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SAP Business One vs SAP S/4HANA Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP Business One
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
ERP (5th)
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Cloud ERP (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, they serve different purposes. SAP Business One is designed for ERP and holds a mindshare of 3.6%, down 6.3% compared to last year.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud ERP, holds 18.9% mindshare, up 12.5% since last year.
ERP
Cloud ERP
 

Featured Reviews

Ijlal Naqvi - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy but needs to improve in the area of BI
If I speak about a feature in the tool that helps with financial management, I would say that of all the products I have ever worked on, used, or implemented, the finance part is pretty much the same in all ERPs and bookkeeping software tools. Finance is a regulated thing. It has to generate financial statements related to all the accounts. All financial management systems will look into the ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. Generally the tool has two models. If the tool's in-house model is opted, then just one person is needed to maintain the product as an ERP administrator. If it is through a partner, then we usually have managed services, so you get access to a whole bunch of resources, technical, functional, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, or resources that you can have as part of the managed services contract. My company does not use much of AI with SAP Business One since it is pretty much manual now. It's still pretty much manual for business process enhancements and it still requires more of a consultative approach with more of a human touch. With SAP S4/HANA, there is a process navigator, process data mining tool that does help users since with the use of AI it provides answers to their questions. Recommendations are subjective to the requirements of the users. I would not recommend SAP Business One to a financial services institution or a bank. I would most definitely recommend it to a small family-owned business with about 20,000,000 of revenue, and that too in the area of discrete manufacturing. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
Sajid Farooq - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides seamless integration of different modules in one place
Certain add-ons like quality control, payroll, and HRMS are not part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. SAP S/4HANA Cloud doesn't provide a quality control module. SAP S/4HANA Cloud does not have its own payroll and HRMS system. The partners develop their own cloud and integrate with the solution. There are certain modules specific to some industries, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud doesn't deal with those modules. Every partner of SAP S/4HANA Cloud has to develop its own and then integrate and certify with that solution. We can't say that these modules are part of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. There is a little area of improvement that SAP has to opt for particular types of solutions like QC, payroll, and HRMS. The graphics of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are not user-friendly. They don't look like they belong to a branded solution that costs too much. The solution's user interface is not appealing or user-friendly. On a scale from one to ten, where one is bad and ten is good, I rate the solution's user interface a five out of ten. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has built-in reports that are hard-coated. We have to alter or modify built-in reports in different marking segments, but there are no options for that. We have to build complete reports from scratch, and SAP-developed reports are not used in the market. SAP should provide a tool for customizing its developed reports so that there should not be a process of reengineering or reinventing the process.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This is the most efficient ERP that is in the market right now."
"It's simple to use and very direct."
"Business One's best feature is that all the modules are integrated."
"SAP Business One has many valuable features. It is highly flexible and has a solid background in accounting that is localized in a lot of countries. This makes it very user-friendly for a lot of different situations."
"All parts for inventory control, project budget, accounting, and business information are valuable. It is very friendly to obtain information. It is also very easy to make the changes that we need. We have a developer with us, and he can make the required changes or rules."
"The solution is user-friendly in comparison with Oracle."
"Technical support is quite good. They are helpful and responsive. We are quite satisfied with their level of support."
"For us, the most useful feature of Business One is Material Requirements Planning (MRP)."
"The integration between SAP EWM and S4HANA Cloud is seamless."
"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."
"What I like the most about SAP S4HANA is how reliable and powerful it is."
"Real-time data analytics capabilities and the ability to integrate external tools like Qlik Sense are some of the most valuable features."
"Since SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a SaaS application, it is already providing a lot of standard out-of-the-box features."
"SAP is an extremely powerful ERP. In my past company, we used it on a massive large scale, and it was amazing."
"It is stable and scalable. In the S4HANA plain version, they have new dashboards and things like that."
"I like that it saves every transaction, so anything is traceable."
 

Cons

"The standard SAP Business One is sufficient for the Indian region. There is no need for further enhancement as custom solutions can be designed and developed to meet specific needs. For example, HR and payroll is not a standard feature of the solution, but they can be created as a separate custom solution. However, payroll is not a standard function due to the varying norms and regulations across India's 29 states and union territories. Therefore, a standard payroll solution cannot be provided by SAP to add utility and features. Adding it would lead to different versions of the solution and more complexity in managing them. However, it would be useful to have addons to cover the other states which have different regulations."
"Something which would be helpful to management and, from our vantage point as a user, would be to see a simple reporting tool."
"There is no dependency, the integration between the other applications."
"The extension of dashboards into mobiles is something which SAP Business One has to improve on."
"There are issues with inventory management and quality management."
"Our customers often request concurrent licensing, which is not available with SAP Business One. Adding this option would be beneficial."
"They have a web client now. It primarily does sales. They just added purchasing. It'll be far more effective when I have inventory and financials as well into the web client version."
"The reading and retrieving of data are slow in the system."
"The price is mainly suitable for larger companies, even then, there may be other, cheaper solutions. Additionally, this solution is the result of multiple acquisitions leaving room for there to be issues with performance."
"The system is very heavy and requires a lot of resources and a dedicated team."
"SAP promotes the cloud, but customers are worried about the security of their data. SAP suggests they have SAP S4HANA with RISE, which is a private cloud environment, but it is difficult to sell many of the customers on the cloud concept because of the privacy issues."
"The pricing is high."
"The solution's speed and dashboard could be improved."
"I would like to see enhancements in certain features."
"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 need more options for enhancing the system, especially compared to the features available in the on-premise version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP Business One is moderately priced."
"Business One's prices are really high."
"I rate the price of SAP Business One a seven out of ten."
"We feel that the licensing fees are a bit on the higher side."
"The price of SAP Business One is reasonable."
"SAP Business One is a cost-effective solution. The price is good and we pay for a subscription annually."
"We compared the Microsoft solution with Oracle NetSuite, as they have a price decrease. It is, however, not that much cheaper, and the price is comparable to SAP."
"I would rate Business One's pricing five out of five."
"The solution's costs have significantly increased, and we have not seen any anticipated cost savings."
"The pricing model can be complicated in certain scenarios."
"The pricing of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is on the higher side."
"The pricing is competitive with other products at that level in that category."
"The licensing process for SAP S/4HANA Cloud has worked well."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"S/4HANA is an enterprise solution that many can't afford. You must invest a lot to get the most out of it. It isn't cheap. I rate the price seven out of 10."
"The solution’s pricing is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Are there any advantages of SAP S4 HANA over SAP Business One (SAP B1) apart from the cost?
SaP Business One is a complete solution for business management. The software applications are broad, ranging from accounting to project management and human resources. It is very versatile and com...
What do you like most about SAP Business One?
It's user-friendly and comes with comprehensive manuals. So, it is easy to learn to use SAP Business One
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business One?
The pricing model of SAP Business One is average. It is neither too good nor too bad, and there is room for more flexibility in pricing.
What do you like most about SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
The manufacturing area is a good feature.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is very expensive, both to purchase and maintain. It's important to evaluate the costs of recruiting and maintaining trained personnel as it's not just a one-time payment yet requ...
What needs improvement with SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
The system is very heavy and requires a lot of resources and a dedicated team. It is costly to maintain, demanding trained professionals, which adds to the expenses. This makes the overall cost ver...
 

Also Known As

Business One
SAP S4HANA Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ego Pharmaceuticals Pty. Ltd
La Trobe University, Carrefour Comércio e Indústria Ltda, Delaware Consulting and Corning Inc.
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