SAP S/4HANA Reviews

I am a system integrator. We recently implemented it for a customer, and they are finding it easy to use.

We implemented the remote version of S/4HANA on Azure, and it is working well for the customer.

My customers use it for all functions, including finance, sales, and Oracle. 

They are using it for all six core functions: 

• Source to pay
• Record to report
• Order to cash
• Procure to pay
• Plan to produce
• Core finance. 

They also use it for other pharma operations.

The cloud-based feature of Microsoft Azure has been very valuable. It is easy to implement and use, saving the customer a lot of effort on infrastructure. The product is also very stable, and the customer is comfortable with it.

The customer has worked with previous products, and this one has brought a lot of comfort in terms of infrastructure handling. The infrastructure is managed by a different team, and the users are also comfortable with the interface. So far, they are happy with the product.

The product is user-friendly. The user interface, now called Fiori, is very stable. The product also has a lot of interfaces available to interact with cloud products, and it supports all kinds of integrations, so the amount of customizations needed from customers is greatly reduced.

The infrastructure resources are also effectively used. It is very optimized; used in a very optimized manner. The maintenance and handling of the infrastructure are very well taken care of with S/4HANA on Azure.

The interface could be improved with more Fiori applications. There are still a few applications in SAP GUI. I think SAP is working on this, but it will take time. 

Additionally, the admin interface could be improved. Since the admin is not directly an end-user, it may not be in focus, but if the customer's team is managing it, it would be helpful. 

Bringing all the admin applications into one place would be very helpful for customers to lock this down and use it internally for management.

In future releases, I would like to see a centralized admin interface. A lot of admin activities need to be done at different places. Apart from that, the pain development and change management for developments could be improved. 

Some features are not yet available in the new interface, so bringing those in would make it easier for customers to manage from the admin side.

I've been working with this solution for the last five to seven years. I work with the 2022 feature pack zero.

Since SAP brings new versions, I would rate the stability nine out of ten as of now.

So far, the performance is fine. No major hiccups or conversations have been reported that would cause the product to fall into any category of material issues. 

All stability and performance-related aspects have been taken care of. We have positive feedback from the customer side in terms of performance and stability.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Scalability is quite flexible. With the solution on Azure or other cloud products, scalability options are very flexible. The backend hardware technologies have improved on the cloud side, so many options are available now.

In my last five years of experience, all the customers I've seen are on S/4HANA. I've hardly seen anyone use older versions. New customers are all getting on S/4HANA.  

Our customers are mostly enterprise-level businesses. 

The technical support from SAP is quite mature. It's been five to seven years, so the product is now getting into the maturity phase. The product support team is quite capable of solving issues on time.

Positive

For me, the initial setup is very straightforward. It may not be easy for the customer, but for the integrator, it is.

So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy. 

There were some generic issues in development, but the support from SAP was good, and they were resolved. All products will have some issues. The product support is good enough to resolve them on time.

Deployment time:

Implementing it for all the functionalities within the given scope took around one year, including various phases like development, quality assurance, and production. It depends on the scope, but with the current scope, including all planned interfaces and project management, it will be manageable.

We (my company) are system integrators. 

Deployment process:

We start with development, where all customizations are performed. It's then moved to the testing system for various tests like regression, unit, user acceptance, performance, and integration testing. 

Once approved and verified by the customer, it's taken to production for deployment. Then, there's minimal functional and engineering testing, followed by live production testing done by the end users. If everything is clear, we go live.

Since customers are adopting it and finding it valuable, in comparison to others, I can give the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive and one being cheap. It's not too expensive and not too cheap.

Additional costs to the licensing fees include maintenance or integration costs, depending on who manages it for the customer. Maintenance and support costs are general support costs for all products.

The product is mature and implemented in various industries. It's a very well-renowned and established product. They can go ahead and implement it. It depends on how they choose the integrator and the support for this product. 

The product is very stable, and finding integrators and support will not be difficult.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Most of my clients use it for controlling finances and for BI (purchasing and sales). Depending on the activity, we can also use it for logistics and plan management, like in energy module ISU — it's a specific module for energy, oil and gas distribution.

There's lots of improvement to be made on the user experience level and digital work. Since SAP is a transactional software, you can't use it like Salesforce. It's not easy to create automated reports.

For the user experience, they can try to get out of the strictly industrial point of view because it's an IT solution. It's not always the most fun application the use. It's pretty complicated and if you're not fully trained for it, it isn't easy to understand how it works.

I have been using it for the last four years.

S/4 HANA is the most stable solution provided by SAP.

The scalability is very good. That's the good thing about the S/4 HANA solution.

