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SAP ERP vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP ERP
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
ERP (1st)
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Cloud ERP (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, they serve different purposes. SAP ERP is designed for ERP and holds a mindshare of 21.1%, down 22.6% compared to last year.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud ERP, holds 12.3% mindshare, down 13.4% since last year.
ERP
Cloud ERP
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivasan Kuppuswamy - PeerSpot reviewer
The amazing, robust framework with unlimited scalability earns its #1 status
The solution is not ready for the current e-commerce environment. Its was built for large enterprises who need to predictably optimize their human, material, and financial resources. ERP has evolved and businesses are changing. There are not many large corporations. Most are small enterprises with the capabilities of large enterprises through networking and platform integration. Some companies promote products but get things done with other enterprises as a network. Companies do not want to create new capacity but want to leverage existing capacity with innovative products. They do not want to spend resources on duplicating capacity or facilities. I do not think any ERP product is ready to support this environment so ERPs as a whole might end up being used for back-office functions only. It is not easy to evolve an ERP product because its intent is to integrate functions and processes within an organization. Whereas, in the new business model, processes are not limited to one's own enterprise but cut across different enterprises. There is no enterprise solution as this point in time for the current e-commerce environment so companies must integrate with many solutions.
Sajid Farooq - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides seamless integration of different modules in one place
Certain add-ons like quality control, payroll, and HRMS are not part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. SAP S/4HANA Cloud doesn't provide a quality control module. SAP S/4HANA Cloud does not have its own payroll and HRMS system. The partners develop their own cloud and integrate with the solution. There are certain modules specific to some industries, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud doesn't deal with those modules. Every partner of SAP S/4HANA Cloud has to develop its own and then integrate and certify with that solution. We can't say that these modules are part of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. There is a little area of improvement that SAP has to opt for particular types of solutions like QC, payroll, and HRMS. The graphics of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are not user-friendly. They don't look like they belong to a branded solution that costs too much. The solution's user interface is not appealing or user-friendly. On a scale from one to ten, where one is bad and ten is good, I rate the solution's user interface a five out of ten. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has built-in reports that are hard-coated. We have to alter or modify built-in reports in different marking segments, but there are no options for that. We have to build complete reports from scratch, and SAP-developed reports are not used in the market. SAP should provide a tool for customizing its developed reports so that there should not be a process of reengineering or reinventing the process.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The best feature of SAP ERP is the full integration."
"The valuable feature of SAP ERP is that everything is connected and under one roof, creating a unified system."
"The stability and performance are good."
"The most significant elements of this solution are the ability to create a virtual product, a service product, and delivery."
"It provides one overview of the capacity planning."
"Finance view across functions is valuable."
"Their tech support is always good."
"I like SAP's premade workflows for various areas, such as supply chain, procurement, or finance."
"SAP S4HANA Cloud has improved the efficiency and visibility of business operations, leading to potential cost and time savings."
"The most valuable features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are the ease of use from the cloud, CapEx analysis report, and everything being connected together well."
"Since SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a SaaS application, it is already providing a lot of standard out-of-the-box features."
"The integration between SAP EWM and S4HANA Cloud is seamless."
"Both standard and customized integrations work well with no issues."
"SAP S4HANA Cloud is stable, and its computational power and speed have improved in later versions."
"We like the web portal or interface, which is great. The user experience is much better than the current traditional SAP landscape."
"The integration between SAP EWM and S4HANA Cloud is seamless."
 

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."
"It was not designed to service all industries."
"It's difficult to code; structured language is difficult."
"The product does not update budgeting based on exchange rates which is important for BPM."
"SAP is not making a big effort to make it easy to integrate solutions from other vendors. It's not easy at all... Integration is what they can do better."
"The service could be more user-friendly in the area of transition codes."
"The user interface can be more intuitive and user-friendly by having it be more menu-driven, this would be a large benefit."
"Could be more user friendly."
"The solution's speed and dashboard could be improved."
