SAP BW4HANA Reviews

SAP BW4HANA is used in our company for analytical purposes. My company uses SAP HCM with SuccessFactors for human capital management. SAP HCM is the core module in SAP S/4HANA, while SuccessFactors is an advanced layer of the cloud-based solution. SAP BW and SAP BO offer features like an on-premises product, and both the products are catered to users using SAP S/4HANA and SAP SAC, making them products that are leveraged and facilitated by customers who want to use some specific features.

Once you have the real-time data warehousing analytics and forecasting of the reports, depending on each and every quarter in the fiscal year, SAP BW helps fill the data and help us get the required data for the planning phase on the systems. The data warehouse part of the tool can handle the processing to generate reports in a few seconds, and it helps businesses make quick decisions.

SAP BW4HANA is a standard product that works as a very applicable system for our company. SAP BW4HANA aims to reduce all the problems and issues related to SAP BW. SAP BW4HANA is helpful in areas where my company sees any issues with the product, like the transaction data, SAP SAC, integration-related areas, or non-SAP aspects. The product is a stable and scalable tool. The cost of the product might be an area that might introduce some restrictions or limitations to customers, making it one of the aspects where improvements are required.

I have experience with SAP BW4HANA for three and a half years.

It is a stable solution.

The data warehouse part of the solution is always stable. While using SAP HANA In-Memory Database, I have seen that the product offers scalability and allows for the required customizations or changes. SAP offers stable products compared to the other ERP tools in the market.

It is a scalable solution.

Globally, there are many users of the product. My company deals with around three to four customers to whom we provide SAP BW4HANA.

You need to raise an OSS note or message to contact the technical support team. You can raise an issue by using the online support services provided by SAP through OSS notes or messages. SAP releases a node that can be deployed on the existing system to remove the bugs or issues if there are any bugs or any issues within the product that affect a particular business process.

SAP SuccessFactors is used for the company's human capital management, payroll part, and hiring. The tool is used for the overall workforce planning part.

Whether the product's initial setup phase was complex or straightforward depends on the line of business. If you operate in the retail process or FMCG industry, the tool does take some time. If you are from the manufacturing domain, your system can be ready within a couple of months. The setup process is something that depends on your line of business and how much data you have in your system. You will have more data if you are involved in the manufacturing of many products. For the FMCG industry or retail businesses, SAP BW is a very essential tool, but it takes around six months to get the system ready. The system can be made ready in only three or four months for manufacturing units.

After running through the implementation processes, the product goes live. The deployment process involves the need to identify the business scope, the overall business processes, and expectations, after which they need to get done with the documentation part.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises model.

For the on-premises version of the product, the solution offers a perpetual-based licensing model to its users. In general, SAP offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model to its users. The product's customers state that the solution is expensive. SAP is always open to negotiations with its customers.

The product has improved data analysis and reporting processes because it helps with the analysis and forecasting of reports. The product keeps the company's tool and landscape in place as it does not mix the organization's transaction data with analytical data. In our company, SAP BW4HANA caters to our requirements if we want to do anything with our reports by adding any key characteristics or figures to our data sources. The product can drill down to a deep level, ranging from company code-wise angle to G/L account number and cost element. With SAP BW4HANA, it is possible to get everything by drilling down at a deep level, and it helps my company come up with real-time business analysis and forecasting for the required decision-making area in our organization. The product also provides BO reports for dashboard development for some of the product's customers who want to see the dashboard area included in the reports. With the help of SAP and SAP SAC, some standard templates can be easily made available, as per the system requirements, which are good features for data visualization and reports since it makes it easy for the customer to identify what exactly is their business. The product provides details about sales, production, and what should be the focus of the business in the upcoming quarters of a year. In general, the tool makes it easy for customers to do planning and indulge in forecasting for the future of businesses.

The solution supports our organization's big data and real-time analytics in the area of decision-making. My company operates as a service provider, and we have seen that for each and every organization where we provide services, the tool has made available leverages for planning and forecasting, which helps in the area of quick decision-making. In the initial system, businesses have to extract data, after which they need to be involved in the planning and forecasting stages using a database view, SAP data with Qlik or Qlik Sense to make reports and then upload the reports by using flat files through the required databases consisting of Excel-based maintenance of such reports so that businesses can get help to decide on the outcomes on the basis of which reports were getting generated. The amount of reports generated by the product on a weekly or monthly basis has reduced a lot since it allows generating reports with a click, ensuring that the decision-making process is made faster for businesses. If you develop a report today, the decision-making process can be carried out tomorrow, after a week, or maybe after a few days.

