SAP ERP Reviews

We are using SAP ERP for business support, business administration, and financial aid. We are also using it for quality manufacturing and logistics.

We have many applications from the SAP side. We are also using SAP BW, SAP SRM, and SAP APO.

We are using it for our daily operations. It is being used for handling different orders for the company. It is also used for logistics, delivery of our products, collecting cash, and controlling the business volume and business activities. It is an integrated application, and we use it quite well.

It is an integrated application, and it has been working really well. Earlier, there were different companies for different applications for manufacturing, finance controlling, logistics, and quality. It probably was the first fully integrated application. Whenever somebody is entering any data, for example, invoice data or ordering data, everyone with a right to see this data can see it in the system.

We will not make any major changes, and we are not expecting any enhancements or new features from SAP because they already have a new solution. No development is happening on SAP ERP because SAP has come up with a new version called SAP S/4HANA, which is memory-based technology. We are planning to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA, but we don't know when it will happen. We are in the preparation phase.

We have been using this solution for 24 years.

It is very stable.

We are using it on a daily basis 24/7. Currently, there is no plan to add additional users. However, if we upgrade to S/4HANA, we will get new functionality and features. Most likely, we will also have more users.

Technical support comes partially from SAP. There are also certain partner companies who are providing support, so the support is quite good.

Its initial setup is quite a complex task because many business people are involved from different areas. It is not a simple solution that is being used by five or ten people. In our company, it is being used by thousands of people. Its implementation requires many consultations and discussions with different business communities. It also requires customization, configuration, and testing before you start using it.

I would advise others to go for S/4HANA. I would rate SAP ERP an eight out of ten.

European migration in the 2000's was the main reason to change. The legacy mainframe bespoke application was difficult to maintain.

We were able to consolidate various obsolete IT systems 15 years ago in the context of merging several companies into a more integrated business.

Finance view across functions has been valuable. The platform has been used to automate transactional processes.

The ergonomics of ECC were poor and unattractive to newcomers, as businesses expect process streamlining.

I am currently working in a group of companies, and we have the SAP HCM module. It is not fully implemented due to cloud issues, but we plan to transition to it. We are also using SAP S4HANA and have incorporated some aspects of the HR module, primarily focusing on payroll.

SAP ERP has improved our organization in several ways. For example, since moving to SAP HANA around eight years ago, the company I used to work for has gained substantial experience and benefits. 

The deployment of SAP ERP has primarily strengthened our financial controls. Although our production planning initially relied on personal interventions and Excel, the finance aspect has shown significant strength and improvement, which is a primary focus for most companies within our group.

The most critical feature of SAP ERP is its focus on supply chain and finance, as our companies are primarily oriented towards financial operations and payroll management. Its customer support is highly rated, and the technical support provided by SAP is considered very good.

There is a need for improvement in the business analytics aspect in financial reporting and also in sales and marketing analytics.

Different companies are at different stages. I have used SAP since the year 1985 or 1986 when I was part of the Toyota group, and we transitioned to SAP HANA around eight years ago. Other companies, like Obertronix, began using SAP two or three years ago.

The support from SAP has been very good. When SAP ERP was used, we did not experience any significant issues. Their technical support is rated highly.

Positive

Prior to using SAP ERP, there was no similar solution in use. We started with SAP in around 1995 or 1996, transitioning directly from using forms, Google, and Excel. There were no alternate ERP solutions before SAP.

The initial setup was challenging initially. People did not understand much about what SAP could do. However, with experience, the transition to S4HANA became easier, as the capabilities of SAP were better understood.

The pricing of SAP ERP is extremely high and often seen as unreasonable. An SLA agreement on maintenance is required, and it constitutes an annual expenditure. The licenses must be bought in bulk, which presents additional challenges, making the pricing not very friendly.

SAP ERP is definitely recommended for larger companies, such as public limited companies, due to its extensive capabilities. However, smaller companies may find the maintenance and licensing fees prohibitive, and they should consider other ERP solutions.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

It's a good solution as you get everything in one software. You get all modules in one software and therefore one doesn't have to look outside for any other software. 

The solution is quite scalable. 

The stability is excellent. 

The solution has a few problems here and there.

It's slightly complex and can be hard to understand if you are new to the product.

The product is very, very expensive, and therefore not really suitable for smaller organizations. 

It's very difficult to find people who are well versed in it. 

I've been using the solution for 20 years at this point. It's been somewhere around two decades. I have a lot of experience with it. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product can scale. If a company needs to expand it, it's not a problem. Users should be able to do so. 

It is scalable in the sense that tomorrow if you have 10 users, you can scale it to 50 users, 50 to 100. That's not a problem. It's pretty easy to scale. SAP is now pushing cloud. It used to be on-premise. When it was on-premise you would have to change your hardware. Now, that is not necessarily the case. 

In terms of maintenance, due to the fact that the solution is complex and nobody can know everything, it's important to have at least two people on staff for maintenance that can handle it and understand how everything - or mostly everything - works. That means either hiring out experts of having in-house personnel.

The pricing is very high. For enterprise-level organizations this may be okay, however, for smaller companies, it's likely not suitable. 

What happens is that if small companies implement it, the maintenance cost is very high for this kind of ERP. It's a problem for those companies who want to implement ERP, and they find implementation cost is higher and the license cost is extremely high. The maintenance cost is very high as well.

I'm an implementor.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. 

It covers pretty much everything. It's not that something is missing. There are better products than this, however, they are not necessarily as complete. If you're buying those products, you will have to spend money to interface with the backbone of SAP. 