Support is quite good; they know their solutions. Over the last few years, they changed all the resources that were on the first S/4 HANA program. They're pretty efficient. There's always a contract with them for support. Normally, regular support is done internally, but when it comes to SAP bugs, when we can't solve the problem, we go back to SAP support and can rely on them.

Setup is complex. SAP is the biggest ERP on the market. We like to say it's the Rolls-Royce of ERPs. So it can't be deployed without a minimum of 10 to 20 consultants, plus approximately the same kind of resources on the business level.

Licensing is quite expensive. It works with yearly licenses and it's ugly. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

For maintenance of the solution, the number of people needed depends on how many users you have. Basically, now we use TMAs most of the time, but for smaller conditions, it would be a minimum of 10 people. It depends on the number of modules that you have. For example, with my last clients, we had a regional team of 20% plus an external team of more than 10% and it was really not a big deployment or activity.

For full deployment, the time it takes depends on the complexity of the deployment and the number of processes to review. In a normal situation, basic roll out would be between four to six months and a global project or program can take up to three to five years. It also depends on the number of sites because you have to deploy the solution, and once you have the core model, you need to perform a roll out on every site and do all the necessary training. I've worked on programs before that lasted five or six years with major companies where there were over 700 sites. It's difficult to do more than 50 or 60 sites per year, and even with that, it's complicated. With one of my prior clients, it was a 10-year program.

With regular companies, there are more than five to seven thousand users and with major ones, on my biggest project, we had 30,000 users worldwide.

The solution can be used on all levels.  On the IT level, it's a tool that we deploy to enable the tracking of client processes, but it can be used on every level. It's commonly used for finance control, sales and purchasing because those are the biggest parts when managing client TNLs. Depending on the activity, if you're not a big client, you can go down to MRP level, managing all the logistics and all the productivity. It can be used by everyone.

I use the solution in my company, which is basically a warehouse enterprise. The solution optimized our company's core business processes, considering that it used to be a legacy SAP system, which migrated to a new system. The tool is used for consolidation purposes and for rolling out to multiple countries in Europe.

There are products equivalent to SAP S/4HANA available in the cloud, but simplification is a part that I feel is very important. The product needs to be simplified. SAP S/4HANA is like a monster, while Salesforce is easy to implement and is like a SaaS product. SAP comes in a SaaS model with S/4HANA cloud.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA for around eight months.

It is a stable solution. The problem with the tool is that its complexity is very high. In the tool, the business process complexity is very high, and so either one should accept SAP's best practices or change SAP according to the business, but there will be a lot of support tickets raised after that, which leads to a lot of delay in the process, and you won't be able to do things on time.

During the role of the product across multiple countries, the first one was successful, while the second one led to losses, and the project in the third one was shelved.

There are around 3,000 people in my company who use the product.

The product is regularly used in my company.

The solution's technical support was from a third-party company, and I found that they lacked in the area of knowledge since it is managed by juniors while others were just running the show from the front end, leading to a disaster.

If the tool is deployed on the cloud, it could take a maximum of ten to twelve weeks. On an on-premises model, it takes its own course in terms of the time required for the deployment phase to be completed.

The product's deployment phase was a massive transformation program, so we could not build it on our own in the company, a reason we had to look for third-parties, like Wipro, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, IBM, PwC, or KPMG, who could help us.

A third party, Infosys, takes care of the team required to manage the maintenance and deployment since it is a massive transformation project.

The product's deployment phase is done with the help of a third-party consulting firm.

The problem with SAP is that it offers two licenses, namely runtime license and enterprise license. If you have a runtime license, then you are doomed since you can't take any data out from the tool. The product's licenses are expensive.

In terms of the impact of the real-time data in SAP on our company's decision-making, I would say that we are heading towards building reporting or analytics solutions, but we haven't started with it yet.

There has not been much difference in the area of workflow efficiency from the use of the tool.

In our company, we are shifting our roadmap from the legacy ERP system to a new ERP, and I would say that it is the only difference, but apart from that, there is not much difference. SAP’s Fiori UI in the tool is quite interesting.

All the processes in our company are the same. For example, the procurement, delivery, and finance stages are all the same, and there is not much difference.

It is a complex solution, and the project for which it was used was shelved. With SAP S/4HANA, the project could go live only in one country. SAP S/4HANA messed up the implementation process in the second country because of which in the first quarter, the company went into a negative revenue. After the implementation of the product in the second country was unsuccessful, my company did not go ahead with the use of the tool in the third country, after which the project was shelved.

If a business is very massive, then I can go with SAP S/4HANA. I don't recommend SAP to businesses that are small to medium.

I rate the tool a one out of ten.

We use the tool  as an ERP transactional system for financials, logistics, human resources, sales, distribution, and billing.