To run any kind of analytical report, SAP BW4HANA with SAP SAC serves as a good product in terms of scalability and stability. The product also helps with the areas of planning and forecasting. The tool will offer its customers a good ROI if the product's costs are reduced.

With SAP Data Services and SAP Datasphere, you can have intelligent integrations and establish some connections that SAP BW4HANA provides to users. SAP has added various integration layers. The tool helps with real-time integrations.

I rate the tool a nine to nine and a half out of ten.

We use the solution to build up complex queries that support data models and reporting.

The solution saves time and cost. Our dependability on SAP has reduced because we use BW4HANA as an intermediate system that works as a data source for different tools. We don't have to connect the other tools to SAP directly. Our data is secured. BW4HANA is like a staging environment. We can use it to supply data to other programming or reporting tools.

All the features are important. BW queries, BW views, calculation views, and calculated columns are valuable features. InfoCubes and InfoObjects are also valuable features. The product speeds up the data read cycle.

There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP. Users must be able to deploy the pipeline and pull the tables directly.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten. The stability has some scope for improvement.

The tool is highly scalable. I rate the scalability a nine or ten out of ten. About seven to eight developers use the solution in our organization.

We have integrated SAP with Azure. We have migrated all standard tables and the output of standard reports on Azure. A different team in our organization coordinates with the solution’s support team to resolve the issues we face. I will recommend the solution to others. If a huge amount of data needs to be moved around for analytics purposes, we should choose SAP BW4HANA. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use SAP BW4HANA as our data warehousing solution. We pull data from different sources and extract it into the central data warehouse. We analyze and visualize it using analytical engines such as Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud.

The solution seamlessly integrates with SAP products but lacks other advantages. 

We use it because underlying SAP products are compatible with easy integration.

We tried integrating SAP BW4HANA with several platforms, but none worked properly. It lacks customization options. It's neither flexible nor elastic, making simple job creation difficult. There's no support for developing data cards or similar functionalities. Its data management and endpoint data governance features are lacking. 

We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports.

The product roadmap and features of SAP BW4HANA are ugly and need improvement.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three or four years.

The product is stable, but if it fails to meet the basic needs. It doesn't support my development lifecycle for the data warehouse.

The solution is not scalable. 15-20 different departments are using it because there is no other solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability minus five out of ten.

There are no support issues. The overall product has concerns, including its dimension, roadmap, evolution with the cloud, and integration with non-SAP systems. Maintaining insight into these matters is crucial, and support helps to address them.

It's been 10-12 years since SAP BW4HANA evolved from its older versions, but the product hasn't improved much. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Snowflake, who continuously evolve their products, SAP BW4HANA lacks seamless integration with third-party connectors. This absence of support for good integration tools suggests a monopolistic approach. Simple integrations take excessive time, leading to low business efficiency. SAP's core applications are highly customizable and purpose-built, with continuous release cycles that align with market trends.

The maintenance of the solution is challenging due to its complex architecture. However, its dynamic design and comprehensive features make it unique. Even a minor with database knowledge can significantly improve the schema creation process.

I don't recommend the solution. It's not fair to compare bananas to oranges. There's no comparison. SAP doesn't fall anywhere close to other vendors.

If you are a static organization with basic SAP applications in the underlying architecture, SAP BW4HANA will be a better choice. However, with the evolution of data and the increasing amount of data being collected, along with emerging applications, it's not advisable to use it. It will complicate your life, leading to disappointment for your business and SAP's overall strategy for the organization.

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

It is a data warehouse product. It is used to extract data from source systems, unify it, and gain business intelligence.

I like the reporting features of the solution.

The tool is not cloud-compatible. It is an on-premise tool. SAP is bringing other tools into its place.

I have been using the solution for ten years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool is stable.

The product is scalable. On-premises systems cannot be scaled easily, though. Cloud solutions are easily scalable. Approximately 200 to 300 people use the solution in our organization.

The tool was implemented in my company 15 years ago. For the last 15 years, we have been in constant touch with SAP.

The initial setup is straightforward. The administration team does it. The team buys the licenses from SAP, downloads the software, and installs it on SAP servers. The deployment did not take more than one day.

The deployment can be done in-house. Our organization pays SAP, and we download the software and install it. It’s straightforward.

The product is free if we have the ECC license.

The product is not relevant anymore. Other modern tools are better than SAP BW/4HANA. I will not recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

We use the tool to analyze data from various sources, such as ERP. 

I like the tool's robustness and security.

The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.

I have been using the product for more than five years. 

The product is stable. 

The solution is scalable, and my company has more than 2000 users. 

Technical support is knowledgeable and helpful.

The setup was reasonable, with no major issues. Our SAP team shares responsibility for maintenance.

We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.

