SAP ERP vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud comparison

The compared SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud solutions aren't in the same category. SAP ERP is ranked #2 in ERP , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 20.2% mindshare in the category. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is ranked #3 in CE , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 15.3% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of SAP ERP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SAP S/4HANA Cloud users who would recommend it.

SAP ERP

Read 104 SAP ERP reviews

16,574 Views
15,033 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Read 52 SAP S/4HANA Cloud reviews

1,714 Views
740 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

SAP ERP

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and others in ERP.

To learn more, read our detailed ERP Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ERP

February 2025

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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 (2nd)

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

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 20.2%, down 22.7% compared to last year.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud ERP, holds 15.3% mindshare, up 12.5% since last year.

ERP

Cloud ERP

Featured Reviews

Srinivasan Kuppuswamy

Founder Partner & Chief Consultant at Sagesse Abundance

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.

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Sajid Farooq

Head of Professional Services at HCC - Technology & Advisory

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is an integrated application, and it has been working really well. Earlier, there were different companies for different applications for manufacturing, finance controlling, logistics, and quality. It probably was the first fully integrated application. Whenever somebody is entering any data, for example, invoice data or ordering data, everyone with a right to see this data can see it in the system."

"SAP is already working on improvements by doing annual releases with enhancements."

"The solution provides good production planning."

"SAP has provided a much more integrated platform for managing our manufacturing business."

"Overall the solution is very good in the industry."

"The solution is very stable."

"The most significant elements of this solution are the ability to create a virtual product, a service product, and delivery."

"The architecture of the solution overall is great. It's great for development, testing, and production. I've worked with solutions where the architecture wasn't as strong and it was a disaster."

More SAP ERP pros

"I come from a functional consultancy background, and S/4HANA provides excellent procurement solutions for inventory management. One of S/4HANA's best features in the manufacturing module is the ability to calculate product costs."

"The tool selection is really robust and scalable for multiple scenarios."

"The most valuable aspect of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is its ease of deployment and the reduced hassles of infrastructure support."

"SAP versions used to be quite cumbersome for the end-users. Now SAP S/4HANA has a totally different approach. They use Fiori landing pages, which makes life better."

"The SAP S/4HANA Cloud has greatly improved our business processes. With SAP hosting the backend, database (HANA), and the application, we get all new features and security patches seamlessly according to SAP's schedule. Everything, including certifications and integrations, stays up to date for the customer. We achieve almost zero downtime, which is very important. The cloud setup provides redundancy, so if something happens at one site, it's seamless to switch."

"The guidance SAP offers for implementing the product is clear and the online resources are great."

"Performs well and can be used with a wide range of devices."

"The solution is stable."

More SAP S/4HANA Cloud pros

Cons

"We will not make any major changes, and we are not expecting any enhancements or new features from SAP because they already have a new solution. No development is happening on SAP ERP because SAP has come up with a new version called SAP S/4HANA, which is memory-based technology. We are planning to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA, but we don't know when it will happen. We are in the preparation phase."

"ERP could use better integration with other systems."

"The initial setup was challenging initially. People did not understand much about what SAP could do."

"It's difficult to code; structured language is difficult."

"Functionality could be improved."

"More integrations and built-in integrations with other environments and products are needed."

"It is very expensive to customize to meet compliance with regulations in some countries."

"This solution could be made more user-friendly for development teams."

More SAP ERP cons

"Their revolving AI should should be better improved."

"Sales data processing was cumbersome with many mandatory inputs. We normalized this by pulling the data out, manipulating it, and sending it back. We also had unique requirements for controlling product availability, ATP checks, and prioritization for certain customers. These were areas specific to our business model that we handled outside the tool."

"The product could be improved by enhancing its user interface to make it more intuitive and by increasing the customization options for tracking and reporting, which would better align with our specific needs."

"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."

"S/4HANA isn't ideal for managing contracts and subscriptions. There isn't a feature to notify us when a contract for a service we need is approaching its end or a product is no longer supported. You need a separate solution for that."

"Customer service and support's response time is really long."

"The pricing is high."

More SAP S/4HANA Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product has high pricing."

"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."

"When we talk about pricing it is expensive. On a scale of one to ten, it would rank a two. There are no additional fees but the user licenses are high."

"I am not sure. However, extensions cost approximately $100,000 or$200,000."

"It could always be cheaper. They don't have a very easy model of licensing, but large entities would get the upper hand in negotiating the license."

"SAP ERP is expensive."

"The licensing costs are slightly on the higher side. They need to make it more competitive."

More SAP ERP pricing and cost advice

"I'm not directly involved in the pricing discussions; it's more of a concern for the finance team."

"The pricing is competitive with other products at that level in that category."

"The price of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is expensive. However, the benefits are good. We did not purchase any upgrades."

"The pricing of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is on the higher side."

"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."

"It's very expensive."

"I feel the solution is expensive when it comes to what can be obtained with open source software."

"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.)"

More SAP S/4HANA Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

University

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Educational Organization

Construction Company

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP S/4HANA Cloud?

The manufacturing area is a good feature.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

SAP S/4HANA vs SAP ERP

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Dynamics AX vs SAP ERP

Compared 13% of the time

Infor M3 vs SAP ERP

Compared 11% of the time

Anaplan vs SAP ERP

Compared 10% of the time

Infor LN vs SAP ERP

Compared 7% of the time

More SAP ERP Competitors

SAP Business ByDesign vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Compared 26% of the time

Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Compared 22% of the time

SAP Business One vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Compared 16% of the time

NetSuite ERP vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

IFS Cloud Platform vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

More SAP S/4HANA Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SAP ERP

January 2025

Download SAP ERP product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

January 2025

Download SAP S/4HANA Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

SAP S4HANA Cloud

Overview

SAP ERP addresses the core business software requirements of midsize and large organizations in all industries and sectors. SAP ERP includes four individual solutions that support key areas of enterprise resource planning: human capital management, financials, operations, corporate services.

SAP

SAP S/4HANA stands for SAP Suite 4 HANA. It is a next-generation integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that is designed for businesses of all sizes, in all industries, that require deep and broad functionality combined with a high degree of flexibility. SAP S/4HANA was launched in 2015 and been adopted by more than 3,200 customers over a period of sixteen months. SAP S/4HANA is materially different from anything SAP has done before and represents the company’s biggest innovation since SAP R/3.

SAP S/4HANA is intended to provide a digital core for an organization. It is fully architected for the most advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA, and is designed on the most modern design principles with the SAP Fiori user experience to create a personalized and simple feel on users’ device of choice (tablet, laptop, mobile). SAP S/4HANA aims to simplify an organizations’ system landscape and reduce total cost of ownership by shrinking the data footprint while at the same time improving productivity levels in the form of higher throughput. Timelines for cloud deployments average around six months.

SAP S/4HANA is designed to drive business innovation by connecting people, devices, and business networks in real time to support the development of new business models. It will also help accelerate the adoption of, and connection to, the Internet of Things and Big Data. SAP S/4HANA can analyze big data at unprecedented speed allowing users to access real-time information from anywhere, any way they’d like and thus help managers make truly insightful decisions. The simplified data model allows customers to reimagine their IT, helping to drive lower costs and deliver IT efficiency. This, coupled with the SAP S/4HANA prediction and simulation capabilities allow it to anticipate the impact of business outcomes. By doing all the above, SAP S/4HANA aims to provide ultimate sophistication in the simplest possible manner.

To learn more about SAP S/4HANA, visit http://go.sap.com/product/enterprise-management/s4hana-erp.html

SAP

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: February 2025.

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