SAP S/4HANA dominates around 70 percent of the ERP market in Chile, and I believe this isn't merely coincidental. I've always maintained that if someone believes SAP S/4HANA lacks a certain functionality, they haven't explored it thoroughly. However, there's a widespread lack of understanding regarding its full potential and how to configure it.

Many businesses in Chile and elsewhere underutilize SAP S/4HANA, limiting its use to basic tasks like document entry or accounting, which is unfortunate considering its capabilities. SAP S/4HANA offers integration, consistency, security, and potential for user-friendliness. Nonetheless, initiatives like Fiori and SAPS/4HANA seem to be moving in the right direction to address this issue.

I can discuss one of our largest clients, a utility company. They specialize in generating and commercializing electricity, primarily for industrial customers. They utilize the tool, encompassing standard ERP features like logistics, human resources, and financials, and integrating their core business processes into the entire system. It adds great value to the company.

For instance, by integrating metering systems online into the ERP system, all billing and operational processes become online. The system connects with the CRM system and incorporates the physical network. Let me provide an example. If there's an outage at your home, contact the utility company, and the tool will identify your location and provide access to relevant client information.

The entire process is seamlessly integrated into the system. When the affected individual is eventually billed, they will receive a discount due to the outage, as per our loss analysis for such situations. It's all integrated, making the experience seamless, efficient, and pleasant for everyone involved, from the call center staff to the customers.

The solution's most valuable feature is integration. Our core data services are very powerful, and they allow a whole new reporting capability that was not present before. Another valuable feature is energy data management, specifically the processing of metering information from utilities, which has benefited our organization the most. It allows us to monitor real-time consumption data.

The use cases I mentioned before all involve customization in terms of parameterization and custom developments. We strive to keep things standard, but there are cases where centralization or more specific development is needed. Through both of these means, we've successfully delivered projects and provided meaningful solutions to our customers.

I think the user interface still needs improvement. While efforts are being made to enhance and make it more user-friendly, there are still shortcomings. Fiori is a great step forward, but work must be done. So, I believe SAP S/4HANA should focus more on improving GUI access. We also had a difficult time migrating the fixed assets. 

I have been working with the product for seven years.

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. 

The tool's deployment is straightforward. 

The solution is worth its costs. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. If your business processes are clear, the implementation will be straightforward. If not, it will not. Don't try to accommodate the system to your business process; instead, try to align your business processes with what's defined in the system.

SAP S/4HANA is the predominant solution from SAP, replacing the earlier SAP ECC. It's widely used for overall enterprise resource planning, including running banking operations and other enterprise functions.

My client's organization uses SAP S/4HANA for real-time analytics and decision-making by leveraging embedded analytics that are part of S/4HANA. Some organizations integrate specialized BW layers or their own data house layers for analytics, using SCC or BI for visualization. Others extract data from SAP S/4HANA to other hyperscalers or providers to create visualizations.

SAP S/4HANA supports my client's business processes in finance, procurement, and supply chain management through end-to-end management. This is often done with other IT specialists or independently for smaller customers using SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA has been an excellent integrated solution for my clients, technically much easier to manage than the ECC solution. The embedded AI layer helps adopt intelligent AI directly within business scenarios, which has been very beneficial. These features enhance operations and efficiency for my clients.

Extensions to SAP S/4HANA have room for improvement, especially in integration with low-code/no-code platforms. Creating these extensions through Fiori transactions is more tedious than customers would like. Although the SAP build process has become more linear, further improvements could provide a huge benefit.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA since 2013.

It's a very stable system overall, but with new attacks targeting customers' SAP landscapes, the latest patches and versions must be applied. I would rate the stability an eight. 

The scalability of SAP S/4HANA is high, around nine. Typically, my clients are medium or enterprise businesses.

They are not excellent, but they are not bad either.

Positive

I would rate the initial setup of SAP S/4HANA as one because it is challenging. Implementing SAP S/4HANA involves integrating an organisation's processes, including different departments, geographical locations, and compliance requirements. Given the scale of these businesses, such as operations in multiple countries, it's complex and not meant to be simple.The physical deployment of SAP S/4HANA is not a challenge.

The deployment itself might happen within a day or even a few hours, given the accessible hardware. The time-consuming part is identifying the needed components, areas, services, and software. The actual deployment process is simple, but adjusting the software to meet your needs is complex. It's not the physical deployment of the application that is the problem.

SAP S/4HANA is usually deployed on the cloud through its own SAP
mechanism. This allows for deployment on both public and private cloud options.

Regarding pricing, I don't regularly deal with the financial aspects, but it is not a cheap solution.

When migrating to SAP S/4HANA, productivity initially dipped as organizations adjusted to the previous system. This is due to the need for change management and adapting to the new software. However, once the transition is complete, productivity significantly improves due to faster response times, a more mobile-centric approach, and better data handling. Overall, SAP S/4HANA helps users perform their tasks more efficiently.

