SAP S/4HANA Cloud Reviews

The business suite that I have got the most experience with is SAP, but they are making that transition into S/4HANA. With S/4HANA, they got both an on-premise and a cloud-based solution, so you can buy it in the cloud on a subscription service or you can have it on-premise. On-premises allows you to manage your own site solution, which a lot of big companies might prefer to do. But then Microsoft Dynamics 365 is also a cloud-based solution that you pay a monthly subscription per person fee — or whatever arrangements you can work out. I think NetSuite is the same way.  

Unfortunately, I have not been directly involved in developing any larger use cases for S/4HANA or 365 or NetSuite. That has been a frustration for me over the last seven or eight years. My move to do an independent consultant was actually to get back into the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) environment and the opportunities just have not been there to further explore the possibilities. It has been kind of frustrating because I have had to focus mostly on continuous improvement and other areas. But even though I spent 10 years in the SAP space, it seems like now I am too far away from where I should have been in working with the product. When I look at these cloud-based solutions in comparison, I have been following SAP and S/4HANA since it started. At least from my point-of-view, SAP is leaps and bounds ahead of anybody else in that space by far.  

They are not going to be a perfect ERP solution for everyone, but they look like they are going to try to stay as close to that as anyone can. What they are doing as a total ERP package can support the whole enterprise.  

The SAP online help is excellent. Their guidance and what they offer in terms of a roadmap for your implementation is a huge benefit from my perspective. I have gone through the Microsoft side as well on their Dynamics approach trying to work with 365, but what S/4HANA offers is a much more clear pathway towards implementation to me.  

When you start looking at IoT (Internet of Things), these cloud-based environments and analytics that those cloud-based solutions offer are unmatched and on the leading edge. It is going to be transforming for a lot of companies.  

It is my understanding — and not my experience — that they were having problems around the supply chain management. Some of the clients who bought it may have had some problems getting things to work properly, but whether it was the product or the users, I am kind of fuzzy on that. The claim was there was an issue with the supply chain management on the manufacturing side. There were a few hiccups that some customers may have experienced with the newer S/4HANA solution. I think all of that has been resolved over the past year. I have not looked back at that issue much recently, but that is because I have pretty much written off that I am ever going to fall back into that particular space in my business as I go forward.  

I have been working with products like this over the past 10 years. My work with SAP has just been spreading out over the last eight years. I work with it in the training environment and using the training version has different components of the system. I have gone through training courses on the parts that I use. Really, a problem management piece of it has gotten in the way of actually implementing the system in projects.  

From my experience and understanding, it has been pretty reliable for me and I haven't heard much at all about stability problems from people I talked to directly. The only supposed problem I had seen or read for anyone having to do with reliability was the supply chain issue some people claimed to have.  

In all, it seems to be a reliable solution.  

Scalability of SAP and any of the other products competing against them head-on should not really have any scalability issues unless it comes to budget.  

I have had no direct hands-on contact with the technical support other than what they provide online. I find what they provide online for technical support is pretty straightforward, to the point, and it solves any issues I might have. The guidance they built into implementing the systems is pretty clear.  

In the instances that I have dealt with personally, there is never an issue, but I have not been deploying on a larger scale.  

This category of products are all pretty much in the same price range. It would be hard to say that lowering the price would be an improvement for any one of these companies because they are all kind of comfortably competing in that range.  

The price of SAP S/4HANA varies based upon what you are implementing and what you are planning to turn on. I do not know the exact pricing right now as I have been looking at it over the last couple of years, but I have seen some pricing in the $129 to $159 range per user per month with the cloud-based solution.  

I have worked with all three of what I consider the major competitors. With S/4HANA, SAP is playing against Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Oracle's NetSuite.  

The advice that I would give to others looking into implementing the S/4HANA cloud is to prepare your organization on the front-end before you even go down the path of any ERP implementation. Get your organization right-minded in the beginning, then go down the path. You need buy-in and training. Companies talk about doing that, but they do not do that. That lack of follow-through is why they end up failing with their implementation.  

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the S/4HANA Cloud as a good, solid eight or nine. Choosing between the two, I go with eight. That gives them something more to shoot for.  

I am currently working as an SAP EWM consultant. I am also involved in sales and distribution, and I work with SAP S4HANA Cloud in supply chain management.

