SAP S4HANA is used as an enterprise resource planning solution.
I have been using SAP for more than 13 years and the new SAP S4HANA was not only a simple upgrade, they have made a lot of improvements. They have simplified a lot of the functions, the all-new interface gives users a better experience. The database itself is quite efficient in nature and it provides effective data queries. It is a good upgrade from the previous version of SAP R/3.
I have used SAP S4HANA for approximately two years.
This solution is stable. The application runs on hardware and if you are using cloud architecture it is stable. However, there are too many factors to clearly say this solution is stable because it depends on the environment. For example, where are you hosting the solution and how are you accessing it can impact the stability. If one of these many factors is not suitable then the solution as a whole could be determined to be unstable.
It is simple to implement SAP S4HANA. If you are already in this type of environment, then the transition is not very complex. However, if you do not then it can be difficult.
It does not matter what ERP you are using, whether it is Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, or others, and even locally made or customized solutions, it is always the change management that takes all the effort. It is never technology that comes in between as the bottleneck because whatever technology you choose, configure, design architect, it does the job. The issue is the mindset of people, how to change people, how to train them, how do you make them efficient, how they will become more fluent and adapt to this change? That is the challenge, it is never technology that falls in place as a bottleneck.
I have evaluated Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and other solutions.
When trying to improve, you either implement something new and then try to improve your internal process, or there is a change in business, market, product, or scenario altogether, or maybe a merger equation that you need something which is not there. It is always a gap between the demand and supply and that is the reason the flow happens. Otherwise, if everything is saturated, then it becomes fully stable, there is no need for any movement or change anywhere.
There has been a lot of changes in businesses recently with COVID, the entire way we do business has changed from the way we used to do business earlier. For example, in a manufacturing company, they could have had everything configured in a certain way, and then suddenly no one was able to attend the offices or building. This pandemic has placed a lot of restrictions and yet you have to manage everything, such as productivity, people, and their time. There have been tremendous changes over the past year and a half. If you look at any supply chain or any transport company, there is a change in requirements, reporting, monitoring, and objective analysis of each and every function. It is a process that is going on that will transform the industry, the outlook, the way of we are going to be working with people. Operations are shifting from a physical presence to remote working and virtually managing. Time, demand, and businesses keep changing, and then the software and different upgrades, functionality, will change too.
I am completely agnostic to any particular solution or vendor. My advice is if you choose SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, or another solution, all of them are equally good. They can be configured and can be customized. There is never a one size fits all solution, you will have to find what solution fits your particular business and use case. One solution might be the best for one type of use case but not work well in another.
I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.
