Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
Sr. Manager at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
Helps with finances, accounting, and reporting while making our internal processes run smoothly
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of SAP ERP are its stability, industry-specific package, and adaptable configuration."
  • "It is on the expensive side."

What is our primary use case?

I use SAP ERP to make our internal processes run smoothly. It helps with finances, accounting, and reporting. I can manage inventory and purchasing efficiently, and the system ensures our production and manufacturing processes work seamlessly.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of SAP ERP are its stability, industry-specific package, and adaptable configuration. It is versatile in communication, making it easy to align with our business processes. 

What needs improvement?

One challenge we face with SAP ERP is the push to upgrade to S/4HANA, which comes with significant costs. While SAP encourages this transition, we need to carefully evaluate factors like our team's functions, existing customizations, and the overall expense involved in the upgrade process. Cost considerations are a major downside to this potential move. For the next release of SAP ERP, I would like to see enhanced financial planning and analysis features

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with SAP ERP for six years.

Buyer's Guide
SAP ERP
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP ERP. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

SAP ERP is quite stable. Our current instance operates smoothly, and we have only made minor customizations for specific management reporting needs. When it comes to the standard functions and configurations, we haven't encountered the need for significant changes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable product. In our company, we have around 200 licensed users for SAP ERP. When it comes to administration and maintenance, we have only one system administrator for the basic IT needs. Additionally, we have less than ten people handling application-related IT tasks. Overall, the management is straightforward, with a small team handling the responsibilities.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before SAP ERP, we used Oracle ERP. The decision to switch to SAP ERP was not driven by our IT team but it resulted from business organizational changes that forced us to adopt a different ERP package.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying SAP ERP two years ago was a bit challenging. We moved from an existing instance to a new virtual one, rebuilding everything from scratch and converting Master DataOps. It took some effort, but with external support, we successfully made the transition. Deploying SAP ERP had its challenges because when we started using it six or seven years ago, it wasn't a new setup but a result of a merger. For the first three years, we were more focused on daily operations. When we decided to take full control three years ago, it was our first time setting up our processes. We needed external support to navigate the difficulties, given our limited familiarity with the new package.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is on the expensive side. 

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate SAP ERP as a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Razan Dimashkieh - PeerSpot reviewer
Human Resources Analyst at Khatib & Alami
Real User
Great localization features, but is not easily integrated with outside products
Pros and Cons
  • "The payroll solution and the localization for advances are valuable."
  • "It is not easily integrated with outside products."

What is most valuable?

The payroll solution and the localization for advances are valuable.

What needs improvement?

There is room for improvement, especially since we are dealing with two systems, on-premises and on cloud, and so many connections could be interrupted. Sometimes the checking criteria on Success Factors are different than the criteria on S4Hana, so we enter master data, and the Success Factor accepts it. However, additional controls are done on S4Hana, so not all the data goes smoothly. Sometimes we have so many errors and must monitor them, which takes time.

It is not easily integrated with outside products because we purchased the finance, timesheet and project management modules on-premises and the HR module on cloud. Our integration issues may be specific to our company, and others may not have similar issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for one year. We have Success Factors. I'm not sure of the version number, but we recently updated it. We have part of it on cloud and part of it on-premises.

How are customer service and support?

We contact technical support when we have issues. I have only used them a few times, but my colleagues have said it takes some time to get a response from them.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup wasn't that complex. We went live for about eight branches, and it was complex in terms of size only. Everyone uses this solution because it is used for timesheets.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I have no details about the pricing.

What other advice do I have?

I rate this product a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
SAP ERP
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP ERP. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1759518 - PeerSpot reviewer
DGM HR at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables continuity in our company but needs to be more intuitive
Pros and Cons
  • "Continuing to use it enabled continuity of business."
  • "SAP needs to be more intuitive."

What is our primary use case?

When the company merged, we decided that we wanted to continue using SAP ERP because all the processes were much more mature, especially when it came to finance. The main value was the convenience for finance to run and manage the business.

The finance team was more comfortable using SAP, so that's why it was decided not to change the solution.

How has it helped my organization?

I wouldn't say it has improved the organization. The company was already using it before we merged.

Continuing to use it enabled continuity of business. It eliminated strife or angst for the employees in terms of experiences since they were already using SAP ERP.

What is most valuable?

We're using the main database. We're using the leave modules and transfers.

What needs improvement?

SAP needs to be more intuitive. It should be easy to use, mobile, and employee-friendly. You need to know the transaction codes. You need to study it to be able to use it. SAP needs to change that. They need to be more intuitive. Like how Facebook is so easy to use, or Uber. No one teaches you to use these apps, but they're intuitive and you're able to use them. So the HR applications need to be the same way.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it since 2018. Before that, I implemented SAP ERP in my previous job and used it for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable.

