SAP BW4HANA Reviews

We use SAP BW4HANA as our data warehousing solution. We pull data from different sources and extract it into the central data warehouse. We analyze and visualize it using analytical engines such as Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud.

The solution seamlessly integrates with SAP products but lacks other advantages. 

We use it because underlying SAP products are compatible with easy integration.

We tried integrating SAP BW4HANA with several platforms, but none worked properly. It lacks customization options. It's neither flexible nor elastic, making simple job creation difficult. There's no support for developing data cards or similar functionalities. Its data management and endpoint data governance features are lacking. 

We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports.

The product roadmap and features of SAP BW4HANA are ugly and need improvement.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three or four years.

The product is stable, but if it fails to meet the basic needs. It doesn't support my development lifecycle for the data warehouse.

The solution is not scalable. 15-20 different departments are using it because there is no other solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability minus five out of ten.

There are no support issues. The overall product has concerns, including its dimension, roadmap, evolution with the cloud, and integration with non-SAP systems. Maintaining insight into these matters is crucial, and support helps to address them.

It's been 10-12 years since SAP BW4HANA evolved from its older versions, but the product hasn't improved much. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Snowflake, who continuously evolve their products, SAP BW4HANA lacks seamless integration with third-party connectors. This absence of support for good integration tools suggests a monopolistic approach. Simple integrations take excessive time, leading to low business efficiency. SAP's core applications are highly customizable and purpose-built, with continuous release cycles that align with market trends.

The maintenance of the solution is challenging due to its complex architecture. However, its dynamic design and comprehensive features make it unique. Even a minor with database knowledge can significantly improve the schema creation process.

I don't recommend the solution. It's not fair to compare bananas to oranges. There's no comparison. SAP doesn't fall anywhere close to other vendors.

If you are a static organization with basic SAP applications in the underlying architecture, SAP BW4HANA will be a better choice. However, with the evolution of data and the increasing amount of data being collected, along with emerging applications, it's not advisable to use it. It will complicate your life, leading to disappointment for your business and SAP's overall strategy for the organization.

Overall, I rate the solution a five out of ten.

I am working with multiple SAP clients. I am more of a tool consultant. We now have our own solutions for the supply chain, but they are more focused on complementing SAP solutions.

The problem is the expensive pricing of technical support, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three to three and half years.

The solution's technical support can be expensive. If you pay the support team, the support team will offer you support. If you don't pay the support team, they will not support you. My company never had any problem with SAP, but it is very pricey.

My company uses SAP Analytics Cloud for dashboards. The data source could be BW, or it could be directly SAP S/4HANA, and sometimes we do it like that. For one of the clients, we did not do it in BW and went directly to HANA database because their requirements weren't much.

My company helps customers with the implementation of the tool. We also offer support and customize our products for the customers.

The product's implementation phase is not straightforward. A few things have to be taken care of, and it all depends on the people doing it. We have very experienced people to take care of the tool's implementation. Sometimes, people implement the tool very quickly, and if they have any issues, they will take more time, but it gets delivered. We don't have any problem with the tool's implementation.

The tool is affordable. In our company, we do have the capacity to offer the tool to others based on the cost, capability, needs and what someone expects from the tool for their overall project. Everything depends or varies because not all clients are the same. If clients opt for our company's complementing solutions, we give a different pricing model to such customers, meaning we have a model to support them.

There are multiple products in the market. People are looking for multiple things, but I am not sure.

I recommend the tool for companies involved in manufacturing and logistics. Our primary focus is on mid-sized businesses.

The clients know what is required for their companies. Our company's main focus is manufacturing and supply chain organizations. The tool can also be used in mining and certain parts of retail business.

The products offered by SAP have high levels of competence. Companies look for tools that can solve their problems at an affordable price.

My company integrates the product with other tools with the help of SAP OData's services.

Speaking about the tool's impact on the customers' data processing speeds, I would say that one of the main concerns is security. The tool is more concerned about the security of the integrations. That is the reason the tool is preferred through something like AWS or GCP. The security of SAP integration is a major concern for the client as they don't want to expose their data to unsecured links. Some customers are okay with the tool's integrations, but my company uses SAP OData for others. Sometimes, if a customer is not willing to share, we use RPA for some integrations.

The tool's modernized data modeling capabilities are mandatory, so it is no longer an option. Users need to have robust data, and if they don't have a robust data architecture, they will have a problem anyway. It is not only about their recurrent operations but also associated with future upgrades. Everybody is trying to be innovative sooner or later.

Speaking about the transition from a traditional data warehouse to an SAP tool and its impact on our customers' data governance practices, I would say that they will get all the data requirements fulfilled after migration. If they don't design it properly, then they will have a problem, and it can be technological or functional.

I recommend the tool to others.

The tool has its own challenges. Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool. From the cost and implementation perspective, I rate the tool as a seven out of ten.

It is a data warehouse product. It is used to extract data from source systems, unify it, and gain business intelligence.

I like the reporting features of the solution.

The tool is not cloud-compatible. It is an on-premise tool. SAP is bringing other tools into its place.

I have been using the solution for ten years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool is stable.

The product is scalable. On-premises systems cannot be scaled easily, though. Cloud solutions are easily scalable. Approximately 200 to 300 people use the solution in our organization.

The tool was implemented in my company 15 years ago. For the last 15 years, we have been in constant touch with SAP.

The initial setup is straightforward. The administration team does it. The team buys the licenses from SAP, downloads the software, and installs it on SAP servers. The deployment did not take more than one day.

The deployment can be done in-house. Our organization pays SAP, and we download the software and install it. It’s straightforward.

The product is free if we have the ECC license.

The product is not relevant anymore. Other modern tools are better than SAP BW/4HANA. I will not recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

We use SAP BW4HANA for revenue reporting. 