"Generally, there's not much noise or many issues, but we sometimes open tickets. These are mainly due to underestimating business needs at the beginning of deployment or sudden changes in the business. For example, when we suddenly open branches in other countries, add many users or the business grows fast, we might need more memory or disk space. We sometimes underestimate our needs from the cloud. This isn't a problem with the cloud or the vendor but more about our estimation. We raise tickets for things like increasing memory, dealing with one-time errors, or issues with space utilization. We might need to increase resources or improve performance."
"The integration with third-party vendors could improve."
"The reporting aspect needs improvement, specifically in integrating the EWM and MM modules into a single report."
"The proposition by SAP does not match the value realization."
"The initial setup can be complex, depending on the environment."
"There is room for improvement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, particularly in enhancing the application's response time."
"The implementation time for S/4HANA Cloud could be reduced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. SAP ERP is a costly tool."
"The price of SAP ERP is high, but it is worth the money. The maintenance and support can be expensive. There should be a different price model for businesses that are not as large to be able to afford it."
"The solution can cost approximately $1 million a year for maintenance for a small-size company and can grow from there. Approximately $1 million is needed for a good-size company."
"The on-premises licensing model comes with annual maintenance whereas the cloud-based licensing model is a yearly subscription. The tool’s pricing is normal and not expensive."
"The solution has moved from a licensing model to a rights-based, subscription model in the cloud."
"I don't know the price, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"My company makes early payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product. There are no additional costs apart from the charges paid toward the subscription-based license offered by SAP."
"SAP ERP is expensive."
"It's very expensive."
"The license for S/4HANA is expensive, and the licensing structure is hard to understand. The admin license is something like 500 euros per user. Other ERP solutions allowed you to pick only the modules you need. The SAP ECC version requires you to take all the modules even if you are not using them."
"The pricing is competitive with other products at that level in that category."
"I'm not directly involved in the pricing discussions; it's more of a concern for the finance team."
"This is a pricey solution that best serves large enterprises. Be sure to ensure that your company's requirements need to be fulfilled by SAP. There are many other ERP's that are cheaper yet highly functional. However, it is still cheaper than some of the competition (i.e. Oracle, ESD, etc.)"
"The solution is affordable."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"SAP S/4 Hana isn't cheap, but its value depends on how much you can leverage from it. It's not just about the system but how well your people are trained to use it and adapt to derive benefits."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
6%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is Anaplan better than SAP ERP?
There are different aspects of both Anaplan and SAP ERP that I like and dislike. Anaplan improves forecast accuracy and drives up the quality of analytics. Rather than spending all of their time co...
What do you like most about SAP ERP?
The solution has made the most significant impact on our human resources function, specifically in HR operations and HR analytics. One feature of SAP ERP that I found most valuable is its use of co...
What needs improvement with SAP ERP?
There is a need for improvement in the business analytics aspect in financial reporting and also in sales and marketing analytics.
What do you like most about SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
The manufacturing area is a good feature.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is very expensive, both to purchase and maintain. It's important to evaluate the costs of recruiting and maintaining trained personnel as it's not just a one-time payment yet requ...
What needs improvement with SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
The system is very heavy and requires a lot of resources and a dedicated team. It is costly to maintain, demanding trained professionals, which adds to the expenses. This makes the overall cost ver...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP S4HANA Cloud
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

B&G Manufacturing, Unilever, Life is good Inc., Joy Global Inc., City of Cape Town, Bhopal Municipal, Corporation (BMC), adidas Group, Butcher & Packer Supply Company, Franklin Valve L.P., Evoshield, Prime Meats, a Norsan Group company, EMC Corporation, Varian Medical Systems Inc., FC Bayern Mªnchen AG, AkzoNobel Chemicals B.V., T¾V Rheinland, Pacific Drilling S.A., Fire & Rescue New South Wales, University of Amsterdam, Pa_alon S.A.
La Trobe University, Carrefour Comércio e Indústria Ltda, Delaware Consulting and Corning Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and others in ERP. Updated: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.