SAP ERP Reviews

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.

I use SAP ERP in my company for its entire package that provides masking and condition techniques, along with the details of all the employees and everything, starting from manufacturing, procurement, maintenance of facilities, onboarding, and warehousing.

A person gets to use the valuable features of the solution depending on how you have implemented the tool. If the tool doesn't have a required process, its user has to put that particular process into it, which is tedious.

SAP ERP needs to be made simpler. The tool is generally not very complicated to use and is easy to use.

SAP ERP needs to consider simplifying a few areas within the tool. Compared to SAP ERP, other solutions in the market are much more easily configurable and understandable. SAP has a lot of complex features. In the future, if SAP ERP offers small, medium, and large versions of the product separately, then the implementation process can be made easier.

I have been using SAP ERP for four years. I use SAP ERP with SAP S/4HANA 1809, but my company plans to move to SAP S/4HANA 1909 soon. I am a user of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a three out of ten.

The standard options of the tool don't work well, and for each and everything, there are new options. When SAP adds new options, the integration of the other modules is not taken care of, and then the fix-around needs a lot of time.

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

Around 400 people in my company use the tool.

The tool is used daily in my company.

SAP ERP's technical support takes a lot of time when it comes to handling errors and debugging errors. The coordination of technical support with different users takes a lot of time. I rate the technical support a four out of ten.

Neutral

Previously, my company used a product from Oracle. My company shifted to SAP ERP from Oracle after our company's plans to move to a manufacturing setup.

I rate SAP ERP's initial setup phase a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup, and ten is an easy setup.

SAP ERP's initial setup phase was quite difficult.

SAP ERP's initial setup phase was complex, as my company had to seek help from a third party while maintaining a lot of coordination and months of discussions with them to get the tool fully usable.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in twelve months.

SAP ERP has three modules or sections that help with the installation areas like the development, quality, and deployment of SAP. SAP takes or collects the data from each of the departments and the processes, and then it gets put into the area that deals with quality in SAP. The signoff of the UAT and any other agreements is done before proceeding with the final deployment.

The product's deployment was carried out in my company with the help of a consultant from SAP and a third-party integrator.

From a long-term perspective, I can say that the solution can offer a return on investment, but it may take around three to four years for our company to experience it. Currently, I don't think the product offers my company any return on investment.

I rate the product's price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap or affordable, and ten is really expensive. The solution is expensive.

SAP ERP's maintenance can be described as an ongoing process. Ongoing maintenance is required in the product, owing to issues like bugs and the fact that the processes are not integrated well enough.

I rate the overall product a seven 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.

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.

We are using this solution for enterprise resource planning.

The most valuable feature is the robust workflows that SAP provides to us in our organization. Overall, I find it the best ERP solution compared to other similar solutions.

The problem for us, we are one company that has seven home markets. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. When we need to configure, modify rules, change policies, or taxes rules, when we move currencies around based on our other financial results, it can get very complicated. When we try to join everything together we have some problems. However, the process good, all of our material and procurement processes are going well. The problem is trying to consolidate the financial reports and this is where I have problems.

I have been using SAP ERP for approximately six years.

I rate SAP ERP a nine out of ten.

We use the product for accounts payable and accounts receivables processes. It helps us analyze the throughput time between goods receipt and the completion of the entire accounts payable process. It identifies any delays or lags in the payment of invoices and ratios.

The product’s most valuable feature is a centralized system integrating different departments within the organization. It works much faster compared to other vendors.

SAP ERP lags a bit compared to Oracle for reporting features. Oracle provides predefined standard reports for vendor and customer-related financial statements. This feature could be included in SAP for creating reports adhering to standardized compliance requirements.

We have been using SAP ERP for three and a half years.

The product is stable. There are a lot of clients that maintain their systems for several years.

The product is scalable and suitable for large enterprises.

The technical support services are good. However, they cannot provide solutions for certain problems.

Positive

The deployment process requires a lot of resources and is expensive. It takes a lot of time to configure and deploy SAP applications. We need around 50 to 60 skilled resources for configuration setup. For finance, we may need another 50 resources. The process involves technical modules. Thus, we need expertise in finance and cost to handle the functional models, including warehouse, production, and plant maintenance. SAP provides good support services to help us set up the application.

The deployment time depends on the size of the data records and their processes. Some implementations might happen for years together.

The number of engineers and architects required depends on the existing data and processes. On average, we need a minimum of 10 executives to work on each module. We have around 20 modules in total. We may need overall at least 100 resources to implement the product.

The product has high pricing. They provide a yearly basis license. The customers have to pay extra costs for support services.

I reviewed some articles and blogs and interacted with IT consultants to learn about Oracle.

SAP ERP provides a lot of features compared to other systems. It is a well-integrated and feasible solution. It is a perfect solution if you can afford to invest in SAP. They are improving themselves rapidly. They provide all the organizational level services, including transaction, dashboarding, reports, automation, etc. They need to improve a few processes, including transformation, intelligence, governance, modeling, etc.

I rate the product an eight out of ten.