Crystal Reports in 2025: Getting more from your reports
What's New in Crystal Reports
Crystal Reports remains one of the most widely used tools for pixel-perfect, operational reporting. With the 2025 64-bit release now available and a clear roadmap from SAP, there has never been a better moment to sharpen skills, modernise your report estate and unlock more value from the platform you already own.
If your organisation relies on structured, printable output for finance packs, operational KPIs, audit-ready exports or board-ready PDFs, Crystal Reports is built for that job. It connects to a broad set of data sources via ODBC/OLE DB and more, making it a pragmatic choice in mixed database environments where “one BI tool for everything” remains a myth.
Across industries from healthcare and financial services to software and IT services, Crystal continues to power day-to-day reporting because teams value stability, precise layout control and low friction distribution.
What’s changing in 2025:
64-bit as standard:
SAP Crystal Reports 2025 and Crystal Server 2025 bring a modern 64-bit baseline, improved maintainability and updated platform support. If you’re still dependent on legacy 32-bit components, plan your move now.
Platform alignment:
The BI 2025 wave clarifies where Crystal fits alongside SAP’s broader BI stack and cloud analytics strategy. The short version: keep Crystal for page-perfect operational documents, and pair it with enterprise scheduling or a self-service tool where appropriate.
Five quick wins to lift Crystal value:
Standardise parameters and prompts
Create a shared parameter library for dates, fiscal periods, business units and regions. Consistent prompts reduce errors and speed up report authoring.
Optimise data access
Push filters to the database, avoid SELECT *, and audit joins for unnecessary complexity. Test the SQL outside Crystal to verify row counts and performance before you format.
Right-size subreports
Reserve subreports for genuinely separate datasets. Replacing row-level subreports with joined queries or shared data sources often delivers order-of-magnitude speed gains.
Automate distribution
If you run Crystal via SAP BusinessObjects or Crystal Server, use scheduling to burst PDFs or spreadsheets to inboxes, portals or file shares at the right cadence. It reduces manual effort and improves data freshness.
Harden your outputs
Lock in fonts, pagination and export settings for your top 10 business-critical reports. Small layout tweaks prevent downstream issues in Excel and keep auditors happy.
When to pair Crystal with other tools
Crystal excels at governed, formatted output. For ad-hoc exploration or interactive visuals, complement it with a self-service BI tool or SAP’s wider analytics stack. Many organisations run Crystal for the “last mile” document and something else for discovery, which is entirely sane and cost-effective.
Skills that pay back immediately
We run a number of Crystal Reports Courses, because teams that invest a single day in focused Crystal skills typically report:
-
Faster report changes and fewer “can you just” tickets
-
Cleaner SQL and lighter, more reliable reports
-
Better distribution with fewer one-off manual exports
Our Crystal Reports Introductory Training Course gets analysts, report writers and power users hands-on with the techniques above, using your kind of real-world scenarios rather than toy datasets.
View upcoming dates and outline. Prefer to talk it through? Request a quick call with a training advisor to map the agenda to your reports. Need to upskill a whole team? Ask about a private, tailored cohort delivered virtually or on-site.