SAP S/4HANA Cloud Reviews

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we are doing migrations, spin-offs, starboards, and implementations. We are doing end-to-end migration in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

BW for HANA features are valuable.

There are many valuable features with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has OLTP and OLAP together in the same system. OLTP stands for online transaction processing and OLAP stands for online analytical processing in simple layman terms. Previously, these two were different in ECC SAP S version. In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, both functionalities are available at your fingertips. The customer can get the very latest fresh data for anything they work with. This is very fast as it is an in-memory database.

It has an apps-based user interface where you can work on mobile devices, tablets, or computers. The alert mechanism and workflows are made very simple. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has extensive features. The full maturity model is on the finance side, the consolidation side, and the planning side. They are gradually incorporating all the models available in traditional SAP ECC into SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Currently, there are fourteen thousand plus apps available to work with in SAP S/4HANA Cloud twenty twenty-four twenty-three version. Each app is either a transaction or the combination of multiple transactions. It has three different types of apps: transactional, analytical, and fact sheet. Transactional apps complete operations such as creating a purchase requisition. Analytical apps provide reports from all purchase requisitions. Fact sheet apps provide information such as stock levels. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has become very mature.

Some of the use cases for SAP S/4HANA Cloud include the transition from ECC 6.0 to the S/4HANA version where they started by building out their finance ledger in S/4HANA, also known as Simple Finance, which allowed them to move their ECC systems, including order to cash and procure to pay functions into the S/4HANA system.

It began as an S/4HANA system only taking financial transactions, then part of a business line was moved fully into S/4HANA, and over time they are addressing other major systems managing regions like Europe and Asia, with a complete transition mandated by 2027.

The good thing about SAP S/4HANA Cloud is its scalability, performance, and great database compression, which far exceeds traditional databases such as Oracle, allowing for large data storage at reduced costs, plus faster real-time transaction processing compared to ECC 6.0.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is an ERP solution. We use it in multiple industries to maintain their process flows for financial, sales, procurement, and production processes. All these processes are integrated with each other. We use SAP S/4HANA Cloud to manage and integrate all these processes, one window operation as an ERP.

The solution's most valuable feature is the seamless integration of different modules into one solution. From an accounting perspective, the warehouse has two general entries. One hits the payable cycle, and the other hits the inventory cycle. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we are achieving that purpose in one window solution. In a single form, we are achieving two different purposes.

With other products, we have to input different modules in different ways. The integration is perfectly fine in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and we are achieving multiple reports. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has a build-based Android and iOS application. You can get the approvals, alerts, and dashboards on the mobile app. Since it's a cloud-based solution, there's no need for an on-premises solution and a fixed cost for the company.

The solution is perfect on the cloud. We had a lot of pain areas in the previous solution that we were offering to the clients. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has multiple functions that help us deal with complex scenarios in the production process. In the procurement process, there are multiple options to deal with different industry segment scenarios in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

I work with SAP S/4HANA Cloud with two major clients: one in the UAE and one in UK. I already work with the cloud-based S/4HANA and ECC.

Use cases also depends on the business process. It's personal to what the use of the previous business process was, what they want, what they get from ECC, and what they want in S/4HANA. 

Everything in S/4HANA is related to the business processes. It depends entirely on the customer's or client's requirements. If you want to check the software via ALV report, S/4HANA can deliver it. If you want to show everything graphically, S/4HANA can deliver that capability, too. 

If anyone wants to check data, like dashboards, S/4HANA also provides those facilities via Fiori apps. S/4HANA delivers everything related to the business process.

We currently leverage SAP S/4HANA Cloud for real-time analytics.

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we work on RFCs (Remote Function Calls). Overall, the dependencies on the client's requirements are similar to those in SAP ECC. The major fields in S/4HANA are the same as in ECC. I work on SD and MM modules, and they are integrated with each other via web services or IDocs.

S/4HANA is an ERP solution that is distributed in various modules. We have modules for financial business processes and a controlling module that manages costs. The materials management module handles purchasing and inventory management, while the production planning module addresses manufacturing business processes. 

There is a whole sea of modules for HANA, but I am an expert in only the materials management module. On the technical side, we have two kinds of consultants. One takes care of the cloud and on-premise infrastructure. We also have ABAP consultants who are programmers who define the logic. In S/4HANA, we have the technical side, which I'm unaware of, and the functional side. I am on the functional side. 