SAP S4HANA Cloud assists our organization with following due processes, making it easy for both internal and external audits. It provides flexibility that allows it to fit into our business requirements and needs.

The integration between SAP EWM and S4HANA Cloud is seamless. SAP's reporting capabilities are exceptional. Real-time analytics are also a strength, allowing analytics as long as data is posted in the system real-time.

The reporting aspect needs improvement, specifically in integrating the EWM and MM modules into a single report. Integration between flexible real estate and sales and distribution needs to be more seamless. Modules into revenue generation should integrate more easily with SD for better operational flow.

I have been dealing with SAP S4HANA Cloud since 2016 and SAP in general since 2014.

The technical support from SAP is quite good, although there is room for improvement. We receive quick responses when issues are logged.

Positive

SAP is perceived as expensive, but this is due to the quality of the product. There are also SAP products applicable to small to medium-sized companies, which are more affordable.

I would recommend SAP S4HANA Cloud to other businesses, including manufacturing, supply chain-related, and finance companies. However, its use in the banking industry might be limited.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use this solution to do a lot of mock up applications to mimic the user scenarios for a couple of our current clients. We try to use those scenarios to see how S/4HANA could be used as a system to better authorize the current client's ability.

I'm using version 1909. The cloud provider is AWS.

There are around 20 people using this solution in my organization.

We like the web portal or interface, which is great. The user experience is much better than the current traditional SAP landscape. Lots of business processes are simplified. There's less maintenance and less configuration effort needed. More importantly, the performance is good. Using the S/4HANA database could really dramatically improve the business performance on the database and could even change the business model overnight.

In terms of S/4HANA Cloud itself, we don't like the rate they charge us. It's pretty expensive. Maybe it's because of the individual instance that we paid for. I don't know whether this is also applicable for other commercial S/4HANA Cloud assistants, but for our training system, there are many bugs or things which didn't work in practice.

We didn't know how to figure it out, and if we posted any of those incidents to the SAP community through the SAP portal, usually SAP would ask what kind of license we had. It's not easy to facilitate the solution between us and SAP, so we have had to leave those issues open.

I've been using this solution for almost two years.

It's hard to say because we haven't implemented any S/4HANA solution for our clients, but from the experience of using that demo system, it's pretty stable. We don't have outages.

It's scalable. For a company that doesn't have experience with SAP, there could be more scalability. If they start a project from scratch, I think they could deploy the S/4HANA solution for the whole company. But if the company has the footprint of SAP in a test and it has pretty complicated IT solutions using the old SAP systems, starting with a small scope, like a pilot project, and then gradually enlarging the scale would be the best option.

I would rate this solution 3 out of 5.

I was not involved in the technical setup of S/4HANA, but from what I understand, it's pretty straightforward. It's almost like an out-of-box solution for us, but it also depends on what kind of use case you have for that system. If it's only for training, you probably don't pay that much attention to all the details, but if it's for a production system for the business, then there are a lot more things that you need to consider.

It all depends on what your needs are in regards to complexity of installment.

I would rate setup 4 out of 5, on a scale of extremely complicated to being very easy.

From the SAP documentation and the best practice webinars, the length of deployment depends on the size of the company and the complexity of their current IT landscape, and also how much data and volume that they want to deal with. It could range from half a year to a couple of years.

We only need one person to administrate the user access and give the IP address to everybody so they have access.

We are a consultant, so deployment was done in-house.

I would rate the ROI 3 out of 5.

Through the experience of another cloud demo system, we know that if we wanted to implement any SAP cloud solution to a potential client, like IBP or S/4HANA, that license cost would be really a big burden for many companies, even for a larger sized company. For instance, SAP charges the license cost per company's revenue size. So if you have a higher revenue, you pay a lot more than a medium or small company.

If clients want to have more sophisticated functionalities or add-ons, they pay additional fees.

I would rate the price 2 out of 5. It's very expensive.

I would rate this solution 4 out of 10. 

My advice is to evaluate the business case very carefully before implementing this solution.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud can be integrated with other non-SAP applications. Our company wants to elevate the core user experience and wants users to use the SAP favourite mobile applications.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud has improved our data management and user and stakeholder experiences. It has also enhanced our business partners, supplier and customer experiences.

