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 are currently using the on-premise deployment model. We have just started implementation for normal usage.

The most valuable feature is that it's robust. 

The performance for the reporting is very poor, there is no graphical report. The price to performance ratio is less. It's also very complex, for example, if I want to make a simple change I have to spend a huge amount of effort.

I cannot integrate it with my other tools. It's not possible to do something in the predictive analysis. Mobile reporting and automated reports are also not available. 

I am interested in seeing more graphical reports. SAP Cloud Analytics is an immature product on the market. They have started something to showcase to the customer that SAP also can do the graphical reporting, but still they need a lot of time. They should have similar features to Tableau and Qlik.

It is stable. 

It is scalable. We don't have many users, but with my previous experience, there is no limit. I can increase my hardware and I can use it for as many users as I want. We do have plans to increase the usage.

We require ten staff members for the deployment and maintenance. 

Their technical support is good. 

I previously used many solutions. I used Tableau, SAS, Oracle, Power BI, and SQL.

The initial setup is complex in terms of implementing the basic objects.

In terms of how much time it took us to implement, for the standard features which are provided by SAP then it doesn't take that much time. It can be done quickly, but if you customize it takes longer. It depends upon the complexity of the business scenario. It's time-consuming if I compare the data to other products available on the market. If I compare it with Tableau then it is tremendously time-consuming. 

Tableau belongs to a totally different league but SAP BW is still not that good. It needs a lot of improvement.

It's a good solution if you're integrating data from SAP software like ERP and looking out for the day-to-day reporting from the operational users at the lower level. If someone is looking for the quick, graphical reports and mobile availability then this is not the right solution for that. 

From an analytical perspective, I would rate it a two out of ten but from the business warehouse perspective, I would rate it a five.

From an analytical perspective, I would rate it two because it's not competent in the current scenario of the market. The reports take a huge amount of time because it just uses its basic features called Microsoft Analysis Office which is like Excel reporting and no one wants to see data in Excel reports.

Businesses want to see the data in terms of the graphs, which can be easily readable compared to the numbers. If I'm giving the data in numbers or charts, the charts should be easily understood. Whereas BW provides data in Excel, so someone has to sit and create their own reports on top of it, which takes a lot of time.

The second thing is the execution time for the reports generation. Even due to the limitation of the analysis of the office I cannot process more than around 10 million records. It takes a lot of time to forget about 100K records. It takes a lot of time to load the data, whereas if I compare this with Tableau, it loads in milliseconds or seconds.

If I'm going to meet some of my customers and then if I decide that I want to check something about what the customer is talking about, for example, I cannot do that. I need to login, I need to connect to my SAP systems, then I need to execute the report and then see what the data is. Mobile availability is not there. While having a discussion with the customers I can include the report on my tab with Tableau. This is lacking in BW.

I had to tell a customer that I had to check the information and get back to him. I had to spend half an hour trying to call someone either from IT or someone in my back office to get the data and provide it to the customer. That was rubbish.

As a user, I use the solution for BW data modeling, customization, remodeling, process changes, and creating queries, workbooks, and analyses.

SAP BW4HANA aids in managing data from ER to front-end analysis, contributes to ROI, and fosters business growth understanding.

I like that the solution breaks down components to a very granular level, allowing for customization and implementation based on specific requirements. Its structured approach provides flexibility.

Challenges arise with real-time client requirements when clients are accustomed to Microsoft Excel's extensive features for data analysis. They expect similar flexibility and customization in the solution, particularly regarding headers displaying keys and descriptions or just keys. Achieving this level of customization can be challenging, and it's an area that may need improvement.

I have been working with the solution for over eight years.

The solution is stable. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is scalable. I rate it a seven out of ten.

The solution is deployed on-premises and cloud, and the entire process took slightly over a week. I rate the setup as seven out of ten.

The solution is expensive.

To ensure smooth deployment, businesses must clearly understand their specific business processes before opting for any solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight 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. 

It's mainly used for finance. We use it for reporting. 

We use SAP standard functionality to get the data from SAP and then just report on it. It's pretty fast.

We like that it is an SAP product, so we can easily connect with the SAP ERP system.

Support is okay.

I've found the product to be scalable. 

The solution is stable.

It has a lot of problems in terms of technical architecture. If I change something in BW, a lot of development becomes inactive.

The development time for any developer is quite huge compared to other products.

The setup is a bit complex.

If I want to have good reporting, then I have to buy a separate license. I have to pay for separate things. That's quite irritating.

I've been working with the solution for 16 years. 

It is stable. It's reliable and doesn't have bugs or glitches. 

We can scale the solution if we need to. 

There are about 150 people on the solution. 

Technical support is okay. The turnaround time is quite high. they are a bit slow. 

Neutral

I've used other solutions as well, such as Qlik and PowerVM. 

They are pretty fast in terms of performance, so the ease of development is extremely good. My turnaround time for the business was less.

The initial setup is not straightforward. SAP is not at all straightforward during implementation.

It is not difficult to maintain. 

We handled the initial setup in-house with the help of a third party.

We have achieved an ROI.

The cost is average. I'd rate it five out of ten in terms of the affordability of the standard license.

I would advise, that if you have SA, as in ERP systems, the BW is fine. If you do not have SAP ERP, for example, if you have a non-SAP system from where you want to load the data, then SAP BW is not a good solution. It will increase the turnaround time.

I'd rate the solution three out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for our ERP purposes.

From an ERP point of view and a functionality point of view, it works very well. The benefits are in that of financial costing and material management.

The only component that is not fully known is the HCM (Human Capital Management), but we have gone with SuccessFactors.

The HCM needs improvement, but as a company, they have stopped any development on this.

In the next release, I would like to see their BI component introduced with a mobile version, as it is not currently present.

I have been using this solution for just over three months and we have just gone into production.

So far, we have not had any issues. This solution is stable.

We have not had the opportunity to test the scalability, as we are retail at the moment and using it as a storage system.

At this point, we have only three users.

It is being used daily, but we plan to use it more extensively in the future.

We have only contacted technical support once and they were helpful. Their response time was also good.

The initial setup was straightforward and similar to other ERP deployments.

It took three months to deploy this solution.

We had the help of a system integrator.

I would look at the Cloud option. Although the Cloud is not mature enough at this time, people who are planning to deploy this solution perhaps a year down the road may benefit from it. The Cloud may be something they would want to consider.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I was a developer.

We use this solution for sales reporting and financial reporting.

I like that it's quite quick.

I would like more integration.

Cost is a factor. It could be improved.

The installation could be simplified.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for seven years.

The version that I dealt with was 7.4, and the company I am in now is using the latest version.

I am just starting to use that now.

SAP BW4HANA is very stable.

It's a scalable solution. I don't have any issues with the scalability of this product.

We have 200 to 300 users in our organization who use it.

I have contacted technical support, they are generally very good.

I used standard reporting, which didn't meet our needs and we had to go through a data warehouse.

The initial setup is quite complex.

We are a worldwide team, we need quite a few people to manage this solution. We have a team of eight to manage this solution in Europe and close to the same to manage it in Asia. 

We have a team of 14 or 15 to manage this solution worldwide.

In general, it's quite expensive.

I would recommend this solution in certain circumstances, but for others, probably not. It all depends on what the use case was.

I would rate SAP BW4HANA a seven out of ten.

We use the product to report to HANA systems. 

The solution is not scalable. It does not have a data streaming feature as well. 

The product is stable. 

The solution's technical support is good. 

The product's setup is easy. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.