SAP S/4HANA Reviews

SAP has many functionalities and a high level of detail so that you can manage all processes in detail without any issues.

It would be very good to merge the SuccessFactors or other solutions with S/4HANA to make it one suite. They could have a single dashboard for all types of products. I have many embedded solutions. 

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

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

Six hundred users are using this solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

SAP needs to improve its support. They don't provide a quality response.

Neutral

I have used IBM and Microsoft.

The initial setup is easy.

There is an additional cost for migration.

Only one consultant is enough for the solution's maintenance. 

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our company implements the solution for customers in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. We manage transformational projects that include selection, upgrade, or replacement of systems that require ERP solutions. 

Our biggest implementation was for a chemical company's software hub that was custom-built on an AS/400 mainframe and they wanted to move to an ERP system.  After a six-month package selection process, we chose the solution combined with extensions provided by an implementation partner that added specific functionality and narrowed down customizations. 

Across all of our projects, there are 5,000 users of the solution. 

The finance solution and procurement functionalities are good. 

Items that impact the TCO should be improved because the solution is very complex to integrate and keep running. 

Integration with a portal or front end is needed. For example, the online collaboration part of SAP with vendors lacks functionality. Integrating with sales or service processes with a CRM or cloud for customers uses three different SAP systems. Customers typically choose Salesforce instead because the SAP system is not good.

There is a very large learning curve for different domains from an end user perspective. Some things are easy to understand and other things are complex. Users receive cryptic error messages when they do things that they do not fully understand. 

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable with no complaints from customers. 

On occasion, users get cryptic error messages that they cannot resolve themselves. Someone else has to assist which results in downtime from the IT side and that has a negative impact on business performance. 

Implementation partners handle issues with support staff and response times are very high. Support staff know the product in most cases and are good. 

It might take time for implementation partners to be notified of issues and then reach out to support for assistance. This support chain is expensive because the customer is invoiced based on the number of total support hours needed.

I rate technical support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup requires advanced knowledge and can take two to three days. In some cases, setup can take several days before demo mode is available.  

Implementation partners handle setups and our company handles project management and quality assurance from the customer's perspective. 

Customers do not manage the complex environment on their own but rather depend on service providers such as Deloitte or Capgemini. The price of operational support only makes sense or is efficient in instances with two or three FTEs. 

The solution often does not survive our shortlist round because it is very expensive when compared to other products. It is only appropriate or selected for very specific use cases and types of companies. 

In some cases, the solution is ten to twenty-five times more expensive than competitors like Dynamics because it requires licensing, cloud environment costs, and contracts for maintenance and support. 

Our company recommends various ERP systems depending on use case and customer environment. We have worked with Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Unit4, N4, Baan, and Vision. We work on transformation trajectories for customers who use ERP systems and want to replace, upgrade, or do a greenfield approach.

The solution is a good fit for use cases where customizations are required on top to cover sector-specific business needs, as opposed to custom greenfield implementations of Dynamics 365 with much custom development. The solution reduces the amount of customization that needs to be implemented.

Use cases for domains with no vertical solution built on top are not a good fit for the solution. 

The solution is complex to learn and user acceptance of NetSuite is ten times faster.

It is difficult to rate the solution. For some customers, it is a seven and for others it is a one out of ten. It really depends on the sector and fit gap between needs and business processes. 

There are many cases or exceptions where the solution is not a good fit, so I rate it a four out of ten overall. 

We use it for our financials and ERP.

It has got all our data more scalable, and it made it more workable for us. So, we're able to make things run faster, especially when our developer team was doing data modeling.

We're able to get all our processes flowing together. We're able to make all of our business processes talk to each other.

It should have more support. Documentation and support for mobile apps can be improved.

I have been using this solution for six months.

So far, it has been good. We had some problems with our customizations, but everything seems to be running fine.

Its scalability is fine. We plan to increase its usage and use it extensively.

All people who are using it are in IT. Some of them are in the finance department.

Their technical support is good. They were pretty knowledgeable.

We're new to that. We didn't use anything.

It was kind of complex because we didn't know the difference between the SAP Business ByDesign and SAP S/4HANA. It wasn't clear. SAP just has too many versions, and it was like, "Oh, give me a break, and tell me what to get."

