SAP BW4HANA Reviews

We are a service provider and we provide SAP services to our clients. I am a consultant and I offer SAP BW4HANA as a data warehouse, used for retail business.

The reports being generated by this product are used by the business to clarify profit and loss on the orders that they have placed.

If you have a large set of orders, it is very difficult to track and manage them. This product helps you to distinguish the processes and provides visibility such as checking where products are in the process at any given time.

It provides information about billing, delivery, and all of the aspects related to an order. You can generate monthly reports or yearly reports, including charts, as needed.

The most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements.

The speed of operations could be a little faster.

We have been working with SAP BW4HANA for approximately seven years.

This is a very stable solution and we use it on a daily basis.

SAP BW4HANA is scalable. We have approximately 5,000 users.

The technical support is good.

I was not using another similar product prior to this one.

With a deployment plan, it takes approximately a year and a half to complete. The complexity of the initial setup is such that we need help from SAP.

The number of people required for deployment and maintenance depends on how big the project is. It takes between 30 and 40 people initially if it's a small to medium-sized project. For maintenance, 10 people would be enough.

We required help from SAP for the implementation.

We use this product in conjunction with the new solution, SAP Analytics Cloud.

My advice for anybody who is considering SAP BW4HANA is that it's a very stable product, and if you are looking at a huge volume of data that you want to process daily or any similar kind of task, then this is definitely a good solution.

At this point, I can't think of any additional features that I would like to see in the next release.

I would rate this solution a nine 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.

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.

We primarily use the solution for analyzing all the enterprise data and pushing it out on a corporate dashboard for the leadership team to have a tab of production, revenues, manufacturing, et cetera.

It has got wonderful features in terms of analyzing your production data, and it gives you real-time insight into productive maintenance. You can plan your budget, and you can map them against actuals. It gives you good insights on overall performance and processes.

The solution is stable and reliable.

It's quite scalable. 

There are certain areas, for example, HR or project systems, where the BW native adapters are still not fully enabled for you to have the standard offerings.

Support could be more reliable. 

It's quite agile. 

It is an expensive product.

We first ordered the product last year. Altogether we have about a year and a half of experience with it, end to end.

SAP is an extremely stable product. I'd rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable. Compared to traditional data warehousing it is very, very agile. It's very scalable. I'd rate the general scalability nine out of ten. 

We have close to 120 users. 

Support varies. On a good day, even the critical ticket gets through, and on a bad day, the simplest one will have you bump across the globe trying to get help. So it's a bit of a mixed experience.

Neutral

We previously used Power BI-based dashboards. That solution, however, was based on flat files and static data. We were looking for a single source of truth and to have real-time inputs, which is why we adopted SAP. 

I would rate the ease of implementation somewhere around six or seven. We still have some teething issues, which hopefully we can resolve.

The deployment took seven months.

We engaged SAP for the initial explorer phase. And based on that, we sized our setup, and we put our requirements in place. The process was to look at the business, polish and design, and then implement.

There were six people involved in the implementation process. They were developers, functional specialists, subject-matter experts, and, of course, admins.

In terms of ROI, we just went live a few months back, so ROI was not a focus. For this year, the focus is the adoption of users and the intangible benefits out of it, how much your end users are buying into the product and how much it motivates them to get insight from the system. We have internal KPIs. However, these are not related to value for money. Real ROI will be looked at on a broader three to five-year zone.

The solution is extremely expensive. I'd rate them three out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

We have the SAP S/4HANA on-prem version, however, we are using the Azure servers to host them.

We are using SAP S/4HANA, BW/4HANA, and SAP Analytics Cloud products.

We have invested heavily in our training and end-user environment. We have got some tools and a team dedicated to that. After learning from the earlier initiatives of SAP implementation, it was rather easy this time around as we knew what needed to be done and implemented those standards early.

I'd recommend the solution to others and also recommend that new users go towards a cloud version. Being on the cloud cuts out a lot of middleware and integration issues. 

Overall, it's a really good product. Right now, I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

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.

