SAP Business Warehouse Reviews

We have used SAP Business Warehouse to monitor and manage supporter donations and campaigns.

SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations.

I have been using SAP Business Warehouse for more than 10 years.

The stability of SAP Business Warehouse has been good. When we are doing charity work we do not do many transactions. The performance has been within the limits of the solution. We are not doing millions of transitions to see an impact on the stability.

SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 10 to 12 people using the solution in the community and once the campaign report is generated the entire business start to use the solution. We have approximately 200 people in the whole business.

The technical support is good, we have never had a problem with them.

There are two groups of people that do the implementation and support of SAP Business Warehouse. One group is for the build phase, the other group is for the support phase. There will be a handshake between these two groups, on how to go live. In the build phase, there are approximately seven to eight people are available for support, we agreed to not exceed more than four. However, this seven will be continuing for longer for deployment and new developments. 

Anything on the support side, if they find any challenge, they can easily reach for a phone and receive input from the builder team to resolve them quickly.

The two clients that have been using SAP Business Warehouse have found that it does not quite fit their use case. However, there is not any CRM or ERP that fits their needs specifically. In the charity use case, they have found challenges.

I rate SAP Business Warehouse a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case includes logging the reports on OpenTech manager. We wanted to slice and dice across the PO - whose POs, number of POs which are created, number of POs whose payment is pending, whose payment was done or the turnaround time from PO to payment cycle, etc... For all this we had to extract the data from SAP and build the cubes with the measurement and dimensions, and to slice and dice. For this, we used these cubes that provided VW. We connected it to our dashboard which is Tableau and used the dashboards for the management.

The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice. But the reporting is not that interactive because of its reliance to Tableau. We have something called Excel Analysis, which we connect to the cube and do the slice and dice - so that is the best part.

The other best part, and why we moved from Microsoft to SAP BW, are the ready-made connectors where we can extract the data from, which was something that was a challenge for us to pull in SQL Microsoft Warehouse. So the delta features and Excel features are some of its advantages, which we've found. And with SAP it was easier for us to directly get the data immediately, rather than purchasing licenses and all. So although we have an additional connector for SQL extraction for the data from SAP to SQL, that connector doesn't provide us the feature of extracting delta data.

All the reports were already depending on SAP data. But anything in which we needed to combine data to their applications we were trying to pull with Microsoft Data Warehouse to those different users.

In terms of what can be improved, they already improved the features of SAP HANA, and since we are not migrated now, we are using SAP VPC and consolidation where they provide those VW's for HANA. Once we go there, we will be able to understand that differentiation point and what could be improved or could have been provided more. But as of right now we're in a very early stage so I don't see anything else that is required.

In the next release, I would like to see BW integrate the visualization with the reports which are in SAP HANA. If that gets into BW in the next release we would be happy rather than having to purchase different business objects, like for the front end, or Tableau, or other SAP products. Instead, of buying that, BW could provide us better visualization. Then we don't have to put data into other tools and build things out there.

My organization has been using SAP Business Warehouse for a year.

I have no issues with the stability as of right now. Everything boils down to the servers and the configuration. So apart from fees, no issues related to BW.

My team members who are handling SAP have been in touch with support. I would evaluate support at four out of five. We are happy with it.

The setup was straightforward.

The only thing which we needed help with, and are still struggling with, is getting to know the AW server. That really helps because we always have to be dependent on a vendor or a consultant company to help with our strategy.

If SAP could help with that, it would really help us with the hardware requirements. Because we are not on the cloud, we still struggle with the SAP and always have to be dependent on a partner to give us all the information. There are existing details about the basic configuration and requirements based on the data sizing - that calculation is available and it really helps.

For BW we use a proper software integrator to help with their part and implementing it for us. But I think their experience is very limited. But since we wanted a partner who knows Microsoft Warehouse and BI, we have connected as partners. As far as the sizing and installation, everything was done by our team within our organization. The vendor is only responsible for creating the cubes and the reports but we implement the infrastructure installation.

SAP Business Warehouse is really good. I had already used it in four prior organizations and this will be my fifth organization using it. It is pretty good as far as SAP Data is concerned. So right now, our licenses are only limited to SAP Data because it is for external data, then we need to purchase additional licenses, which we have now gone ahead with.

So that's where one of the challenges is. They have ready-made connectors for the SAP, data transfers, extractions, cube production, and all the applications. We build the data and the reports. They are trying to deliver the data as compared to extracting the data from SAP to SQL Tables and then building the same logic and producing the report. We prefer that when it comes to SAP Data.

My advice would be if you have a data block and if you really want a big solution on the reporting side of it with slicing and dicing, definitely go ahead with BW when it comes to SAP related data.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate SAP Business Warehouse an eight. 

As I said, a few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared to Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution.

Because if I already have an SQL Server, my licensing fees and the server licensing cost for installation all go drastically down.

They also give us a free reporting tool. For the data view, we need to have user-licensing and every cost gets increased, as I said. For example, we have a license for SAP Data, and for external data, we also have to purchase one more license, and again for a visualization tool. So that way, licensing costs keep increasing with BW.