I'm the solution architect here, so I deal with the solutions proposed by the consultants. I am utilizing the S/4HANA, but my role is different. I'm not designing the solutions. I am managing the solutions the consultants propose and ensuring the quality of the solution.

I come from a functional consultancy background, and S/4HANA provides excellent procurement solutions for inventory management. One of S/4HANA's best features in the manufacturing module is the ability to calculate product costs.

SAP has substantially improved the analytics component of S/4HANA to provide business intelligence. S/4HANA is increasingly recognized globally as the best analytical tool available. You can connect S/4HANA analytics with cloud solutions like Ariba and SuccessFactors, so you can integrate S/4HANA upstream and downstream.

The SAP S/4HANA Cloud has greatly improved our business processes. With SAP hosting the backend, database (HANA), and the application, we get all new features and security patches seamlessly according to SAP's schedule. Everything, including certifications and integrations, stays up to date for the customer. We achieve almost zero downtime, which is very important. The cloud setup provides redundancy, so if something happens at one site, it's seamless to switch.

SAP has a specific product called SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) for analytics. This cloud-based tool is great for creating dashboards, drill-downs, and everything related to analytics. SAP has moved everything to the cloud now—SuccessFactors, the S/4HANA database, analytics, and more.

Generally, there's not much noise or many issues, but we sometimes open tickets. These are mainly due to underestimating business needs at the beginning of deployment or sudden changes in the business. For example, when we suddenly open branches in other countries, add many users or the business grows fast, we might need more memory or disk space. We sometimes underestimate our needs from the cloud. This isn't a problem with the cloud or the vendor but more about our estimation. We raise tickets for things like increasing memory, dealing with one-time errors, or issues with space utilization. We might need to increase resources or improve performance.

I haven't encountered any major challenges with SAP S/4HANA Cloud because working with the cloud is the most efficient and modern method. It serves our business well. However, we occasionally face minor issues related to the design of the server or resources. Sometimes, we must send a ticket and wait for results, which can be delayed due to business needs. But the escalation process is clear, and everything goes fine after we push for a fix. The cloud is the best recommendation for any new implementation.

The use cases are for ERP, for manufacturing, for sales, for finance, HR, material management. Normally, all the basic modules of any ERP package.

Right now, SAP uses the HANA database. It is a real-time database, or as SAP calls it, an in-memory database. For all current transactions, SAP has layered the database into different layers. All the current databases are stored in memory, which makes processing them very fast.

Secondly, the most important thing is that Oracle or Microsoft Dynamics still uses the RDBMS concept in the database. That's what any standard ERP has been using all this while. What SAP HANA does, the HANA database, is store it in a linear fashion. It's a linear database.

See, if I have to draw an analogy, suppose I ask Mr. X. He enters an apartment, and then I ask him to gather five books from five bedrooms. He has to run to each bedroom to get a book. And then I have another apartment where there is one big bedroom. That's what is a linear database. And there are five books stored in that one big shelf. That's the difference between previous RDBMS databases and the HANA database. So the response time is much quicker.

It takes care of very high-volume manufacturing MRP runs, where the MRP run is done across geographies. This kind of in-memory database helps out a lot. Then, the current database is stored next. 

The other part is that near-line storage. That's the second layer of the HANA database, where they store the not-so-current data. And the rest of the old data is stored in the data lake layer of the HANA database.

We are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud with different modules such as PM, FICO, and PS. These are the modules we are presently using.

Based on my recent experience, I have observed that Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) appears to offer a more mature and user-friendly approach
to financial transaction processing compared to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Specifically, Oracle's financial modules often provide a more intuitive
and streamlined interface for entering and managing financial data, which can enhance user productivity and reduce training time.

Oracle provides more control over subledger-level accounting rules through tools like SLA (Subledger Accounting), users typically see more granular
control and visibility during data entry and posting. Whereas in SAP S4 Hana transactions are posted directly into the Universal Journal (table ACDOCA), ensuring real-time impact across financials
and controlling. Offers simplified data models, eliminating many reconciliation steps between subledgers and the general ledger.

However, I must acknowledge that my exposure to SAP S/4HANA Cloud is relatively recent, and my current perception may evolve as I gain
deeper insights into the system's capabilities, configuration options, and best practices.

Real-time analytics is valuable when data is visible to all segments. Department heads receive reports properly with actual data. We are going to implement the analytical parts, as we are not using them now. The reports, figures, and facts are readily available to us at this point in time.

The solution is scalable.