They're making it more user-friendly. A user has to work smart and if he's not able to work smart, we spend so much less time training people. Unless you have a photogenic memory, SAP can take a bit of work.

Other software can be learned in 15 days, however, SAP takes a while. 

• Real Time end-to-end transactions
• Industry standard flows
• Structured data

• End-to-end visibility
• Streamlined and ingrained our process

• User Interface / User Experience
• Social features like @mention
• Workflow engine
• Browser Capabilities
• Production Planning

Three years.

Deploying an ERP is a tough task, if not the toughest. It has to do with the fact that our staff did not understand the software well enough, just as the software did not understand us well enough, as we went live.

No issues encountered.

Yes. Sybase, the newly-acquired RDBMS SAP was purchased and we were integrating it into the ERP, didn't scale well and was slow initially. Being one of the first customers of the Sybase/SAP ERP combo, I was disappointed that SAP didn't test out its integration with Sybase thoroughly prior to release.

Aside from the patch, this problem was solved by changing the worker thread parameter on Sybase. We had to rely on our own knowledge based on our previous experience with Sybase.

OK. SAP responded with a patch to our Sybase issue within weeks we of us filing the issue.

OK. The technical support are provided by local SAP partners.

We used a homegrown one. It was getting a bit long in the tooth.

Complex. SAP ERP, even with its so-called industry-specific best practice, does not fit everybody. It must be custom configured to fit your company.

Through a vendor. Their expertise was good.

The ROI, though unofficial, comes from the somewhat shrinking inventory due to an intelligent MRP and the fact that most parts are now fully-accountable for. The ERP has touched upon every corner of our business. While it has streamlined some functional departments right away, other departments have not been adjusted according to my wishes. To get more ROI from an ERP, we have to conduct more data analysis using BI tools (in our case Tableau) to streamline our operations and find problematic issues.

The software was around US$600,000 for 230 users and the vendor implementation cost was around US$1.5 million. The day-to-day cost of using the product is low. Just electricity and user administration maintenance.

• Oracle ERP
• Yonyou ERP

Allocate enough time to do the blueprint and UAT well, but don't drag on the project for too long. 1 year is good -- not too long and not too short.

We implement this solution on-prem and on cloud for our clients. Our customers use it for their entire business process and end-to-end operations. It involves everything from production, to financial planning, sales and procurement. 

The most valuable part of ERP is the well-integrated technology. The different modules talk to each other very seamlessly. The solution is also multilingual and multi-currency. It provides that level of support and is highly flexible. When it comes to integration with third-party softwares you can integrate with a lot of technologies and a lot of different data feeds. If I'm selling something on Amazon and I want to check product performance, I can directly interface with SAP and see all the dashboards and reports. That is the beauty of SAP.

We face a lot of challenges with SAP. The support is very slow. When you do get a response, it's not as technical or as detailed as a customer would expect. I've also found them to be lacking in flexibility in terms of their pricing and they are not competitive with other solutions. If you have budget constraints, then SAP might be beyond your reach; they never provide any discounts. Our on-prem customers don't want the cloud model for now because they are concerned about their data transparency, but SAP won't offer an on-prem license. Those are the challenges we currently face.

I've been using this solution for 15 years. 

The solution is stable but there can be product bugs or performance issues. A couple of our customers have high volumes and a lot of interfaces. They are facing challenges in terms of stability when scaling. Several of our customers with retail businesses are currently in this position. We raised requests with SAP but the response was very poor and customers were totally fed up. SAP eventually provided a workaround temporary solution. The system is running but it's not up to the mark. 

The technical support provides valuable advice but they don't respond in a timely fashion. There are delays which create pressure for the customer and eventually they will lose business as a result and will move away from SAP. 

Neutral

As a consulting company, we can deploy ERP quickly. Our clients are unable to implement alone, it requires some expertise. Our last couple of deployments have taken six to eight months. The solution is easy to maintain but it requires support, either external or internal. SAP charges a maintenance fee that is quite high at 25% of your initial license cost. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

Human capital management - time and payroll

• Standardization of processes
• Better control
• Ease of reporting
• Cost saving
• Working with the most comprehensive payroll solution in the world

• Employee/manager self-service
• The product is an on-premise version. SAP has already released SuccessFactors(SF), which is SaaS. Going forward, SAP will be making significant investments in developing SF.

I have used it for 10 years.

I have not really encountered any stability issues.

I have encountered scalability issues, but not to a critical extent.

Technical support is decent.

I have had a chance to work with Workday, SF and SAP ECC. I have worked with SAP ECC the most, being an established payroll and time solution in the market. SF is catching up, but that again is a product of SAP itself. We need to understand that SAP ECC is an on-premise system, whereas SF and Workday are cloud solutions, still evolving as far as payroll and time evaluation features are concerned. However, from the standpoint of other HR processes/workflows, those products have an edge over ECC.

Initial setup is a little complex when compared with Workday and SF.

Before choosing this product, PeopleSoft was considered.

Go for Workday or SuccessFactors as the system of record, and SAP ECC as the payroll and time management product, if you wish to process these functions in-house.

I use ERP for internal solutions like selling and our customer database.

An area for improvement would be the response time. In the next release, I would like to see more technical integration for directly designed solutions on behalf of the selling process so that you can design solutions and not have to use ten or more other tools to get the solution for selling.

I've been using this solution for a couple of years.

ERP is very stable.

This solution is scalable.

I previously used Salesforce.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.