SAP BW4HANA Reviews

I'm part of our company's IT department. We implemented the SAP BW/4HANA solution, and we recommend it to our customers.

SAP BW/4HANA is an analytics solution. You can use it for reporting. It's an advanced data warehousing solution, so it supports real-time analytics, data warehousing, and consolidation. Advanced analytics and data exploration are other use cases.

One significant advantage of SAP BW/4HANA is the direct integration with the SAP HANA database, providing seamless access to real-time analytics. 

Additionally, it enables real-time data integration. We don't need to rely on historical data alone; we can provide reporting and features based on real-time information. 

Also, it integrates well with SAP S/4HANA. The data governance and security features that come with SAP HANA are another significant benefit.

It enables real-time data analytics. Before SAP BW/4HANA or traditional BW systems, data loads would happen nightly. With SAP BW/4HANA, you can directly access the HANA database, providing real-time data and analytics. So, the integration with SAP HANA impacted data processing speeds.

Moreover, the modernized data modeling capabilities helped with analytics. From a data modeling perspective, you have better options to present data to customers or C-level managers. This helps them make better decisions.

The transition from a traditional data warehouse to SAP BW/4HANA improves data governance practices. The transition to real-time, in-memory analytics helps shift how business is conducted. In traditional BW, you had fewer options for data stores. BW/4HANA lets you connect with various source models, both SAP and non-SAP, giving greater visibility.

Valuable features depend on the customer's specific requirements. The benefits will vary based on their needs.

There are few areas of improvement:

• There's the complexity in migration from BW to BW/4HANA, especially with data migration. 

• Also, the cost of ownership is higher. It's resource-intensive, and naturally, that increases costs. 

• Additionally, BW/4HANA is SAP-specific, a vendor lock-in. It makes sense for customers in an SAP environment, but if they run an Oracle suite, for example, they might need to consider if BW/4HANA aligns with their organizational standards. 
• Finally, finding skilled BW/4HANA specialists can be a challenge, as it requires not only BW knowledge but development expertise as well.

I have been using it for eight years now. 

From an overall perspective, SAP BW/4HANA offers businesses what they need. It provides flexibility in data presentation and integration options. It's a good product.

We need to consider both competitors and the customer's environment. If the customer is already using SAP and considering HANA, I'd certainly recommend it. 

However, there are advanced options where you don't even need BW/4HANA. You can get reporting capabilities directly from a HANA database using SAP Analytics Cloud. It's important to understand the customer's specific use case.

The customer service and support are good, but it depends on our contract with SAP. A strong contract agreement will ensure good support.

Having worked with the SAP ecosystem for a long time, SAP supports more than the product; they support the customer as well. Customers need to negotiate their contract terms carefully. 

With the right contract, you'll get good support. However, like any software vendor, SAP has ticket priorities. If it's not a high priority, they'll address it within their SLA. This might not always align with customers' expectations.

Neutral

I worked with traditional BW, which is similar but uses a relational database instead of HANA.

Pricing is always a consideration with SAP. You need to navigate the contracts and agreements carefully. But, with the right terms in place, it can be a cost-effective solution.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. It's a robust product. But there are  downsides, like the cost being one. It's resource-intensive. Also, integration with non-SAP enterprise components could be improved.

It is used for analyzing data, finding patterns, and generating reports, especially management-level reports. So, it's an advanced and enhanced form of the traditional SAP BW, which could run on other databases. SAP BW4HANA runs only on SAP HANA, and it has certain additional enhancements and capabilities that are possible because of BW4HANA. There are very few use cases. I haven't seen many customers using SAP BW4HANA or even SAP BW because there are so many BI applications around nowadays.

The solution's performance is really good. Also, it's easy to operate, easy to administer, and relatively simple to install. Also, it integrates very easily with most other known applications, especially widely used applications.

The licensing cost could be made better.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three or four years. We are a sales provider organization.

It is a stable product.

It is a scalable solution. Again, it completely depends on the hardware it is running. We only have two customers using the solution.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup is the same as any other SAP product based on NetViewer. The installation can be done in one or two days. The post-processing phase to have the solution on our system may take a week, approximately. The prerequisites for deployment are pretty much standard. The HANA database must be installed, and an application server must be installed. The application server needs to be prepared with the required file system, OS libraries, and specific runtime environments.

For the solution's deployment and maintenance, we have two or three people. So, we have one senior consultant and two mid-level consultants.

It is an expensive product. The licensing strategy is pretty much the same for all SAP products, and I or my team are not exposed to it.

Its integration capabilities are good.

I would suggest those planning to use it evaluate the features and decide for your specific use cases to deduce whether this is something you really need. Some applications offer the same features, which can meet similar requirements. So compare and evaluate to see if this is exactly the solution that you need. If it integrates easily with your existing landscape and workloads, then choose it for yourself. I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

In terms of use cases, when you look at SAP BW4HANA, you are looking at creating data warehousing for the organization. You use it to create analytical solutions for the customers.

