SAP BW4HANA Reviews

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.

We are a consulting company, we use the solution for our client's organizations who have a basic requirement for KPI information.

Our customers require KPIs to analyze their management. We use BW/4HANA to extract data and provide business intelligence for our customers that are using S/4HANA ERP.

SAP BW/4HANA can be used more generally as a data warehouse. Prior to BW/4HANA, BW classic could only work with SAP products, but S/4HANA can be used for any enterprise data warehouse and is no longer limited to SAP, but can also be used for legacy data or big data. The solution is more flexible than before.

We benefited from BW/4HANA's ability to utilize predefined content. We didn't need to start from scratch.

The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning. I would like to see the features be simplified.

I have been using SAP BW/4HANA for five years. 

The solution is stable.

SAP BW/4HANA is not a cloud version, it does not have auto-scaling functionality. It is scalable, but it is not automatic.

In the past, for data warehousing, we used Oracle, Google BigQuery and AWS. For business intelligence, we used BusinessObjects as a solution.

BW/4HANA is not easy to implement, it is complex. It requires four or five people to implement.

Before, in BW classic, there is BW Workbench. Inside Workbench, we could do almost anything without needing to go to the database level. Now, the architecture has changed. We need to use Eclipse to model the data, making it more technical than before. It is difficult to train our customers.

If an upgrade is needed, it takes about five months to implement, depending on what the client currently has. If we are implementing a new BW/4HANA from the beginning, it will take more time to analyze the requirements.

SAP BW/4HANA is expensive.

SAP BW/4HANA did not require us to start from scratch as it utilizes predefined content inside.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a service provider and we provide SAP services to our clients. I am a consultant and I offer SAP BW4HANA as a data warehouse, used for retail business.

The reports being generated by this product are used by the business to clarify profit and loss on the orders that they have placed.

If you have a large set of orders, it is very difficult to track and manage them. This product helps you to distinguish the processes and provides visibility such as checking where products are in the process at any given time.

It provides information about billing, delivery, and all of the aspects related to an order. You can generate monthly reports or yearly reports, including charts, as needed.

The most valuable feature is that we can transform a huge amount of data and apply business logic as per the requirements.

The speed of operations could be a little faster.

We have been working with SAP BW4HANA for approximately seven years.

This is a very stable solution and we use it on a daily basis.

SAP BW4HANA is scalable. We have approximately 5,000 users.

The technical support is good.

I was not using another similar product prior to this one.

With a deployment plan, it takes approximately a year and a half to complete. The complexity of the initial setup is such that we need help from SAP.

The number of people required for deployment and maintenance depends on how big the project is. It takes between 30 and 40 people initially if it's a small to medium-sized project. For maintenance, 10 people would be enough.

We required help from SAP for the implementation.

We use this product in conjunction with the new solution, SAP Analytics Cloud.

My advice for anybody who is considering SAP BW4HANA is that it's a very stable product, and if you are looking at a huge volume of data that you want to process daily or any similar kind of task, then this is definitely a good solution.

At this point, I can't think of any additional features that I would like to see in the next release.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I was a developer.

We use this solution for sales reporting and financial reporting.

I like that it's quite quick.

I would like more integration.

Cost is a factor. It could be improved.

The installation could be simplified.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for seven years.

The version that I dealt with was 7.4, and the company I am in now is using the latest version.

I am just starting to use that now.

SAP BW4HANA is very stable.

It's a scalable solution. I don't have any issues with the scalability of this product.

We have 200 to 300 users in our organization who use it.

I have contacted technical support, they are generally very good.

I used standard reporting, which didn't meet our needs and we had to go through a data warehouse.

The initial setup is quite complex.

We are a worldwide team, we need quite a few people to manage this solution. We have a team of eight to manage this solution in Europe and close to the same to manage it in Asia. 

We have a team of 14 or 15 to manage this solution worldwide.

In general, it's quite expensive.

I would recommend this solution in certain circumstances, but for others, probably not. It all depends on what the use case was.

I would rate SAP BW4HANA a seven out of ten.

I'm a reseller and implementer.

There are about 20 consultants using this solution on a daily basis.

The solution is useful for connecting with external systems.