I advise others to design requirements carefully before importing data and do incremental refreshes instead of full uploads to save resources. We can integrate non-SAP data sources using XML data exchange. It's important to plan work well and design solutions properly. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

The real-time analytics capabilities are good, but we often move data to a different platform for analysis. Overall, SAP BW4HANA provides a stable, robust, and scalable solution that integrates well with various systems, allowing us to consolidate data from different places.

We use SAP BW4HANA for revenue reporting. 

We can get good visualization and less redundant data. 

The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers. 

I have been working with the product for six months. 

I rate SAP BW4HANA's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. 

SAP BW4HANA's deployment is not complex. You need five to ten people to handle the maintenance. 

SAP BW4HANA has helped us save time and money. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

SAP BW/4HANA acts as a singular point of service for the enterprise data warehousing platform in order to consolidate and generate a single source of truth for organizational-wide data analytics and insights. 

The solution has been in use for many years and has undergone some changes since its initial implementation.

The system currently has a considerable number of users who access analytical reports and dashboards on a regular basis to aid them in making informed business decisions. Moreover, ad-hoc reporting and analytics are commonly carried out using leading industry tools, which provide flexibility in generating on-demand reports. Visualization and dashboarding solutions are also available for users to present the data in a meaningful way, with popular options including some of the widely used tools in the market.

The system's user-base is both active and vast, with a strong focus on business operations. We conduct training sessions to onboard users during the implementation of business requirements as part of packaged project delivery, including the realization of the solution, user acceptance, Go-Live, and post-Go-Live phases. These training sessions provide comprehensive end-to-end guidance on using the tool, we also conduct knowledge-based sessions to ensure that the users are well-versed with the tool's functionality. Additionally, an infrastructure team is in place to provide support for the application.

With SAP BW4HANA's ability to process large volumes of data in real-time, organizations can make more informed business decisions faster. The solution also provides a single source of truth for data, improving data accuracy and consistency across the organization. Additionally, the integration with leading visualization and dashboarding tools allows for a better understanding of data, further supporting effective decision-making. However, successful implementation of SAP BW4HANA requires a well-informed and experienced team to ensure that it is rolled out effectively and efficiently.

One of the unique features of SAP BW4HANA is the out-of-box preconfigured business content information models and metadata solution that caters to different lines of business. This solution can be customized and enhanced according to the customer's specific business process and industry requirements, which sets it apart from other data warehousing solutions.

The toolset provided by SAP BW4HANA is comprehensive and can connect to various data sources, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. It also supports historical trend analysis and real-time reporting, enabling users to gain insights and context from their data.

SAP is facing tough competition in the data lake and big data analytics market from other established vendors, such as AWS, Databricks, and Microsoft Azure Data Lake, among others. According to Gartner peer review insights, most customers prefer SaaS-based platforms offered by these market leading vendors.

Although SAP has its own data lake solution, SAP IQ, it lags behind market leaders in this domain. SAP is working to enhance the capabilities of SAP IQ to bridge the gap, but it still has a long way to go before it can compete effectively with other players.

To stay relevant in the ever-evolving IT landscape, SAP needs to adopt an open environment and allow third-party applications, such as Azure Synapse Analytics, AWS Redshift, and Google Big Query, to connect natively with its flagship enterprise warehouse solution, SAP BW/4HANA. This move will help SAP become the market leader in enterprise warehouse solution.

Many customers currently rely on third-party integration solutions to integrate data from various sources with SAP BW/4HANA. Enabling integration with third-party applications through cloud connectors and open-source APIs can enhance the capabilities of the solution and increase its appeal to customers.

I have been using this solution for over five years now, which has given me a deep understanding of its capabilities and limitations. During this time, I have been involved in multiple projects that have leveraged this solution, including implementing new functionalities, improving performance, and troubleshooting issues.

I have also seen how the solution has evolved over time with new features and upgrades, and I have kept up to date with the latest trends and best practices in the field to ensure that I can maximize the value of the solution for my organization.

Overall, my experience with this solution has been very positive, and I feel confident in my ability to use it effectively to support my organization's data warehousing and analytics needs.

Despite being in existence for over 20 years, the SAP Business Warehouse solution has persevered as one of SAP AG's finest products. It has continuously progressed in line with SAP's enterprise data warehouse strategy roadmap. As part of this strategy, SAP advocates for an enterprise-wide consolidated data warehouse solution to serve as the authoritative source for all reporting needs, including financial, sales, workforce, departmental, and procurement reporting.

The setup process may be prolonged and intricate due to the organization's size and level of maturity. However, once the system is operational, the process runs seamlessly.

