SAP BW4HANA Reviews

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.

I'm a data analytics lead.

The Strategic Enterprise Management Business Consolidation System is the most valuable and critical feature of this solution. It also has a great analytics engine with all the capabilities I'm looking for. There are a lot of master and transitional data relationships where BW has very good features.

I love this product and have been working on SAP products for many years but the solution needs to be more user-friendly with an improved UI, particularly if you compare it to what Snowflake is offering. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable, we have around 200 users.

Technical support from SAP is good and very structured. They are trying to improve day by day. They've got a good repository in terms of their knowledge base.

The initial setup is not complex because we use HANA Studio. For anyone not in the SAP domain, it will be more complicated. We have two admins. 

When comparing SAP to Snowflake, the difference is that Snowflake has a better UI and it's very quick to scale compared to SAP. 

It's important that SAP does not destroy the core value of what makes BW a great solution. They shouldn't abandon the star schema modeling so that anybody who wants to do 16 dimensions can keep their own shell, and can enhance user information on top of that. 

I rate this product eight out of 10. 

It is used for analyzing data, finding patterns, and generating reports, especially management-level reports. So, it's an advanced and enhanced form of the traditional SAP BW, which could run on other databases. SAP BW4HANA runs only on SAP HANA, and it has certain additional enhancements and capabilities that are possible because of BW4HANA. There are very few use cases. I haven't seen many customers using SAP BW4HANA or even SAP BW because there are so many BI applications around nowadays.

The solution's performance is really good. Also, it's easy to operate, easy to administer, and relatively simple to install. Also, it integrates very easily with most other known applications, especially widely used applications.

The licensing cost could be made better.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three or four years. We are a sales provider organization.

It is a stable product.

It is a scalable solution. Again, it completely depends on the hardware it is running. We only have two customers using the solution.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup is the same as any other SAP product based on NetViewer. The installation can be done in one or two days. The post-processing phase to have the solution on our system may take a week, approximately. The prerequisites for deployment are pretty much standard. The HANA database must be installed, and an application server must be installed. The application server needs to be prepared with the required file system, OS libraries, and specific runtime environments.

For the solution's deployment and maintenance, we have two or three people. So, we have one senior consultant and two mid-level consultants.

It is an expensive product. The licensing strategy is pretty much the same for all SAP products, and I or my team are not exposed to it.

Its integration capabilities are good.

I would suggest those planning to use it evaluate the features and decide for your specific use cases to deduce whether this is something you really need. Some applications offer the same features, which can meet similar requirements. So compare and evaluate to see if this is exactly the solution that you need. If it integrates easily with your existing landscape and workloads, then choose it for yourself. I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for analyzing all the enterprise data and pushing it out on a corporate dashboard for the leadership team to have a tab of production, revenues, manufacturing, et cetera.

It has got wonderful features in terms of analyzing your production data, and it gives you real-time insight into productive maintenance. You can plan your budget, and you can map them against actuals. It gives you good insights on overall performance and processes.

The solution is stable and reliable.

It's quite scalable. 

There are certain areas, for example, HR or project systems, where the BW native adapters are still not fully enabled for you to have the standard offerings.

Support could be more reliable. 

It's quite agile. 

It is an expensive product.

We first ordered the product last year. Altogether we have about a year and a half of experience with it, end to end.

SAP is an extremely stable product. I'd rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable. Compared to traditional data warehousing it is very, very agile. It's very scalable. I'd rate the general scalability nine out of ten. 

We have close to 120 users. 

Support varies. On a good day, even the critical ticket gets through, and on a bad day, the simplest one will have you bump across the globe trying to get help. So it's a bit of a mixed experience.

Neutral

We previously used Power BI-based dashboards. That solution, however, was based on flat files and static data. We were looking for a single source of truth and to have real-time inputs, which is why we adopted SAP. 

I would rate the ease of implementation somewhere around six or seven. We still have some teething issues, which hopefully we can resolve.

The deployment took seven months.

We engaged SAP for the initial explorer phase. And based on that, we sized our setup, and we put our requirements in place. The process was to look at the business, polish and design, and then implement.

There were six people involved in the implementation process. They were developers, functional specialists, subject-matter experts, and, of course, admins.

In terms of ROI, we just went live a few months back, so ROI was not a focus. For this year, the focus is the adoption of users and the intangible benefits out of it, how much your end users are buying into the product and how much it motivates them to get insight from the system. We have internal KPIs. However, these are not related to value for money. Real ROI will be looked at on a broader three to five-year zone.

The solution is extremely expensive. I'd rate them three out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

We have the SAP S/4HANA on-prem version, however, we are using the Azure servers to host them.