I am the Group IT Manager in our company and responsible for SAP implementation. We are currently evaluating what is the best solution for us given the landscape. We are running SAP 3 release plus BW, version 7.5 and we are evaluating the adaption of BW/4HANA considering attached applications like BPC. Our focus is to migrate to the SAP solution and we're evaluating the product in terms of data warehousing.

Our primary use case is for collecting data coming from SAP implementation and fully running the solution for other companies. We have about 20 users in our company who are generally IT admins. Our difficulties relate to the way users configure these kinds of solutions. The traditional approach is to extract the data from the ERP and make extra files.

The business warehouse solutions are not SAP solutions, which means that data is already connected to the IP network connectors making the configuration of the BW system quite simple. It's more simple than other solutions available on the market. I think it's the best quality of BW.

On the existing release, I'm unsure about improvements. For sure the functionality is available in the new release. I don't know what competitors' systems of data warehousing provide. I would for sure like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users. I'd like to see the flexibility to create reports. Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution.

I'm considering migrating to the BW/4HANA solution because the language in terms of settings is very similar to the one I am currently using. We are starting to configure the BW old version solution so I don't need to invest in data analysis in order to understand the difference or to connect to a different data warehouse with this system.

Additional features that could be included would be for SAP to provide different layers of solutions. One for data warehousing, another for different end solutions on the data warehouse. 

We've been using the solution since 2014 when we began with a data set, and have expanded it over the last five years. 

Stability is okay but there are some bugs which is normal for an enterprise solution. Again, our issue now is that we didn't go ahead with the upgrade. We are now running a newer version.

We have had some issues with scalability but it's related to the fact that we didn't upgrade the solution. If you update the solution every time SAP suggests it, you have the possibility to introduce all the new features. We didn't do that and we have some issues with the connection. 

Technical support is strong and helpful.

We are a manufacturing company, also running a factory and we implemented it in the ERP. I think BW is one of the best products at the moment. There are a lot of competitors that are adding features. Specialty Suites or the FETA Gartner and Logic requirement. It's important to check all options. A company needs to take into account what business or industry they have. Most are probably considering different solutions and for banks or insurance companies, it's possible that Microsoft solutions are better. 

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

Note: My opinion here is NOT specifically focused on SAP BW. It is based on overall experience I have on SAP software. As we know BW user always involve in different SAP modules for data extraction, transformation and load process for analytical reports. From this I have learned so much on how SAP software is being used in my organization and hopping that it's worth sharing with thers.

Some of the most valuable features are:

SAP ECC Finance – AP module

• Payroll and Procurement
• Human Capital – Organizational Management
• PA and Benefits
• BW/BO – SAP Webi

Finance and Human Capital modules are the core departments that support the overall organization and we run SAP ECC system in this area.

HR module – Starting from the process of hiring the employees and their benefits, all of this happens within the SAP system.

FI module – All the budgeting, fund management and payroll functions take place in the SAP Finance module.

SRM – The procurement process such as to create a purchase order for schools and departments, also takes place in this system.

It has helped our financial transactions and the HR-related functions to communicate across our organization. All our processes such as funds management, grant, payroll transactions are processed automatically through this system and BW helps to collect the data for analytic needs of the department users and board members.

We are an educational organization. Our core value is to concentrate on the children’s education and their well-being. Sometimes, we find ourselves moving away from the core value. The reason for this could be that the business process is not simple or clear enough for the administrator to do their daily tasks. It could also be that the software is complicated or not capable/scalable to do certain tasks/new functions or maybe there are no right skill sets/human capital in the right place. All these are key factors that play a big role to achieve the overall goal of our organization.

With the SAP ECC upgrade, we are hoping that it will streamline the existing business process and provide opportunity for new functions, increase the user performance and satisfaction and lower the overall costs which can be used for the children’s education.

Our system is old. After the system upgrade, it will open opportunities to explore so many new functions in the FI and HCM modules that could be very valuable to our organization.

The upgrade will allow improvement in the below-mentioned three areas and there are many more that we have yet to discover.

• Business Functionality
  • Implementing the SRM’s procurement function for the public sector such as the supplier registration, strategic sourcing, contract management, plant maintenance and MRP. The key features that we would like to achieve are a simple interface for the user and supplier, support on both the supplier and buyer-end solutions, future enhancement capabilities and cost saving benefits.
  • Travel Management - To support travel-related functions and lower the travel costs.
  • Human Capital - To allow integration between SuccessFactors and SAP ECC. It needs to allow reporting capabilities using BI/BOBJ modules.

• Technical support
  • It will maximize the system performance and allow continuous support and enhancement of new functions. Hence, there will be reductions in the overall support cost.
  • Take advantage of updated Solution Manager functionalities.

• UX - demand (Screen Personas and SAP Fiori)
  • The current SAP ECC version does not support SAP Screen Personas or SAP Fiori.
  • With the help of these UX capabilities, we would like to simplify the user experience, increase user performance and reduce the manual process/errors.

I have been using this product since 2005.