SAP BW4HANA is outdated because of which people have started to move to SAP Analytics Cloud. SAP BW4HANA valuable feature revolves around the fact that it was easy to customize the tool.

SAP BW4HANA has issues with its integration capabilities, specifically when it comes to non-SAP products, since you have to use middleware tools in such scenarios. The integration capabilities of the product with other non-SAP tools should be improved.

I want to see improvements in the support offered by SAP. I don't see SAP actively supporting the solution now, and I believe that it is because of its new stack of solutions. SAP is not actively supporting SAP BW4HANA, but a better support from SAP would be appreciated.

I have experience with SAP BW4HANA.

It is a very stable solution.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company deals with ten customers who use SAP BW4HANA.

All of SAP's customers regularly use the tool.

The solution's technical support is slow. I would say that when working with SAP, one has to be very patient. You have to give SAP's support team enough time after raising a ticket since they will work as per their priorities specified under L1 support and L2 support, but the fact remains that the support system is slow.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward.

I was not the person responsible for the deployment, so I would not be the best person to speak about it. I was on the business side associated with the tool.

The solution can be deployed in a couple of weeks.

It takes three odd months to complete the whole implementation cycle of the product to deal with simple to medium-level use cases.

There is a need to make payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. Whether the price of the product will be expensive or not is something that depends on the buyers' negotiation skills with SAP. SAP sells products at different rates. For some, the rates offered by SAP can be costly while for others it may seem cheap. The price ultimately depends on how you have negotiated your contract with SAP.

Speaking about whether there are any extra costs attached to the product apart from the standard licensing fees, I am not very sure about where the customer service from SAP fits into the licensing model.

In terms of data warehousing and real-time analytics, the tool has been doing pretty well for our company, and as a matter of fact, it has also been working out well for some of the customers for whom we had helped with the implementation part of the solution. The customers who use SAP BW4HANA are happy with the tool.

The in-memory compute feature impacted the data processing speed since my company presently sees a thirty to forty percent improvement.

In terms of structuring the data that is going to come in, and especially in terms of the overall setup of the tool, the APIs to be set up, and other such areas, are some of the key roles of the people who use the product.

If customers are looking at SAP BW4HANA, I would say that it is definitely a stable solution, but it all depends on your landscape. If your landscape consists of seventy percent non-SAP, then SAP BW4HANA is not meant for you. If you have your core ERP and everything else on SAP, then SAP BW4HANA is a good solution.

The real-time analytics capabilities benefit our organization by allowing employees to make the process of decision-making faster because we have seen reports getting pushed with the in-memory computing capabilities of the tool in a very fast manner. The product has definitely helped the customers make decisions faster.

I rate the overall satisfaction with the product in terms of scalability and future readiness as seven out of ten. Overall, the product is stable. I feel that the support could be better. From the perspective of the people in the market, if you look at the resources offered by SAP BW4HANA, you can find many people who are trained in the product. Getting qualified resources for SAP BW4HANA is very easy.

I rate the tool a seven 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. 

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.

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 the tool to analyze data from various sources, such as ERP. 

I like the tool's robustness and security.

The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.

I have been using the product for more than five years. 

The product is stable. 

The solution is scalable, and my company has more than 2000 users. 

Technical support is knowledgeable and helpful.

The setup was reasonable, with no major issues. Our SAP team shares responsibility for maintenance.

We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.

I advise others to design requirements carefully before importing data and do incremental refreshes instead of full uploads to save resources. We can integrate non-SAP data sources using XML data exchange. It's important to plan work well and design solutions properly. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

The real-time analytics capabilities are good, but we often move data to a different platform for analysis. Overall, SAP BW4HANA provides a stable, robust, and scalable solution that integrates well with various systems, allowing us to consolidate data from different places.

We are using HANA for dashboarding. HANA is like a database for the system where we create dashboards using business planning and consolidation on AE4 and EPM. Five or six people are on the business warehouse team managing BW/4HANA, and I'm the architect, so I help them.

The UI is completely new, beautiful, and user-friendly. There are some other helpful features like global filters and advanced tools. We can perform custom calculations easily

From a technical perspective, the performance has been enhanced and optimized for a limited number of flows. The content settings are more advanced, and there are so many other features that I can't name them all.

BW/4HANA could improve query optimization. For example, there could be an error message that pops up when you hover over it if any query fails. That would make it easier to find out what went gone wrong. Guided SAP help tools would make it easier for us to go forward. 

I have been using BW4HANA for almost six or seven months now.

BW/4HANA is quite stable unless we come up with different service sites.

There are some old systems that have been discontinued, and it'll be challenging if you migrate completely to a new system. I'm not sure whether every organization wants to do that, but so I cannot speak to the scalability. 

SAP BW/4HANA is easy to set up. It's a little tricky when it fails, but I did not find it challenging. You need to have all the help files installed before starting the setup. The deployment is fast.

I can't comment on the cost because it keeps changing based on the plan and company requirements. There are different procedures and corporate discounts.

I rate SAP BW/4HANA seven out of 10. It's user-friendly, so it's easy to get started on it.