Choosing the right business intelligence tool is crucial for effective data analysis and reporting. Google Looker and Crystal Reports are two prominent platforms that offer distinct features and capabilities for these tasks.
While Google Looker is known for its powerful data modeling and analytics, Crystal Reports excels in detailed, customizable reporting options. However, users often seek alternatives that combine ease of use with robust functionality.
In this comparison, we will delve into the specifics of Google Looker and Crystal Reports, and introduce Sourcetableāa tool that offers a streamlined, spreadsheet-like interface that automatically syncs with your data, presenting itself as a contemporary alternative for your business intelligence needs.
Google Looker is a business intelligence platform that is part of the Google Cloud product suite. It provides tools for accessing, analyzing, and utilizing data for business purposes.
Google Looker is a business intelligence platform that is part of the Google Cloud product suite. It provides tools for accessing, analyzing, and utilizing data for business purposes.
As a cloud-based solution, Google Looker offers scalable and flexible access to business intelligence resources.
Google Looker supports integration with existing business intelligence environments, maintaining a balance between self-service and governance.
Crystal Reports is a business reporting tool that specializes in creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect reports. It is known for its ability to work with various data sources and deliver reports in multiple formats.
Crystal Reports is a business reporting tool that specializes in creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect reports. It is known for its ability to work with various data sources and deliver reports in multiple formats.
Using Crystal Reports, advanced users can develop flexible report designs, while also allowing for intuitive report creation through drag-and-drop functionality. The tool provides guidance for sorting and grouping to enhance report clarity.
Crystal Reports can connect to nearly any data source, utilizing standard data access protocols to ensure a broad compatibility with different types of data.
This reporting tool is capable of sharing business data through a range of documents, including invoices, letters, and statements, maintaining pixel-perfect quality in over a dozen report formats.
Business Intelligence Capabilities |
Looker is a powerful BI tool providing enterprise-class intelligence capabilities. It ensures a fresh, consistent, and governed real-time view of data, supporting informed decision-making across the organization. |
Data Governance and Real-Time Access |
Looker offers a unified data platform, allowing access to data across multiple clouds. It ensures data governance and real-time insights, enabling proactive decision-making. |
Integration and Accessibility |
Integrated with the Google Cloud portfolio and Looker Studio, Looker enhances data accessibility and analysis within the Google Cloud console, simplifying the creation of reports and dashboards. |
Semantic Modeling with LookML |
Utilizing LookML, Looker's version-controlled data modeling language, analysts can centrally manage business rules and definitions. This fosters a singular understanding of data across the enterprise. |
Extensibility and Collaboration |
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Google Cloud Integration |
As a core product of Google Cloud, Looker is available as a service within the Google Cloud ecosystem, ensuring compatibility and streamlined cloud data management. |
Report Creation and Design |
Crystal Reports enables the creation of various business documents, including reports, invoices, and multi-page financial statements. It offers a flexible design interface for crafting pixel-perfect documents that cater to specific business needs. |
Data Source Connectivity |
With the capability to connect to nearly any data source, Crystal Reports utilizes standard data access protocols to integrate data into reports, ensuring broad compatibility and data retrieval ease. |
Report Delivery |
Reports generated by Crystal Reports can be delivered in multiple formats, meeting diverse business distribution requirements and user preferences. |
User Base and Accessibility |
Crystal Reports is a versatile tool employed by organizations of all sizes, including public institutions, and boasts a user base of over a million across more than 100 countries. |
Looker Studio Pro serves as a robust enterprise business intelligence platform designed to cater to the data exploration and analytics needs of medium and large scale enterprise environments.
The tool empowers users to delve into data effectively, construct visualizations, and answer critical business questions, streamlining the reporting process.
With features that facilitate team content management, Looker Studio Pro enhances collaboration among team members, making it easier to share insights and dashboards securely.
Users gain access to enterprise-level support, ensuring any issues encountered can be swiftly addressed, thus maintaining continuity in business intelligence activities.
Looker Studio Pro excels in sharing dashboards, enabling stakeholders to stay informed with the latest data-driven insights, which is essential for strategic decision-making.
Google Looker presents a steep learning curve that can be a significant barrier to entry for new users. Its interface is not very intuitive, making it challenging for users to navigate and utilize its full potential for reporting and data analytics.
Users experience performance drawbacks with Google Looker, such as slow response times and laggy interactions, especially when handling many graphs on a single page. This can hinder efficient data analysis and reporting processes.
Google Looker lacks seamless connectivity options, with users finding migrating data from AWS to BigQuery particularly painful. The security measures in place can also lead to heavily restricted access, impeding smooth integration with other systems.
The platform's sharing mechanism is complicated, which can complicate collaboration efforts among teams. This complexity can lead to reduced productivity and difficulties in data governance.
Onboarding for Google Looker is expensive, adding to the total cost of ownership. In addition, the limited availability of training materials and documentation can further increase the resources needed to get teams up to speed.