We have a handful of experts to administrate the overall working of the SAP system; it is stable.

In order to address known issues in SAP System, SAP release SAP notes that has issue details and instruction to fix the issue or workaround solutions. If it is relevant to our SAP system, we review the SAP Notes and follow the instruction to correct the issue.

It could be changes in code or apply recommended patches and should fix the issue but if it goes wrong all these activities could deteriorate or defect the system and it could lead to catastrophic system failure.

As of today, we do not have any system failure and we received very minimum user complaints regarding errors. Taking this evaluation, I would say our SAP system has no stability issues.

We are running an older version. It is doing what we need it to do but there is some limitation due to its version.

SAP has been providing support that we need based on the severity of issue that we face. Sometime, it is not the way we need but it is same across any other software vendor.

Since I have joined this organization, they have always been using the SAP solution.

Licensing is expensive but you will get the value for it.

SAP offers so many solutions based on the type and size of the company.
I would advise to always use best practices, establish strong project governance, define the scope of the project, maintain a project plan, etc.

We use SAP Business Warehouse to host the data. We are hosting financial services data.

I like that it integrates to open-source.

SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools.

There is some complexity to the setup. It would be helpful if the setup could be simplified.

I would like to see more MLOps capabilities included.

I have been using SAP Business Warehouse for one year.

We are using a previous version.

We did not experience any bugs or glitches with SAP Business Warehouse. It's a stable product.

SAP Business Warehouse is scalable, but you need to understand the product well.  It requires some expertise.

We have five people in our organization who use this solution.

Technical support is good. They were able to assist us in some specific issues we were experiencing.

I have some experience with Snowflake.

We did not previously use another solution, this was a new implementation.

The initial setup can be a bit complex. It's not easy, but not overly complex, It's medium.

It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it.

SAP Business Warehouse is a good option if you are interested in memory analytics including HANA.

I would rate SAP Business Warehouse an eight out of ten.

Getting high volume data is most valuable for us. It is really fast and it has great integration with SAP ERP or a non-sap system.

For example, only sales and distribution has approximately 150-200 mio transactional data for each year. As a result, we mention that we have approximately 400-500 mio transactional data for all our ERP system. It’s not possible to analyze that data without using Business Warehouse. Besides all those pluses, SAP BW provides us with real time analyzes for non-system.

The big minuses are its not being user friendly. The user interface and it’s reporting tool called BEx have room for improvement. SAP Global always promotes Business Objects for visualizing.

We have been using SAP BW for four years and also we had been using an old version called SAP BW 7.0 between 2008 and 2011.

Sometimes we do have stability issues, but if we evaluate the entire system, it provides more stability than its not being stable. Big stability issues are about getting dumps without any reasons and integration with Business Objects.

We have had absolutely no scalability issues. If a developer or product owner considers their data volume, BW never encounter any scalability problems.

I rate technical support so highly because of its being an old product.

We have never used any other business warehouse program except using an older version.

Setup is sometimes complex, sometimes not. For example, LIS structures are initially highly complex; you have to drop setup tables and re-fill it again. But other structures do not use setup tables and are more straightforward.

Every product owner has to be careful to evaluate the number of users. First of all, pricing is really high when compared with other business warehouse applications. Product owners also have to consider consultancy. Consultancy is more expensive than ERP consultancy.

Actually, we did not evaluate any other product because we were using SAP ERP.

Absolutely avoid non-standard structures. SAP BW is a highly established application that brings us many standard functions.

SAP Business Warehouse is a data repository; a data warehouse for business intelligence applications. Companies can use it in a variety of ways. Our clients that work with SAP use Business Warehouse for staging, consolidation, and treatment of data between SAP and the business intelligence application.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP.

The initial setup is very easy.

The solution scales well.

The stability is good.

It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore.

It's a product that needs experience and needs knowledgeable users. You don't typically find experienced consultants, especially in Brazil. While it's not hard to maintain, it's hard to find people that could help you with it.

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution can scale well. There aren't any issues if a company would like to expand it. 

Technical support is very good. We were very satisfied with their level of support when we needed it. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not too complex. 

You need two experienced technicians to handle the deployment process. 

I don't have any details on the ROI. It's hard to gauge exact numbers as the ROI doesn't depend only on SAP Business Warehouse; it depends on all the components, including the BI and the IP.

I'm an independent consultant. I have no direct relationship with SAP, with the vendor.

It's an application that is being migrated to HANA. I would recommend only the HANA version right now.

I would advise those considering this or a similar solution that they need to hire an experienced consultant, or to study the technical details of the project before starting using it.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for the business warehouse.

The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature.

The visualization should be improved, as well as the dashboards and advanced analytics. It needs to have a better interface.

The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases.

I've been using the solution for 15 years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is very scalable. It's one of the advantages of the tool. Right now we have about 500 users on the solution.

Technical support has been relatively helpful in the past.

We previously used Oracle BI. We switched to SAP because the solution is more comfortable to work with.

The initial setup was complex.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We're an SAP partner.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it eight out of ten.