In regards to storage, one of the other drivers that led us to implement SAP S/4HANA is that other SAP storage offerings, such as RISE with SAP and SAP BTP, do not offer the same user and customer experience or proper data management. As a result, it's difficult to find available competencies.

I like the SAP offerings and the standard best practices included in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud version.

Another valuable feature is the private cloud. If you are on a private cloud, the SAP S/4HANA allows you to use a desktop PC and customize the workings to your business needs. In addition, with SAP S/4HANA, you also have the choice to select your own Hyperscaler.

A challenge with SAP S/4HANA is that the proposition by SAP does not match the value realization. For example, SAP proposes more value for the cloud offering with RISE with SAP. This same approach should also be realized to the fullest extent for SAP S/4HANA.

We started the implementation of SAP S/4HANA in November 2021. 

The product is stable. It's not challenging, especially with extensive testing and multiple iterations. However, there is always a possibility of issues or surprises, but the product is stable immediately.

In terms of storage scalability, if it is in the cloud, SAP S/4HANA Cloud appears to offer some direct phasing, down phasing, and scalability. But, I have yet to come across a scalability situation on the customer side.

We have a great contract with SAP, so we have no challenges getting technical support. We know that SAP technical support works per their policy and whatever has been defined in the cloud agreement. So, we can connect with an expert and usually have an answer within 48 hours.

Positive

The initial setup of SAP S/4HANA Cloud was complex and wore me and my colleagues out. Value realizations are complex, and it was difficult finding out the actual value realization.

The licensing process for SAP S/4HANA Cloud has worked well and is usually completed before I decide on a project. Also, licensing is confidential between the supplier and the customers.

Regarding setup processes, I believe that a company should be clear about its vision and goals. A company should ensure that the technology they want to implement aligns with the vision they want to achieve in the next two or three years. If these things align, they should adopt this technology and see how many competencies they possess. So, for example, if the company doesn't have the technical competency in-house, it may be better to offload these tasks by leveraging completely managed services via the cloud or SAP.

I would rate this solution an eight. I would have rated it a 10 had I successfully gotten a value realization in a simpler way.

Our company wants the data to be collected from SAP S/4 SSP, and then we want to send the data to the data lake. We want to bring to the world analytics on the data collected from SAP. This includes the structured and non-structured data collected from SAP and data from social media.

We were migrating from our in-house ERP solution to the solution, which was a more corporate-centralized solution. My role was to lead the team in mapping our processes with the central team. We aimed to find synergies and learn how to handle processes that weren't directly covered.

Sales data processing was cumbersome with many mandatory inputs. We normalized this by pulling the data out, manipulating it, and sending it back. We also had unique requirements for controlling product availability, ATP checks, and prioritization for certain customers. These were areas specific to our business model that we handled outside the tool.

I have been working with the product since 2017. 

Our Singapore team contacted SAP's technical team. I found them in tune with our needs and understanding from my limited interaction. They took time but provided solutions to meet our requirements.

Neutral

The solution helped us save money and time, especially as part of a global central platform. It allowed for standardized, optimized processes across all entities in our global organization. When one entity develops an optimized practice, it becomes available to everyone. This brings both tangible and intangible benefits.

The time it takes to see benefits varies. For a new optimization like procurement planning, it might take 12-18 months to see results. For shorter-term projects like monitoring investments, we might see the impact in three to six months. It depends on the complexity and scope of the project. You can't expect immediate results like adding spice to soup—it takes time to see the effects of these changes.

SAP S/4 Hana isn't cheap, but its value depends on how much you can leverage from it. It's not just about the system but how well your people are trained to use it and adapt to derive benefits.

No specific feature stood out as especially valuable. It's a well-established ERP solution, so all of it was good. We stuck to the original solution in some areas where we couldn't manipulate it much. Where needed, we used our development on an SQL platform, taking relevant data from the tool, manipulating it, and sending it back using interfaces.

We didn't use real-time analytics because we didn't need it. Our data refresh frequency of one to two hours was good enough for us. It wasn't about cost but necessity. We didn't want to load the system unnecessarily when our business needs were met with less frequent updates.

We used SAP S/4 Hana with other tools in our ecosystem. We extracted data through interfaces for multiple ancillary solutions. For example, we integrated it with our warehouse management system, not SAP's. We used real-time interfaces for some things, but for analytics like Power BI and SQL analytics, we updated data every one to three hours, depending on needs.