Support in Japanese is available from 9:00 AM JST to 5:00 PM JST, Monday through Friday, and from 5:00 PM JST to 9:00 AM JST, Monday through Saturday, including weekends and holidays.
Looker Support is available only for instances running an officially supported Looker version. Instances hosted by Looker automatically update to supported releases, whereas customer-hosted instances must update to a supported version to receive support.
To get Looker Support for your Looker (original) instance, you need to fill in the Google Cloud Project number on the Admin General Settings page.
Looker Support is available to users with the Tech Support Editor IAM role, and to administrators and developers on instances using Legacy Support.
You may be prompted to choose from a product area when submitting a support request.
Reducing client report time
Modernizing business intelligence
Embedding analytics in a quote-to-revenue platform
Crystal Reports excels in creating high-quality business reports that are both good looking and highly formatted. It is recognized for its sophisticated reporting tools which support detailed company analysis and financial investment opportunities. The integration with asp.net based software and Visual Studio applications enhances its reporting functionalities, making it a robust tool for business intelligence.
This tool allows for fine tuning of data visualization, providing a plethora of features for creating detailed and customized reports. The ability to present data as information in a professional manner helps businesses to interpret complex data sets effectively.
Known for its ease of use, Crystal Reports facilitates users in visually designing reports without extensive technical knowledge. It integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio and connects effortlessly to SQL databases, ensuring a secure way to query data for analytics.
The automatic scheduling of reports and strong data sorting capabilities streamline business intelligence processes, making it an efficient tool for small and medium sized companies looking to optimize their data analytics tasks.
With two decades of usage, Crystal Reports has established itself as a comprehensive and powerful reporting development tool. It represents a safe choice for businesses seeking a reliable solution for their reporting and data analytics needs.
Crystal Reports is not a free tool, which can be a significant barrier for businesses looking to minimize expenses. The cost incurred may affect small businesses or those with a limited budget for BI tools.
New users may find Crystal Reports challenging to set up, presenting a steep learning curve that can delay report development. Additionally, the platform is not conducive to drag-and-drop operations for pixel-perfect reporting, making it less user-friendly for those seeking intuitive design interfaces.
Crystal Reports offers limited export options, which can restrict the sharing and distribution of reports. Specifically, exporting to Excel often results in a loss of formatting, impacting the readability and professionalism of shared reports.
The software does not consistently load images to size, potentially compromising the visual quality and accuracy of reports that include graphic elements.
Users may find it difficult to connect to their data sources, which can impede the report creation process. Additionally, Crystal Reports requires some knowledge of SQL programming, making it less accessible for those without a technical background.
SAP Crystal Reports is available in multiple versions, including SAP Crystal Reports 2020, SAP Crystal Reports 2016, and older versions. Older versions can be acquired through sales@sap.com.
Yes, Crystal Reports can be implemented in both on-premise and virtual machine environments.
No, Crystal Reports 2020 and Crystal Reports 2016 have no maximum number of users.
SAP Crystal Reports 2020 requires a 64-bit Windows operating system and is not supported on 32-bit Windows. It can be installed on the same machine as Crystal Reports 2016.
The full online documentation for SAP Crystal Reports can be accessed on the SAP Help Portal.
Generating invoices, sales orders, and delivery challans
Visualizing KPIs and metrics for data-driven decision-making
Tracking expenses for open cases in law firms
Creating pixel-perfect reports for internal and external stakeholders
Automating the generation of reports from ERP systems and databases
Sourcetable offers enhanced simplicity in reporting and data analytics by aggregating data from multiple services into a user-friendly, spreadsheet-like interface. This contrasts with Google Looker and Crystal Reports, which may require more complex setup and management to achieve similar data consolidation.
The intuitive spreadsheet-like interface of Sourcetable allows for a more accessible user experience compared to the more sophisticated interfaces of Google Looker and Crystal Reports, which may have a steeper learning curve for new users.
Sourcetable's streamlined approach to data management and reporting allows users to focus on analysis and decision-making without the need for extensive training or technical knowledge, offering a more efficient solution for businesses of all sizes.
With its ability to sync data seamlessly across services, Sourcetable provides comprehensive reporting capabilities that can be more time-consuming to replicate in Google Looker or Crystal Reports, where data modeling and embedded analytics may require additional steps.
Both Google Looker and Crystal Reports serve as business intelligence platforms, enabling organizations to make data-driven decisions. They provide tools for accessing, analyzing, and acting on data.
Google Looker and Crystal Reports offer self-service business intelligence, allowing users to create reports and dashboards without extensive technical knowledge. Additionally, they provide governed BI features, ensuring data governance and security.
These platforms can be used for embedded analytics applications and data modeling. They allow the integration of analytics into other applications, enhancing the value and accessibility of data insights.
Both platforms enable the building of data-powered applications, though Google Looker offers this alongside additional capabilities such as building workflows and chatting with business data.
Google Looker emphasizes self-service and governed BI, allowing for both autonomy and control in data analysis. It focuses on providing data experiences to users across the organization. In contrast, Crystal Reports is traditionally known for its strong report generation capabilities, often requiring more specialized technical skills to create complex reports.