We are using SAP S/4HANA, BW/4HANA, and SAP Analytics Cloud products.

We have invested heavily in our training and end-user environment. We have got some tools and a team dedicated to that. After learning from the earlier initiatives of SAP implementation, it was rather easy this time around as we knew what needed to be done and implemented those standards early.

I'd recommend the solution to others and also recommend that new users go towards a cloud version. Being on the cloud cuts out a lot of middleware and integration issues. 

Overall, it's a really good product. Right now, I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

It's mainly used for finance. We use it for reporting. 

We use SAP standard functionality to get the data from SAP and then just report on it. It's pretty fast.

We like that it is an SAP product, so we can easily connect with the SAP ERP system.

Support is okay.

I've found the product to be scalable. 

The solution is stable.

It has a lot of problems in terms of technical architecture. If I change something in BW, a lot of development becomes inactive.

The development time for any developer is quite huge compared to other products.

The setup is a bit complex.

If I want to have good reporting, then I have to buy a separate license. I have to pay for separate things. That's quite irritating.

I've been working with the solution for 16 years. 

It is stable. It's reliable and doesn't have bugs or glitches. 

We can scale the solution if we need to. 

There are about 150 people on the solution. 

Technical support is okay. The turnaround time is quite high. they are a bit slow. 

Neutral

I've used other solutions as well, such as Qlik and PowerVM. 

They are pretty fast in terms of performance, so the ease of development is extremely good. My turnaround time for the business was less.

The initial setup is not straightforward. SAP is not at all straightforward during implementation.

It is not difficult to maintain. 

We handled the initial setup in-house with the help of a third party.

We have achieved an ROI.

The cost is average. I'd rate it five out of ten in terms of the affordability of the standard license.

I would advise, that if you have SA, as in ERP systems, the BW is fine. If you do not have SAP ERP, for example, if you have a non-SAP system from where you want to load the data, then SAP BW is not a good solution. It will increase the turnaround time.

I'd rate the solution three out of ten.

I use the solution for reports and dashboards.

At this moment, it was started as a business intelligence strategy. So, I used it for a new project.

The feature I found valuable is that the solution had only one dashboard and no more.

I need a more efficient tool. I need more competitive tools, like Microsoft Power BI. The tool is not easy to use for an end user.

I need more analytics tools, especially optimizing the AfO tool for data analytics, since it is a critical point for us.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for about six months.

It is a stable solution.

I plan to increase the use of the solution from next month.

For support, I have a local partner.

The initial setup was easy.

It's a little expensive compared to Microsoft Azure.

I may consider contacting a consultant next month.

It's not a friendly solution. So, it is a complex tool.

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

We use SAP BW4HANA to extract data from SAP ECC and load it into another system, such as Snowflake.

SAP BW4HANA can be deployed in both the cloud and on-prem.

SAP BW4HANA enables us to extract information from different repositories and create reports that are shared with managers.

The ability to instantly pull data is the most valuable feature.

SAP BW4HANA is a new package with a steep learning curve. I am currently taking courses to familiarize myself with the features so that I can manage them smoothly.

I would like to be able to design new reports in a future release.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three months. 

I give the stability of SAP BW4HANA an eight out of ten.

I give SAP BW4HANA's scalability a five because I am still familiarizing myself with the solution.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have seen a return on investment.

The price is high and currently only affordable for large organizations.

I give SAP BW4HANA a nine out of ten.

We have plans to increase the usage of SAP BW4HANA in the future.

I recommend SAP BW4HANA for organizations with an IP platform. Similar products, such as Qlik Replicate, are more expensive.

We are consultants and distributors for BW4HANA.

SAP wants to transition all of their customers to the cloud, so they have announced a lot of policies that will support the on-premise product until 2024 or 2025. That's a good opportunity for us to transition our customers to the cloud.

The solution is based on SAP ERP, so there's some business content already included. For customers who use SAP ERP, SAP BW4HANA is a good choice for their DW implementation.

It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it. The interface could be improved. It's not intuitive to build a data model and use their ETL tools.

The product is complex, so I think it could be simplified.

I have used this solution for five years.

It's stable.

The on-premise product isn't very easy to scale up, but implementing it in the cloud is much easier.

Technical support is pretty good. SAP doesn't respond immediately, but they deal with the most critical issues.

Initial setup was easy.

We don't refuse any kind of opportunity that our customers want to implement, so we are trying to learn about analytics solutions from Microsoft and Google.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

If someone wants to implement BW4HANA, it's important to do a training course first and think about the strategy they would like to use to leverage the data for their business.