The present-day configuration of the enterprise data warehousing solution, encompassing SAP BW/4HANA on cloud, boasts exceptionally flexible computing and memory capabilities. Leveraging SAP HANA as an in-memory engine, expanding the solution can be accomplished rapidly and smoothly, leading to enhanced performance at the application layer.

As the organization grows and expands, it has initiated plans to scale up its usage of the enterprise data warehousing solution. Several business units have already begun migrating to the latest operational system, with a major program currently in progress. Upon the completion of this business-wide consolidation, a substantial number of users are expected to leverage the solution. To ensure the enterprise data warehousing solution remains aligned with the organization's future needs, a strategic direction must be established. This could include implementing a cluster data warehouse solution or an agency data warehouse solution, based on user footprint and performance.

Due to the substantial number of employees within the organization, it is challenging to estimate future usage levels. It is noteworthy that each employee may potentially access the system at some point. Despite this level of uncertainty, the present architecture has exhibited its resilience in managing considerable user volumes without causing significant performance degradation. It is critical to recognize that no system can achieve complete perfection.

The organization has a support team responsible for day-to-day operations. A third-party vendor provides support for application maintenance, security, user authorization, and other related tasks. Additionally, a few internal consultants handle other aspects of the day-to-day support activities.

Positive

The implementation of the data warehousing solution was carried out in a streamlined manner, with the aim of creating a single platform for enterprise-wide reporting.

The initial approach involved establishing analytical reporting for the primary lines of business, followed by the phased rollout of the reporting solution to other areas within the organization. The ultimate goal was to implement the reporting solution across the entire organization, ensuring comprehensive and accurate reporting capabilities.

I'm an independent contractor on the project.

The platform provides a centralized and unified data platform that enables businesses to manage and govern data more efficiently. This can result in higher-quality data, better decision-making, and increased productivity.

In-memory databases and advanced analytics capabilities can help businesses gain deeper insights into their data, leading to better decision-making and increased revenue.

The organization previously had a legacy setup for its data warehousing solution that did not fully utilize the capabilities of the in-memory application. However, in line with the organization's digital transformation and cloud-first strategy, a decision was made to migrate to the latest cloud-based solution hosted by a third-party vendor.

The migration process involved careful planning and execution to ensure a smooth transition from the legacy setup to the new cloud-based solution. While the details of the licensing arrangements for the migration are confidential, it is important to note that the organization's decision to move to a cloud-based solution aligns with industry trends and best practices in the field of data warehousing.

By leveraging the capabilities of the cloud and the latest technologies, the organization can now benefit from a more scalable and flexible data warehousing solution that is better suited to its evolving business needs. Additionally, the migration to the new solution has enabled the organization to fully utilize the capabilities of SAP HANA and take advantage of its in-memory computing and analytics capabilities.

On a rating scale of one to ten, I would give this solution a nine, acknowledging that it is a robust data warehousing solution. However, in the current landscape of digital transformation, there are certain features that seem to be lacking. With various complex systems, multi-stack architecture, and multi-cloud hyperscalers involved, it is essential for organizations to have a comprehensive data warehousing solution that can aid them in making informed business decisions and drive success. SAP has room for improvement in this regard to make their product a more holistic data warehousing solution.

It's important to have a well-informed and experienced team when rolling out this kind of application. For a Greenfield implementation, you will need skilled business analysts, architects, and functional solution specialists who can translate functional requirements into detailed designs. Additionally, a seasoned technical specialist will be necessary to design and roll out the solution.

When undergoing a migration, it's imperative to consider additional factors beyond technical challenges. These may include converting third-party legacy artifacts, connectors, and data. Furthermore, aspects such as change management, data migration, governance, and security must also be taken into account when implementing an enterprise data warehouse solution.

As a user, I use the solution for BW data modeling, customization, remodeling, process changes, and creating queries, workbooks, and analyses.

SAP BW4HANA aids in managing data from ER to front-end analysis, contributes to ROI, and fosters business growth understanding.

I like that the solution breaks down components to a very granular level, allowing for customization and implementation based on specific requirements. Its structured approach provides flexibility.

Challenges arise with real-time client requirements when clients are accustomed to Microsoft Excel's extensive features for data analysis. They expect similar flexibility and customization in the solution, particularly regarding headers displaying keys and descriptions or just keys. Achieving this level of customization can be challenging, and it's an area that may need improvement.

I have been working with the solution for over eight years.

The solution is stable. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is scalable. I rate it a seven out of ten.

The solution is deployed on-premises and cloud, and the entire process took slightly over a week. I rate the setup as seven out of ten.

The solution is expensive.

To ensure smooth deployment, businesses must clearly understand their specific business processes before opting for any solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.