We use SAP BW4HANA to extract data from SAP ECC and load it into another system, such as Snowflake.

SAP BW4HANA can be deployed in both the cloud and on-prem.

SAP BW4HANA enables us to extract information from different repositories and create reports that are shared with managers.

The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature.

SAP BW4HANA is a new package with a steep learning curve. I am currently taking courses to familiarize myself with the features so that I can manage them smoothly.

I would like to be able to design new reports in a future release.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three months. 

I give the stability of SAP BW4HANA an eight out of ten.

I give SAP BW4HANA's scalability a five because I am still familiarizing myself with the solution.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have seen a return on investment.

The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations.

I give SAP BW4HANA a nine out of ten.

We have plans to increase the usage of SAP BW4HANA in the future.

I recommend SAP BW4HANA for organizations with an IP platform. Similar products, such as Qlik Replicate, are more expensive.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the solutions that we implement for our customers.

We primarily use this solution for data warehousing and reporting.

This product is user-friendly.

Out of the box, this solution has a lot of standard features.

The product is quite optimized, having simple processes for change management and different security features. It offers a lot of flexibility.

Things are going more agile nowadays and you want to use a solution like BW/4HANA. It is more agile and more open to other sources. It integrates well with visualization tools like BusinessObjects.

This solution is very costly compared to competitors on the market, which stops some people from implementing it.

SAP has to be more customer-centric. They are aware of the standard business use cases but if changes are made then they are not aware of them, which makes the product more difficult to support.

You receive a standard product, which is fine, but it needs to be made more customizable.

Connecting multiple sources is a challenge because you have to go through a lot of different setups. For example, if you want to use FreeSQL then BW4/HANA lacks the support.

Some of the options that exist are very complex, which makes it tough to integrate.

I have been using SAP BW/4HANA for the past six years.

As this is an on-premises solution, scalability can be a challenge. SAP claim that it is scalable, but I don't think so because it will add to your cost. I think that it should be more cloud-oriented. Basically, it can be scaled but it has its limitations.

We have perhaps 200 to 300 users in our company and it is being used on a daily basis.

This is quite a stable tool.

The support for this solution is good. The availability is good and the responses for more information are quick. However, it can sometimes take a long time to get a solution. Sometimes, it is so long that I can find the solution faster myself.

There is one problem for which I have not received a resolution. They have taken a lot of input from us, yet have been unable to pinpoint the problem. This is a challenge that I still face.

I have tried Snowflake and it is also quite a flexible tool. It is more open in that you can bring in data from multiple sources by just installing some DLLs and parameter files.

The length of time for deployment, to get everything up and ready to work, depends on several factors. For example, if depends on the number of objects and the number of reports that are needed. When we implement this solution for somebody, we do our estimation based on those two.

One of the projects that I worked on took approximately one year to go from the initial stage up until the point where it could be used for reporting purposes.

This is an expensive solution and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

SAP is introducing a lot of new features and making this product even more flexible.

The suitability of this solution depends on how big the business is and how much they want to invest in data warehousing. The effectiveness will vary from customer to customer. For example, I don't think that it is a good solution for small or medium-sized businesses because it is very costly. It involves a lot of maintenance costs and a lot of expertise. For a big customer, who is SAP-centric, with lots of SAP data or SAP business processes, this is one of the best data warehousing solutions.

Rating a product involves taking many things into consideration, such as scalability, performance, and security features. It also depends on what industry it is being used in.

Overall, I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I use the solution for reports and dashboards.

At this moment, it was started as a business intelligence strategy. So, I used it for a new project.

The feature I found valuable is that the solution had only one dashboard and no more.

I need a more efficient tool. I need more competitive tools, like Microsoft Power BI. The tool is not easy to use for an end user.

I need more analytics tools, especially optimizing the AfO tool for data analytics, since it is a critical point for us.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for about six months.

It is a stable solution.

I plan to increase the use of the solution from next month.

For support, I have a local partner.

The initial setup was easy.

It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure.

I may consider contacting a consultant next month.

It's not a friendly solution. So, it is a complex tool.

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