conditional output of the reports are really good and we could find no equal software to this from the perspective of the reporting. All in all, this is a well structured and easy-to-use system with extensive functionalities which can help in crucially reducing work-time by managing some necessary reporting tasks.
Pros and Cons
  • Easy to use UI. Basically, even a non-technical user can learn to do everything in a week.
  • The speed of compiling the data.
  • Useful templates.
  • Easy interface for integrating the data in the system from external sources.
  • Scheduled reports.
Likelihood to Recommend
The system can be used for basically any purpose in any business niche for creating reports. There are no limitations. Thus, if it's business, medicine, logistics, etc.. industry, the system can be extensively used for reporting purposes and highly effectively. The provided templates, as well as the possibility of creating the reports from scratch, can be chosen for reporting. The system can also be used for scheduled reporting which saves a lot of time according to your business needs.

Presentable reports with many integration and visualization options.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
November 06, 2019
JC
Jesus Chacon
Software Support Engineer
Vexilo (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
It is used as a tool to visualize reports that are generated in our developed applications. It facilitates us to be able to display rich information with images, tables, colors, and graphs. It has an excellent form designer by using drag & drop controls to give the shape we want to each of the reports. The viewer also allows us to print the information or export it to other common formats such as PDF. It integrates very well with Visual Studio IDE.
Pros and Cons
  • It has many interesting tools and functions when used with Visual Studio IDE. This allows us to integrate many features of the IDE to design each visual element using drag and drop controls to customize reports
  • We have been able to make successful connections to diverse data sources including SQL Server, MySQL, local and in the cloud
  • You can perform complex queries by incorporating SQL statements
  • There are no limits as to the type of data or objects that I can use. I can format the changes, add mathematical and logical functions, also add images configure the color fonts, all in design mode
Likelihood to Recommend
It is excellent as a solution for reports because it has its own functions to ensure that the information shown is presented in a clear and professional manner. We can format the output of the fields used in the uncovered functions of the Crystal reports.

I do not recommend it for temporary use or small projects.

SAP Crystal Reports - Still great but slowing down

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
October 31, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
6 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal Reports is used throughout our company. It allows us to present consistent and branded reports to all of our internal and external clients. It also allows us to have standardized cost reporting. Prior to implementing SAP Crystal Reports, we had different sites presenting clients with their own custom cost reports. Many of these were done in Excel and there was no consistency across our organization. SAP Crystal Reports has replaced those and now we provide one consistent and branded report.
Pros and Cons
  • Crystal Reports allows us to create a consistent template for all of our reports.
  • Crystal Reports and Server allows us to house a repository for all of our reports to make them easy to find and update when necessary.
  • Crystal Reports can connect to a wide variety of data sources.
  • Crystal Reports can be a little daunting when first implementing. There are a lot of nuances in learning how to truly master this software and it can be frustrating at times.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you want easily controlled and formatted reports to provide a consistent platform across your organization, Crystal Reports is an excellent program. You will need to be willing to put in some effort up front for install and learning the program, but once you are up and running, it does provide a great way to provide standard reporting. It gives you the ability to allow all of your employees access the same data, in the same format at any time.

SAP Crystal Reports good option for the value

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
September 17, 2019
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal reports is naturally embedded into SAP B1, we use it across the organization and have over 100 different reports created at the time, all these fill our departments with crucial information about their KPIs, we use Crystal for lot of different reports from a range of very visual reports with charts and colored graphics thru text/numeric grids filled with information, all are viewable from our SAP client.
Pros and Cons
  • Excelent integration on SAP B1 client install
  • Very easy for the user to access / export reports data
  • User permissions/controls to enable/disable unwanted users to access the reports
Likelihood to Recommend
To have reports on sales / buying side as well as inventory reports, pretty much every data stored in a SQL Database can be pulled to create a crystal report, in the case when used with SAP B1 every SAP module can have at least 1-3 crystal reports to control each module

Crystal -- Good software if it is still 2005

Rating: 3 out of 10
Incentivized
September 15, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
6 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Many custom reports are developed by our IT department to serve our various departments. At this time, it is largely used for legacy reporting and for personalized, highly formatted emails. Many of our older reports are written using Crystal Reports. We are gradually phasing out those reports and moving to SSRS.
Pros and Cons
  • Page formatting.
  • Query generation.
  • Capturing requests at runtime.
Likelihood to Recommend
It can connect decently to an ODBC data source. If you need to create a highly formatted report, with a lot of graphics and careful field placement, it can do that well. On the other hand, if you are generating a run of the mill business report, you can do better with SQL Server Reporting Server.

SAP Crystal is a life saver

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
September 03, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
5 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal is mainly used by only 2-3 people within my company. It helps me tremendously tweak Viewpoint reports just enough to get them to include all the info we need when we need it. I have used Crystal at least once a day for almost 5 years now. If not every day, then at least once or twice a week. As far as our business problems that it helps address, it has helped us save a ton of money on not having to request custom reports through Viewpoint. We are able to take a canned report out of Viewpoint, add a new data line, or remove or even combine data to show it the way we need it. It has saved me a ton of time, and I would recommend it to anyone. I am excited to learn more about Crystal and how it can continue to help me grow and excel.
Pros and Cons
  • SAP Crystal is easy to use and easy to learn it makes pulling data out of Viewpoint easy and quick.
  • SAP Crystal has a ton of strengths when comparing weaknesses. One of its strengths is the speed of it. It pulls data super quickly.
Likelihood to Recommend
Crystal reports are well suited for pulling information for a SQL database. It is also a platform that helps in the scenario of decision making.

Efficient reporting tool with endless possibilities

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
June 11, 2019
FH
Frank Hunt
Business Development Manager
MEDIAPAKT AS (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Crystal reports help us to pull automatic reports out of various databases directly (without importing into Excel first and running pivot tables) and display relations in the data. As long as there is a common data field (a campaign ID, for example), the reports are done in seconds across all the connected data sources. This exact process used to take at least an hour when done manually.
Pros and Cons
  • Seamless parsing of data across different data sources.
  • Ability to create sub-records and drill-down feature for granular data analysis.
  • Complex queries or SQl statements are done in seconds.
Likelihood to Recommend
Crystal reports is a great Business Intelligence tool for any midsize business that prefers to keep its data in-house instead of in the cloud. The learning curve for parsing data source and creating first reports could be a bit steep at the beginning, but then the cost savings are invaluable. The reports generated by Crystal are easily manipulated according to different requirements and further analyzed by the recipients.

Crystal enables presentable canned reports and offers scheduling

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
April 04, 2019
RN
Rohit Narang
Assistant Vice President
HSBC Commercial Banking (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Crystal reports in our credit risk reporting function within the IFRS9 accounting standard to pick up specific delinquency reports at a customer level which needs to feed into disclosures on a quarterly basis. The idea is to receive canned reports by monitoring the amortization profile of customers and which goes as a feed to risk managers in creating early warning list by using specific credit utilization behavior.
Pros and Cons
  • Great visualization for static format & precise tasks: For presentation to senior management /ex-co/vendors where concise decisions need to be made, Crystal is a nice choice to slide data into presentable views.
  • Diverse data source connect: We have used it to write reports using data from DB2, SQL, Progress, Excel spreadsheets, XML data, Access, and Lotus Notes databases. It can also be used to join different database types together in one report.
  • It uses the "recurring bands" structure for page layout which is efficient and fungible for generating different types of reports. Crystal doesn't require that we set up a metadata layer before creating reports and provides direct access to tables and dimensions.
Likelihood to Recommend
With department's organizations having precise and periodic (fixed data/views) requirements, it turns out to be a great tool for doing BAU (business as usual) reporting. During agile environments, where bespoke cuts of data are required or frequent changes are the need of the hour, the effort and skills going into designing reports is a serious trade-off since the availability of skilled resources are limited to other market BI tools.

Review Of Crystal Reports

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
February 27, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
4 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Crystal Reports to track and report on many types of data, but primarily to track expenses related to open cases of our law firm. Accounting uses it to report on case expenses like copy costs, long distance charges, travel expenses etc ...) These reports then accompany the final cost leger for each client.
Pros and Cons
  • SAP Crystal Reports has great 3rd party support that extends its out of the box capabilities
  • SAP Crystal Reports can connect and use almost any data type
  • Crystal Reports connects to all ODBC or OLEDB data sources. You can also connect to older mdb files and even allows you to get data from windows file folders
Likelihood to Recommend
In my opinion Crystal Reports does well with almost any type of report including simple listings, sic summary reports, pro forma financial statements, multi-section reports and reports that export to an Excel spreadsheet. I think it has room to improve by integrating some collaboration features in upcoming releases.

Process your business information and data easily by using SAP Crystal

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
February 27, 2019
JK
Jane Kabochi
Human Resource Officer
TSC (Education Management, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
4 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
SAP Crystal reports is an integrated business intelligence platform that allows users to write reports, display KPIs and other metrics from data preserved in your database. SAP Crystal is used by various departments in our organization such as research and development, operations and human resource departments. The software has streamlined our decision making process and it has helped us make meaning out of our preserved data.
Pros and Cons
  • Customer support is available 24/7 helping new users embrace and learn how to use the software efficiently.
  • The reports generated are usually in many formats from formulas, cross-tabs and sub-reports thereby helping us understand our data.
  • Can generate reports from data obtained from any virtual source
Likelihood to Recommend
SAP Crystal is a platform that helps in the scenario of decision making, forecasting and strategizing in a company where it will help provide and generate reports, metrics and KPI Insights that will inform and help in basing your decision. It will help ensure that your decision and forecasting solutions are empirical and informed by data and insights.

Crystal Reports for your business

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
February 08, 2019
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
SAP Crystal
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Crystal Reports is used for creating reports and graphs working synchronously as a team. I and my team analyse and fetch data from various clients for which we have setup and installed networks for as a part of projects. After that we send all the data to technical team and data analyst to log it into crystal reports. We then analyse and create reports in Crystal reports. It is really helpful if we want to manage a lot of data. It makes easy for us to give presentation on projects.
Pros and Cons
  • Merge and log data very easily.
  • User interface is good.
  • Different types of fonts and graphs and charts to analyse data easily.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well these are quite useful for technical people who also know how to import data directly from database, and as their mind is technical so it will be also easy to understand it.
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