There are currently 8,000 users who use SAP in my company. Our IT team maintains it.

We do not have plans to increase usage. SAP has said that they are dropping the ERP part. They advise moving on to SuccessFactors for HR. SAP themselves has said not to go forward with more usage, but to change the system.

How are customer service and support?

It has good support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Oracle. When the company merged the new finance team preferred SAP, so HR also had to move along with the finance team. 

How was the initial setup?

The company was already using SAP ERP when we joined, so I didn't have to do any setup here. But in my previous job, we did set it up.

It wasn't straightforward. We had to first align the HR processes. IBM was the implementation partner. We had to speak with SAP and also IBM. They understood our processes and they proposed the best solution. Some parts we did not agree to, so there were workarounds, but it went through. Once the design architecture was finalized, the implementation was smooth.

The deployment took six months.

What about the implementation team?

IBM was the implementation partner.

What other advice do I have?

On a scale from one to 10, I rate SAP ERP a five. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Shady Mogawer - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Arabian Cement Company
Real User
Top 5
Has many modules, and is useful for all business processes
Pros and Cons
  • "The Material Management and Sales and Distribution modules are great. The Financial Accounting module is also great."
  • "It should be less complex. It should also have better integration capability. I am using the ACC version, and in this version, the integration and the communication are very difficult and complicated."

What is our primary use case?

It is for all business processes. It is for material management, financial accounting and controlling, sales and distribution, and HR.

Our SAP version is a little bit old. It is the ACC version.

What is most valuable?

The Material Management and Sales and Distribution modules are great. The Financial Accounting module is also great.  

What needs improvement?

One module that is not doing well is HR.

It should be less complex. It should also have better integration capability. I am using the ACC version, and in this version, the integration and the communication are very difficult and complicated.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it in our company since 2008.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I doubt if it is scalable. That's because it is on-prem, so you have a lot of parameters, and scalability would be a little bit hard.

We have 130 people, but in my company, only about 65 people are using it. It is being used every minute of every day. There might be a plan for expanding its usage, but I am not sure.

How are customer service and support?

Every time we need technical support, we take the help of a local consultant.

How was the initial setup?

I didn't do it, but I'm sure it's complex.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't know the price, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director of Transformation SAP at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Scales well and the claim management feature is useful
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the claim management."
  • "There are a lot of manual tasks that are used by a lot of people, so it is a very good candidate for RPA."

What is our primary use case?

We are a consulting company and SAP ERP is one of the products that we implement for our customers. Our primary role is to advise them on tools and strategy, including business use cases that they want to transform.

With ERP, we are working with customers who are looking for S/4HANA transformation, mainly from a greenfield approach. For RPA, we want to add some value in the business case because the business case of the S/4HANA transformation is not so easy to find. So we use some techniques like RPA to find more money around this transformation.

Right now we try to automate some functionality, which is not yet really good, within ERP. We really want to connect via API to the RFP tool to S/4HANA in fact.

We do business consulting or IT consulting, and do not provide support. We do advise them on tools and strategy, including business cases that they have to transform. We work with them up to this point and do not do the implementation.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the claim management. We also find the automation for the process within the "purchase to pay" can be valuable as well. We know that SAP already has an RPA solution to automate the reconciliation between the invoice and the orders, so we don't think that we can find a lot there. We would like to have some use cases with logistics and so on, but we don't have much right now.

We have a "purchase to pay" process, which is in SAP Ariba but mainly within the ERP. We would like to have more around purchasing because with purchasing we have a lot of money to gain and it could be very good for the business case.

What needs improvement?

There are a lot of manual tasks that are used by a lot of people, so it is a very good candidate for RPA. SAP says that if you want to extend the solutions, you need to use some solution outside of SAP for RPA, on a platform as a service or whatever. So, if SAP could have some option, but this not the tool or the best platform that is in the market. So we try to find some solutions to better convince our customers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I began working with SAP in 1992, about 28 years ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have experienced no problems with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability has not been an issue for our customers. Our smaller clients have between 2,000 and 3,000 users, whereas a large company has between 10,000 and 20,000 users.

How was the initial setup?

Normally our customers are in retail, the chemical industry, and energy companies. The setup is usually quite complex. When we want them to transform to S/4HANA it has been mainly customized. There are a lot of specifics because their processes are generally not straightforward.

The deployment will take perhaps two months, on average.

What other advice do I have?

When it comes to financing or accounting, SAP is quite enormous. When a company has to produce on every quarter, the numbers that would be in the SAP report, it is quite good. It has very long, long, long life behind it. Logistics, it's still okay. But for the rest, we just started G-Cloud first with a software as a service application. For HR, you have Workday, for instance.