I'm a strong supporter of integration. You can't expect to have all the solutions on one platform. Different solutions excel in order processing, procurement planning, workflow management, or data analytics. Integration is the best way to combine these strengths.

Integrating tools with SAP S/4 Hana wasn't too difficult because we had a good technical team. It has standard interfaces for sharing critical data. It can be challenging without people who have in-depth knowledge of the modules and processes. But with the right team, it's just a matter of good design, testing, and rollout.

We didn't use AI features as our implementation was in 2017-2019 before AI became prominent. I haven't worked with other equivalent platforms, but from what I hear, the tool is among the top. Nothing is perfect, as it's all man-made, so I'd rate it an eight out of ten. 

We are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a cost ledger and reports.

The most valuable features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are the ease of use from the cloud, CapEx analysis report, and everything being connected together well.

The solution could improve by adding a planning model, such as BPC. Additionally, if we need to make changes in the profit center it has to be done manually. It is not connected to the cost center.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for approximately 10 years.

The solution is stable. However, we have some connectivity issues but this is due to our network and our factory being away from the city.

The scalability of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is good.

We used a contractor for the support in our company. We had some difficulties.

I rate the support from SAP S/4HANA Cloud a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We switched from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA Cloud because SAP S/4HANA Cloud has better connections to our models and is newer. Most solutions only last approximately five years and a switch have to change.

The initial setup of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is easy.

I rate the initial setup of SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten.

The price of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is expensive. However, the benefits are good. We did not purchase any upgrades.

The solution is very good, I love it. It is a complete feature set.

I rate the price of SAP S/4HANA Cloud a four out of ten.

I rate SAP S/4HANA Cloud a nine out of ten.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is very powerful compared to previous versions regarding enterprise process management, data retrieval, and reporting. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is way better than the previous versions because of the data architecture and new technology adopted by SAP.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud's robustness in data accessibility and reporting, GUI change, end-user experience, and accessibility on mobile have improved our organization. The traditional layout change of SAP is improvised on SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

The reporting that we are doing from SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a valuable feature. Also, SAP S/4HANA Cloud has improved the data retrieval time, system speed, user accessibility, and user experience.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud's customization can be improved. 

SAP S/4HANA Cloud can incorporate basic procurement, material management, and HR-related functionality like in other cloud-related services, such as SAP Ariba. The incorporation of these additional features could be a very good offer.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for the last five years.

I would give SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten rating for stability.

I would give SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten rating for scalability.

The initial setup is a bit complex.

We do see a ROI with the use of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

The pricing of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is on the higher side. Traditionally, SAP is always a heavy product for any organization.

We currently use a free version. We started with a very basic version around five years back and then did two upgrades. Around 2,0000 people are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud in my organization, and we have plans to increase the usage in the coming years.

My advice would be to evaluate whether your organization needs this kind of product because it is a high-end product and may not be relevant for a small-scale or medium-scale organization. Your business processes should be standardized instead of adapting the tool because we normally believe adopting the tool is the solution to our business processes or business problems. First, fix the business process-related issues, streamline and standardize them, and then go for this implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. When I compare SAP S/4HANA Cloud on-premises with SAP RISE, I feel there must be some more control available on SAP RISE.

Overall, I rate SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud has been used in manufacturing, for niche industries, such as automotive utilities, higher education, and oil and gas.

The most valuable features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are the detailed solution costing, integration, and built-in analytics.

The integration with third-party vendors could improve.

I have used SAP S/4HANA Cloud within the last 12 years.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a stable solution.

The scalability of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is great.

It is difficult to receive the correct answer from the support.

I rate the support from SAP S/4HANA Cloud a four out of ten.

Neutral

Other ERP solutions are significantly easier to implement, but SAP S/4HANA Cloud has its merit.

The length of time it takes to implement the solution depends on the environment. I have done 15 implementations.

I rate the initial setup of SAP S/4HANA Cloud a six out of ten.

The maintenance of the solution can be outsourced, done in-house by a selected team, or a hybrid of the two. Most companies have hybrid maintenance programs.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is not one of the top solutions when evaluating other solutions on the market. This solution is a bit rigid. 

I rate SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten.