Logi Info vs. SAP Crystal

The pricing of Logi (per server core) is highly attractive for internal-facing use as we can control/predict how many visits we will get to our internal Logi webserver. The fact that the only license required is on the server means that all of our staff can use Logi Info-presented content without restrictions. The option of OEM licensing is also attractive and presents many future options, but will require much more licensing as the webserver will require more cores to handle the level of traffic demanded by OEM usage.

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

Incentivized

• Flexibility and easy standup. Users can choose to create their own Logi application or do a "quick standup" by using design straight out of the box. Due to varied customer requirements, Logi allows the developer to address all needs.
• Great design studio. The studio provided with Logi to create and maintain your Logi app gives a lot of detail and examples to guide you along the way. The tool even includes some additional tools for the layman to assist with deployment or wizards to help you create more complex type reports that otherwise would require more detailed technical knowledge to create. Of course, you can still do anything you want by hand if that is what you prefer!
• Documentation. Logi's developer portal provides plenty of documentation and examples to get users going. Need to create a custom template that builds from a table rather than being hard-coded? Search the documentation and you will find examples to piece together to form your solution!

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Support. Logi used to provide EXCELLENT support. However, they've changed their support model and no longer provide excellent help. I used to get problems resolved within 15-30 minutes. Now, it has gone down to 48 hour response time just to answer a simple question. In-depth questions can go on for days or weeks.
• Based upon the change in support, and the fact that we pay for 'unlimited phone support' in our annual contract, we are moving away from using LOGI as a tool for the future.
• Learning CSS and Javascript would make you a better LOGI developer.

Incentivized

• Crystal Reports charting engine is ok but compared to some other visualization products available it is behind the times.
• Crystal Reports uses a proprietary format for its data storage, using an open format (like XML) would be much better
• You cannot add add a structured table object to the page layout, you can only use lines and boxes

Incentivized

Logi Info is a very outdated, archaic product that tries to build .NET / Java web apps using an obscure XML-based markup language to implement BI widgets, with a lot of extra CSS/JavaScript needed on your own to make it do the best things. There are many other better tools. It is not a BI tool, and as a web development tool it's not great either. I'd recommend getting some good third-party .NET BI library if you want your web devs to make the reports, otherwise use a proper BI tool like Power BI or Tableau, or even Logi Composer (formerly ZoomData before Logi acquired it.)

Incentivized

We have been using this product for so many years and it has truly become a cornerstone to our business processes when it comes to developing and distributing information via reports. We currently have over 500 reports developed to date over about 30 systems and that will continue to grow as user needs change.

I am giving 9 rating because the Logi Info still needs to improve on the tutorials part and make it easy for the beginners. Otherwise, it's a very good analytics tool which offers more than 20 types of visualization. It's predictive analysis feature and easy to embed with technologies make it stand out in the market.

Incentivized

Being able to get up and running quickly is a key asset. There's plenty of advanced features to master that are surprisingly difficult in others tools (or just missing from other tools altogether). The UI can feel a bit dated at times but its usability isn't affected. Any issue you have can usually be resolved by searching in the user community

Incentivized

The support process is bit slow and has a good scope improvement but overall it's good as team is very supportive. They generally take 1-2 days time to respond emails sent to them but some times a delay is also expected. Overall, I did not face any major issues using the service.

Incentivized

SAP Crystal report is very supportive in daily need of reports or any organization. Basic functionality of operational reports detailing the Sales Order details or PO in a manner which can be used very easily. A readily available solution for delivering any customized need in terms of pixelated reporting can be met easily with the tool

Trainer was patient and thorough in going through the basics and willing to answer questions by email after the initial training

Incentivized

Just like any other implementation: When designing the differing reports, get end users' input, make sure to design the reports so that they display the information that the company requires, in the best and clearest way possible.

Test, test, test, revise when needed, and, particularly, do sufficient training so users are comfortable using Crystal Reports!

Incentivized

We test drove a lot of the big hitters, Pentaho, Sisense, Tableau, Jasper, Spago, Birt, Knime, Power BI and while most of them did a lot of things very well, but none did exactly what we were looking for without a lot of downsides (more developers, bolting on extra modules etc). Logi also was ultra competitive on pricing structure and they truly wanted to partner with us as much as we want to partner with them.

For standard pixel perfect reporting, our company still uses Crystal Reports. It allows us to continually provide standard reporting to our clients. For dashboards, we are moving towards Microsoft Power BI. Power BI allows similar collaboration, but generally has better features for dashboards. Power BI also allows us to publish multiple reports and dashboards into a single app for our end users.

Incentivized

• By embedding Logi in our solution and using the Logi Self-Service Module we can provide this flexibility to our users without requiring custom development work for each new request.
• We succeeded in developing embedded self-service analytics at scale with a combination of Logi analytics as front-end and a Cassandra data lake with Spark aggregation algorithms as back-end.
• We analyze the insurance industry and need to replicate different data formats across hundreds of databases to support multi-tenant (customer) BI reports and "ad hoc" data review on millions or hundreds of millions of records per customer.

Incentivized

• Time and cost savings achieved by automation of report creating across many data sources we maintain.
• The ability to drill down into granular details of the data leads to a better understanding of the business procedures.
• Well-presented reports are invaluable for getting new clients on board.

Incentivized