Looker enables the building of data-powered applications, enhancing the integration of BI within operational workflows. Crystal Reports does not inherently offer application development tools but focuses on reporting and data presentation.
Google Looker offers a generative AI feature, which is not a functionality typically associated with Crystal Reports. This AI capability can enhance data analysis and insights generation.
Looker supports embedded analytics and embedded data modeling, which can be leveraged within other applications. Crystal Reports' primary use case is to embed static or interactive reports into applications rather than directly embedding analytics capabilities.
Looker provides the ability to chat with business data, facilitating a conversational interaction with data for insights. Crystal Reports does not offer this type of interactive feature.
Google Looker is a business intelligence platform with a wide range of capabilities. It offers both self-service and governed BI, enabling users to build data-powered applications and workflows. Looker's generative AI feature distinguishes it as an innovative tool in the market. Users can access, analyze, and act on data for various purposes, such as delivering trusted data experiences, embedded analytics, and embedded data modeling. Looker supports organizational and self-service business intelligence and allows users to interact with business data through chat.
Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application primarily used for designing and generating reports from a wide range of data sources. Unlike Google Looker, it does not inherently provide a platform for building data-powered applications or embedding analytics. Its main focus is on report generation, offering detailed and customizable reporting capabilities. Crystal Reports does not have a generative AI feature and is more limited in terms of self-service BI functionalities compared to Looker.
Sourcetable is a spreadsheet interface that integrates with various data sources to provide business intelligence and analytics. It offers a more familiar and accessible environment for users accustomed to spreadsheets. Sourcetable's capabilities for self-service BI are notable, but it may not offer the same depth of embedded analytics or data modeling features as Google Looker. Additionally, it lacks the generative AI feature of Looker and the advanced reporting features of Crystal Reports.
Sourcetable is a spreadsheet application designed for growth teams and business operations people. It is used to centralize, analyze, and model data that updates over time, and replaces workflows typically done in Excel, Google Sheets, and Business Intelligence tools.
Sourcetable syncs data from over 100 applications and most databases, allowing users to access and query data from most 3rd party applications without needing to code.
Data integrations update every 15 minutes on the regular plan and every 5 minutes on the pro plan.
Sourcetable starts at $50 per month for the starter plan and goes up to $250 per month for the pro plan. Additional seats can be added for $20 per month per user.
Yes, all plans of Sourcetable come with a 14-day free trial.
Looker's platform pricing is a fixed cost for running a Looker instance. It covers platform administration, integrations, and semantic modeling capabilities.
User pricing is determined by licensing individual users for access to the Looker platform. This cost varies depending on user roles and permissions.
Each Looker instance is linked to a billing account, which is charged for new instances and user additions. Looker offers annual subscriptions with one, two, or three-year term options.
Crystal Reports is available at a one-time cost of $495. This fee provides access to the full suite of features that Crystal Reports offers for report generation.
Crystal Reports is available at a one-time cost of $495. This fee provides access to the full suite of features that Crystal Reports offers for report generation.
For distributing reports externally, additional licensing is necessary. Developers creating reports for external use must adhere to these licensing requirements.
Google Looker is recognized as a business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform. The feedback from users is mixed, with some expressing significant dissatisfaction.
When considering Looker in the landscape of BI tools, users tend to prefer competitors, notably Data Studio for a free option and Tableau for a paid solution, over Looker.
Users frequently mention the ease of use when discussing Crystal Reports. The interface and process for creating reports are straightforward, making it accessible for users with varying levels of expertise.
Reviewers praise Crystal Reports for its wide array of features, which include data sorting, retrieval for analysis, and the ability to create detailed and quality reports. Its capability to integrate well with Visual Studio applications is also noted.
Financial investment opportunities can be effectively reported using Crystal Reports, as highlighted by users.
According to reviews, Crystal Reports excels at moving data from databases and presenting it visually, which is essential for making informed business decisions. Its performance with SQL datasets and business documentation is particularly emphasized.
The tool is well-regarded within the SAP ecosystem, offering seamless integration for those already using SAP services.
There are conflicting reports about the pricing model of Crystal Reports. While it is described as a one-time purchase, it is also referred to as having a subscription model. Nonetheless, the consensus is that it has a high price point for single user licenses and is expensive due to its perpetual license availability.
Criticism is directed towards the weak data security model and the lack of an online dashboarding feature, which limits accessibility for some users.
The reviews and ratings for Crystal Reports come from users who have been invited by Capterra and have received a nominal gift card for their contributions.
Users recognize Crystal Reports as an established tool in the market, having been around for over two decades.
In summary, both Google Looker and Crystal Reports offer robust business intelligence capabilities, each with its unique strengths.
Google Looker excels with its integration into the Google Cloud Platform and its powerful data modeling features, while Crystal Reports is renowned for its detailed reporting and strong customization options.
For those seeking a more streamlined solution, Sourcetable provides an alternative by offering real-time data syncing across various services within an easy-to-use spreadsheet interface.