For key purchasing, maybe go to SAP Ariba. If you are looking for Salesforce automation, for instance CRM, maybe you will go to Salesforce. It really depends on which process you want to clone and you want to target, but for the core finance, S/4HANA is a good solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer2506776 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead system and process development at a retailer with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
Users have to deal with a complex setup phase
Pros and Cons
  • "The tool can be very much customized."
  • "I think we have not seen any tangible benefits from SAP ERP."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company since I am responsible for business digitalization. The tool is used and it is a part of the top-down strategy. My company wants to use the tool since we want a digitalized ERP or to meet the requirements of the authority. The tool is used to meet the needs of the medical product authority and other national regulation authorities.

I think it's a very decentralized solution built for all different business units, so it acts as a separate solution on SAP.

What needs improvement?

In our company, we have an old system, so the effort to update to HANA was too big for all the ERPs. I think we will update only the ERP part to SAP HANA, and we can build the rest. For communication and CRM, we can build a portal so that we can directly communicate with our users or customers. The tool can be very much customized.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SAP ERP for fifteen years. I am a customer of SAP.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase was very complex, and you can have all the tools to build the process from business, and it depends on the system or on the SAP and not on the other way around. I have a lot of tasks that I have to do because the system says that they are without value, so I would like to change it, and go for digitalization. I have several solutions, one of which is Camunda for process automation. Camunda can be used for process management, documents, and enterprise management.

What was our ROI?

I think we have not seen any tangible benefits from SAP ERP.

What other advice do I have?

I am not satisfied with the tool.

I use an old ERP tool, so it makes no sense to rate the product. I want to update it to a new architecture. I think SAP is an old ERP.

I rate the tool a one out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
reviewer1834797 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
Comprehensive functionality but complex implementation lifecycle
Pros and Cons
  • "SAP ERP offers a wide range of functional modules, including payroll, HR, financials, and others."
  • "Implementing SAP ERP can be very costly, particularly for smaller organizations with limited resources."

What is our primary use case?

SAP ERP is essentially used for back-office functions, such as payroll and HR, as well as covering financials. It has many functional modules that can be used depending on the needs of your business.

What needs improvement?

Implementing SAP is typically very costly, and it takes a long time to deploy because of the huge amount of complexity. For smaller organizations, the implementation can be particularly challenging. Maybe the integration capabilities could be improved to increase the rest of the three tools. If you're trying to plug it into other best-of-breed products for HR or reporting, that's where you'll have charges.

I would suggest that the implementation lifecycle could be made simpler. Therefore, it would be easier and faster to implement and cost less.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using SAP ERP for fifteen years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a very scalable solution but it can be cost-prohibitive at the same time due to the time it takes.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment process depends on various factors. For the bare minimum setup, the solution would take six to nine months to deploy. But the likelihood of it taking six to nine months is very low. It's probably going to be more like a year to eighteen months to get the whole thing up and running and fully working as you expect for an organization of over six thousand people. 

The time taken to deploy the solution depends on the implementation approach. More than likely, you would roll it out to one part of the organization, which could take six to nine months. Then you would expand it to other parts of the organization, which would take longer. So, there's a deployment that could be done in six months, but it's unlikely that the entire organization would be fully onboarded in that time.

What other advice do I have?

If you're a large, professional organization with significant complexity, then SAP ERP would be a good fit as it comes with out-of-the-box support for more complicated processes. However, if you're a smaller organization or a quick-build company that's not planning to grow larger, then SAP ERP may not be advised. It's more about the complexity of the business you're running, and we run a manufacturing distribution component that is quite sophisticated compared to something you would find with Dynamics or 365. But it's more about the organization's size and complexity that determines how useful SAP ERP can be.  It may be the right solution for some and not for others, so it's subjective.

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

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
GLOBAL ERP (SHIFT) Logical design and Technical Integration Lead at Sanofi
Real User
Feature-rich, quite stable, and excels at finance management
Pros and Cons
  • "This product is very scalable and easy to expand."
  • "Technical support is an area that is in need of improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We used SAP ERP for a variety of business processes including finance, sales, credit, distribution, and more.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the finance management. However, there are many good features.

What needs improvement?

Standardization and customization need to be improved.

Technical support is an area that is in need of improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

This product has been used by the company for about 12 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is quite high and we used it on a daily basis.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This product is very scalable and easy to expand.

We have approximately 40,000 users.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have been in touch with technical support and I think that it can be improved. It's quite inefficient.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use another ERP solution prior to SAP.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex. One of the main difficulties is that there are a lot of processes and you need to integrate all of your ecosystems. When you have a very complex environment you have to understand the details and complexity.

The deployment can be done either on-premises or in the cloud, depending on the requirements. It can be an ongoing process.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed this solution with assistance from the vendor.

Both our in-house team and the vendor is responsible for maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would say that the price is competitive. Some components are available at an additional cost, depending on the type of contract that you have.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SAP ERP Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Product Categories
ERP
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SAP ERP Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.