For its maintenance, we have at least five people. They're in IT with different roles.

We used a consultant. Our experience was good.

We're not sure yet. I think it was six figures a year, over 100,000. It has straight-up licensing fees.

I would rate it an eight out of 10 because it has got great scalability. It has worked so far.

I'm a senior functional consultant and we partner with SAP. 

Previously, when a sales person had to register a deal, it meant logging onto Windows to look at the deals, now it can all be done from a mobile phone. That's a huge benefit for us. 

The best part of this solution is the Fiori design. 

The documentation for this solution can definitely be improved and I'd also like to see more support, more numbers of Android or iPhone apps.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

This solution is stable. 

The solution is highly scalable. We've scaled it more than 75% of what we initially had. We regularly scale and there's no excess consumption of resources or major tweaks required when we're scaling up. We have around 500 end users and we have a team of five or six people responsible for maintenance, including a system administrator. We use this solution extensively and will continue to expand our use of it. 

We had a good experience with technical support. They know what they're doing and the response time was good. 

We previously used SAP ECC. We switched because they discontinued maintenance of ECC and this is a new solution altogether. It didn't make sense for us to continue with SAP ECC.

The initial setup was moderate on the complexity side. Not too complex, but also not so easy. The deployment was done in-house and took several months. 

There are a lot of ERP solutions on the market - Oracle, JD Edwards, and the like, but when it comes to SAP, my experience is that once you implement the solution and you understand how it works, it becomes intuitive to work with. When you upgrade to a new solution or when a whole lot of changes come in, the user experience stays pretty much consistent.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

I am a consultant and SAP S4HANA is one of the products that I work with.

From a technology standpoint, the theory and analytics are fascinating.

When it comes to the delivery of features, I would like it presented in a more user-friendly way. Every year, when a new version is released, it comes with a very thick booklet of 300 or 400 pages and it is a little difficult to comprehend. This is something that should be simplified. A simple comparison between the older and newer version would be very helpful for customers and consultants.

The default UI has been the same for a long time and in my last few projects, I've found that it wasn't fast enough. 

I have been working with this product since version 1511 in 2015, about five years ago.

I am comfortable with its stability.

This product is definitely scalable. 

I would say that it is for medium-sized companies. For smaller companies, the scale of the project might be too large, so they may not be able to harness the complete power of S4HANA.

The support from SAP is excellent. It is very good, compared to other products.

The SAP Marketplace is a good source of support.

I have hands-on experience with a few other products that are on the market.

Compared to older versions, prior to S4HANA, it is very easy to deploy. Starting from a development environment, I say it would take about three to four months to deploy for a mid-sized customer.  

For ERP, I do not recommend anything other than SAP 4/HANA. For other applications such as CRM and planning, I may recommend a different product.

I think that the newest version is great and I think the idea should be to quickly push it to cloud completely.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are consultants who help supervise our customers' implementation projects. Two of our customers use S4HANA. The older ones are on the ECC platform.

We found that the implementing partners themselves are struggling with S4HANA's features. It's not an exact translation of the older ECC, so SAP has taken a new route to do things with S4HANA. Maybe it's a good product, but the implementing partners also like to have an in-depth understanding of the full feature set the product offers. There are areas where even the implementer has to go back to set, which takes time, so that's one of our major concerns.

The older implementations were cloud-based, but one is happening now in one of the larger utilities, which sells services to around 4 million consumers. That's an ongoing project that hasn't gone live yet. This will be the real test. In a year, we'll know, and we can give more feedback.

Another complaint I have is that the screen source is disjointed. When I say this, I'm speaking from a user experience perspective. I don't know the S4HANA database, so I can't say if it's good or bad. I am sure that S4HANA would have certain limitations compared to Oracle, which is the gold standard for databases. Maybe there are some challenges in the backend, but I don't dwell on those because I'm not a technician. But the graphical interface requires improvement, and its flow should be very smooth. 

Also, the Fiori app is very basic. They need to become richer because people tend to use Fiori to access the S4HANA application to save on license costs. Fiori gives you access because it's a web client, and they market it as an app. It's not really a full-fledged app, but the roadmap has to be cleared from SAP. And when its capabilities improve, it gives a native app experience when people use Fiori.