We can get good visualization and less redundant data. 

The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers. 

I have been working with the product for six months. 

I rate SAP BW4HANA's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. 

SAP BW4HANA's deployment is not complex. You need five to ten people to handle the maintenance. 

SAP BW4HANA has helped us save time and money. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

Its direct approach is the most valuable. You get more real time and capabilities than BW. 

They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy.

It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers.

It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required.

SAP BW4HANA is a relatively new product from the SAP side, but we have been running almost a two years project now and moving from BW to BW4HANA. So, it is a completely new build of the entire environment. We just completed that in November last year.

We have used BW and HANA Native. BW4HANA is definitely much better than BW. It is also much better than HANA Native.

It depends on your experience, the approach, and so on. I took over the project when it was already started. It had been running for two or three months. I would have approached it differently if I was there during the kickoff. It is challenging when you are too much focused on old products, and you don't have a good model in place or a good understanding of the business model. For me, it was not so difficult. I did it a lot in my former positions and during many years of experience in multidimensional data modeling, but for most of my colleagues and my team members, it was quite challenging because they had more experience in reporting subs, SQL subs, and so on and not so much experience in data modelings and so on. 

In general, you need to acquire experience in this. There are not so many in the market. I also had a bad experience with consulting companies. I had to correct them and technically detail the process for how to do this.

It is simply the mindset. When we approach it with the mindset of how it was done in BW or HANA, you get a process that is not really efficient. When object-oriented approaches are not taken into consideration, everything gets built a hundred times, and instead of being more object-oriented, it gets quite complex. It always requires good modeling and an understanding of the business requirements, which can be quite challenging.

We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything.

It makes sense for all enterprise companies that currently have BW in place to move over because BW4HANA has more reasonable performance, and it helps you in getting reporting. An enterprise can manage the reporting on this one product. In my previous company, I had to do and review reporting for end-users at the aggregated management level, not only at the transactional level. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. It is definitely an eight for reporting low and high at the management level as compared to others, but it is also dependent on the design. I had to provide and I still need to provide a lot of things knowing how my former colleagues have approached those things. From my point of view, it is never always the product, it is the experience we have in the design and context. BW4HANA is definitely much better than BW. It is also much better than HANA Native. It is definitely the right tool in terms of reporting and security on top of the SAP companies. Most of the companies are SAP companies. If you need an additional reporting tool on top, this is a solution.

Simplified tables, advance DSOs, and composite provider are valuable features.

I've been working with this solution for four years.

It is a stable solution.

The technical support is okay.

The initial setup is easy.

Price wise, this solution is on the higher side.

I would advise you to go ahead with SAP BW4HANA with minimal options to look into other solutions.

We found that SAP BW4HANA has better performance than NetWeaver Business Warehouse. Also, SAP BW4HANA has a simplified structure, advance DSOs, and a composite provider. These were not possible with NetWeaver Business Warehouse. This is because of the HANA database at the back end. Because of this, we have shifted 60% to BW4HANA and have 40% remaining on NetWeaver Business Warehouse. We have less than 5000 people using this solution.

Overall, I would rate SAP BW4HANA at nine out of ten.

We are a consulting company, we use the solution for our client's organizations who have a basic requirement for KPI information.

Our customers require KPIs to analyze their management. We use BW/4HANA to extract data and provide business intelligence for our customers that are using S/4HANA ERP.

SAP BW/4HANA can be used more generally as a data warehouse. Prior to BW/4HANA, BW classic could only work with SAP products, but S/4HANA can be used for any enterprise data warehouse and is no longer limited to SAP, but can also be used for legacy data or big data. The solution is more flexible than before.

We benefited from BW/4HANA's ability to utilize predefined content. We didn't need to start from scratch.

The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning. I would like to see the features be simplified.

I have been using SAP BW/4HANA for five years. 

The solution is stable.

SAP BW/4HANA is not a cloud version, it does not have auto-scaling functionality. It is scalable, but it is not automatic.

In the past, for data warehousing, we used Oracle, Google BigQuery and AWS. For business intelligence, we used BusinessObjects as a solution.

BW/4HANA is not easy to implement, it is complex. It requires four or five people to implement.

Before, in BW classic, there is BW Workbench. Inside Workbench, we could do almost anything without needing to go to the database level. Now, the architecture has changed. We need to use Eclipse to model the data, making it more technical than before. It is difficult to train our customers.

If an upgrade is needed, it takes about five months to implement, depending on what the client currently has. If we are implementing a new BW/4HANA from the beginning, it will take more time to analyze the requirements.

SAP BW/4HANA is expensive.

SAP BW/4HANA did not require us to start from scratch as it utilizes predefined content inside.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to build up complex queries that support data models and reporting.

The solution saves time and cost. Our dependability on SAP has reduced because we use BW4HANA as an intermediate system that works as a data source for different tools. We don't have to connect the other tools to SAP directly. Our data is secured. BW4HANA is like a staging environment. We can use it to supply data to other programming or reporting tools.

All the features are important. BW queries, BW views, calculation views, and calculated columns are valuable features. InfoCubes and InfoObjects are also valuable features. The product speeds up the data read cycle.

There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP. Users must be able to deploy the pipeline and pull the tables directly.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten. The stability has some scope for improvement.

The tool is highly scalable. I rate the scalability a nine or ten out of ten. About seven to eight developers use the solution in our organization.

We have integrated SAP with Azure. We have migrated all standard tables and the output of standard reports on Azure. A different team in our organization coordinates with the solution’s support team to resolve the issues we face. I will recommend the solution to others. If a huge amount of data needs to be moved around for analytics purposes, we should choose SAP BW4HANA. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.