SAP S/4HANA might not be able to address all business challenges directly, but other products can be integrated to fill these gaps. For example, difficulties like sustainability or energy rating do not have a direct solution within SAP S/4HANA. Similarly, areas like contact centre or customer call centre management are not directly part of SAP S/4HANA, but partner solutions are available to address these needs. 

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Most of our customers have their applications hosted on SAP. Therefore, they have stored the data on SAP S/4HANA database.

SAP S/4HANA is the preferred database because of its scalability, faster accessibility, compatibility, and other well-suited features for large data sets.

The product’s pricing could be improved. It needs a high CPU and memory to analyze and compute that data. Thus, it should be natively supported from the cloud platform. We should get the bundled image so installation and configurations are not done manually. All those should come as a bundle learning package. A virtual machine could exist to make everything available on a single deployment. That will save some time for any project timelines.

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

The product is stable.

SAP S/4HANA is scalable. We have enterprise-level clients.

The initial setup is fine since we have good documentation for reference. The deployment requires four hours to complete.

The product is not that cheap, not that expensive. It is costly in computing because these VMs have a huge CPU and utilization. We have a monthly billing, and there are extra costs for the license.

As for the interface, it always depends on the individual. However, there are some recommendations. Ultimately, it is up to the developer to decide how to implement the interface in the back end.

SAP S/4HANA is a good product, but anyone who plans to use it for their application should have the core skills required. It is not something that ordinary people can do, as it requires some expertise. When hosting it on the cloud, such as Azure, Amazon, or Google, it is important to take care of security policies, government regulations, and disaster recovery strategies. You need to plan your design and architecture accordingly.

Overall, I rate it a nine out of ten.

I have implemented many different versions of SAP S/4HANA (since 1511) with the latest version being S/4HANA 2021

Led Transformation Projects covering core processes such as P2P, O2C, R2R, A2R, D2O,H2R, etc.

SAP S4HANA could improve by having a more seamless easier integration, faster integration. The overall implementation timelines can be reduced by leveraging Agile methodology

I have been implementing SAP S4HANA for more than a decade now

SAP S4HANA is stable.

S/4HANA offers one of the best scalability options. It is one of the largest ERP solution globally supporting all Industry verticals.

The technical support could be improved.

Positive

None of the large-scale implementations of SAP S4HANA are straightforward. The ecosystem can be made a little better, to drive faster and simpler implementations, and reduce complexity.

I have been a consultant and an integrator, and I have hired and onboarded consultants and integrators. The number of consultants that are needed depends on the project, size, and scope of the project. It could be anywhere as low as seven or eight consultants and the number can increase to as much as 25.

The licensing models for On-Prem as well as Public Cloud versions are based on no. of users charged Annually. Apart from the Licence cost there is a component of approx 20% Annual Maintenance Costs.

Apart from Licensing costs there is a cost of implementation and associated hardware (in case of On Prem)

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to import master data. We use classic resolution to collect local US company material masters and align HQ material masters' numbers. We import FI/CO/MM/PP/SD IMG and opening posting accounts and stock. 

We use it to import transactional data. We collect purchase orders and sales orders into S4H 

We also use it to import security. We collect user roles and permission objects.

We provide training requirements for logistic modules for sales orders to intercompany purchase orders and make production orders for goods issued and goods received. Finally, we run production order confirmations for cost variants. 

We removed gaps for MRP planning, forecast data, and PIR purchase orders. We integrated overall sales commission collections and sales profits management. 

It's helped with business aspects and improved material planning and RMA processes.

It's helped with service aspects and improved customer service and spare parts management.

It's good for HQ FICO aspects. We consolidated P/L statements, cash flows, and income statements.

For supply chain aspects, we integrated the last puzzle piece for material control.

We found the solution integrated with HQ and local material number for batch orders to split several partial orders. 

For customer service and RMA views, material alignment or aggregate is evolving. The US can assign sales forecasts to distribute Asia-built finished parts. This business model can accumulate mass stocks for replacing parts and labor maintenance services. If sales order to shipment can align with the ERP platform, the materials to order can support visibility across Asia/the US/the EU. The integration not only speeds up order processes but also controls solid stocks and costs.

During parallel preparation of go-live processes, SAP B1 and S4H transactional data alignment can be difficult to track. The approach is to have the same sales order amount and quantity to compare the correctness so both sides are matched, according to FI concerns. For project purposes, we need to figure out if there is any solution or approach when considering data migration for sales orders and purchase order imports. Any resolution for an add-on program to validate reports can be useful. 

I spent six months in a S4H project implementation, including SAP business - one migrated into an S4H 1809.

We did not previously use a different solution.

We did not evaluate other options.