I haven't been using S4HANA for long. It's been two years now.

S4HANA is relatively stable, but it's not as stable as ECC was. ECC had a long time to mature, so S4HANA still has a few years to go before it can achieve the level of stability that we've come to expect from SAP.

We've primarily relied on the local implementers for support, and there are challenges whenever they need to refer back to SAP's own technical support. It usually takes longer than expected in many cases. Sometimes they're pretty fast, but they're usually not, which is a serious concern.

We've worked with three of the biggest products in the ERP segment: S4HANA, Oracle EBS, and Microsoft Dynamics AX. Microsoft Dynamics is pretty straightforward. It's not as complex and offers a good user experience, whereas SAP through Fiori gives a certain level of user experience, but that's not as good as what Microsoft offers. But the rich line where you go through the desktop license — that user interface is still cumbersome. It's not as user-friendly I must say. On the other hand, Oracle is the middle of the two. I won't say that it's as good as Microsoft's user experience. However, while it is a bit more complex than Microsoft, it's not as complex as SAP. 

I would currently rate S4HANA seven out of 10. We tell our clients that SAP's roadmap shows us that S4HANA will mature in time. It won't happen tomorrow. They have to make an informed decision whether they want to live with certain delays in getting certain fixes or go with another solution. SAP is such a big name, so half the time, people are willing to live with those delays with the expectation that things will get better in a year or two. SAP is a trusted name, and I'm sure they must be doing something now to get S4HANA up to speed. I hope they understand that.

The integration features of SAP S/4HANA stand out as the most valuable, surpassing those of other systems.

The product could be improved in several key areas, particularly in API granularity and ease of configuration. It is typical for new technology to initially lack the full functionality of older systems, as seen in every development cycle. In the Business Technology Platform (BTP) context, certain granular configurations available in S/4HANA, such as output determination, are not as easily replicable through current APIs. Previously, configuring outputs for delivery at a detailed level was straightforward. For example, one could easily specify output settings for regular deliveries. However, replicating this process in an API-driven workflow is currently more complex and less intuitive for business users. Additionally, there is no simple way in the new technology to verify if an output was successfully created and sent to a partner.

We have been using S/4HANA for approximately two to three years.

Overall, the stability of the solution is commendable. The core system demonstrates robust performance, maintaining operational stability in general use. However, there are instances where specific functionalities become less stable. These issues often stem from implementation-related factors, such as custom user exits, rather than inherent flaws in the software itself. For example, an order may fail due to a custom user exit, which should be considered an implementation issue rather than a reflection of the system's stability.

The scalability of SAP S/4HANA is highly impressive, making it suitable for companies of all sizes. Its flexibility allows for adding applications as required, enabling customization to meet specific business needs effectively.

The initial setup of SAP S/4HANA is inherently complex, with various factors contributing to its intricacy. While the software installation may be completed quickly, configuring it for practical business use involves a lengthy process spanning years.

Typically, an implementation partner is involved in this process. These implementers handle most setups, including addressing bugs or issues during deployment. They act as the primary contact with SAP for resolving technical problems.

I rate the product an eight out of ten.

This solution is installed in the customer's system, and we perform SAP Basis administration. 

The migration to SAP S/4HANA is hard.

We've been using it for one year. It is deployed on-premises and in the cloud.

At present, it seems very stable because it is in the cloud.

The scalability depends on the tier you have. You may need to pay more as you scale up.

I have 10 administrators and 7 customers using S/4HANA at present. Our objective is to scale, but it's difficult because customers are scared to migrate to S/4HANA.

We used R/3 before S/4HANA. We switched to S/4HANA in order to stay with SAP solutions.

The initial deployment is difficult, and migration is hard when big data is involved. For a medium company, the initial deployment can take six to seven months, or maybe even one year to get it done perfectly.

For maintenance, you would need two or three people for a medium company.

Depending on the client, we have deployed it ourselves or have done so with the help of an integrator.

It is an expensive solution. On a scale from one to five, with five being the most expensive, I would rate the price at four.

I would rate SAP S/4HANA at eight on a scale from one to ten.