From a technical perspective, it could be even more related to legacy systems. The connectivity requirement is quite high and requires systems that are up-to-date.

There's a lot of competition. If a customer isn't already using SAP, they should also consider other tools.

I have used this solution for three years.

The stability has improved a lot. It's becoming a more mature product.

We haven't had any issues with the scalability. It has also improved significantly.

SAP's technical support is okay as long as you follow the process. I would rate technical support as three out of five.

I would rate the setup as four out of five. The documentation has improved, so it's not that difficult.

The cost and licensing depends on how the customer is going to use the solution.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

Overall, it's hard to compare with other products on the market, but I think it has improved quite significantly.

For those who are interested in using this solution, my advice is to do a trial of the solution because it's a good way to get started and will make implementation faster.

SAP BW/4HANA is the same as the old SAP BW system, except that it's being hosted on HANA. Nowadays, SAP HANA is coming out with all the data warehouse features. You don't have to have SAP BW on HANA, HANA itself can offer that. SAP as 4HANA itself is taking over because it supports both OLTP and OLAP transactions at the same time.

One thing is that it costs more because you have to acquire that license for the product, which itself is a waste. If you can do that without the product, that's one thing. And then the performance. Performance is never so good with the old model, BW model that SAP developed because you need to extract the data, you have to load it, you have to put it into cubes, and you have to build your own warehouse, then it's ready for reporting, which is a very convoluted process. It's a long journey and a tedious job every day, every week, but that's how the world was working for several years.

If anything, they should only make it faster. You cannot blame the product completely because it depends on how well you built your cubes, as well as the database objects inside the data warehouse, and how efficient your SQL is.

I've been using this solution for about three years.

The system has always been stable. 

The scalability is fine. The limitation is not the product, but limitation is the hardware for HANA because HANA hardware is very expensive. Everyone has to be very cognizant about how much data is really required and what data needs to be pushed. Otherwise the hardware costs for HANA database is going to be very, very expensive.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten because it's not bad. The world has been running with the same product for several years, but now new products and new technologies are coming. They have their own challenges. That doesn't mean that this is bad.

Its direct approach is the most valuable. You get more real time and capabilities than BW. 

They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy.

It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers.

It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required.

SAP BW4HANA is a relatively new product from the SAP side, but we have been running almost a two years project now and moving from BW to BW4HANA. So, it is a completely new build of the entire environment. We just completed that in November last year.

We have used BW and HANA Native. BW4HANA is definitely much better than BW. It is also much better than HANA Native.

It depends on your experience, the approach, and so on. I took over the project when it was already started. It had been running for two or three months. I would have approached it differently if I was there during the kickoff. It is challenging when you are too much focused on old products, and you don't have a good model in place or a good understanding of the business model. For me, it was not so difficult. I did it a lot in my former positions and during many years of experience in multidimensional data modeling, but for most of my colleagues and my team members, it was quite challenging because they had more experience in reporting subs, SQL subs, and so on and not so much experience in data modelings and so on. 

In general, you need to acquire experience in this. There are not so many in the market. I also had a bad experience with consulting companies. I had to correct them and technically detail the process for how to do this.

It is simply the mindset. When we approach it with the mindset of how it was done in BW or HANA, you get a process that is not really efficient. When object-oriented approaches are not taken into consideration, everything gets built a hundred times, and instead of being more object-oriented, it gets quite complex. It always requires good modeling and an understanding of the business requirements, which can be quite challenging.

We started as early birds from the SAP side. We got this entire suite for free. I cannot really talk about the price because we didn't have to pay anything.

It makes sense for all enterprise companies that currently have BW in place to move over because BW4HANA has more reasonable performance, and it helps you in getting reporting. An enterprise can manage the reporting on this one product. In my previous company, I had to do and review reporting for end-users at the aggregated management level, not only at the transactional level. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. It is definitely an eight for reporting low and high at the management level as compared to others, but it is also dependent on the design. I had to provide and I still need to provide a lot of things knowing how my former colleagues have approached those things. From my point of view, it is never always the product, it is the experience we have in the design and context. BW4HANA is definitely much better than BW. It is also much better than HANA Native. It is definitely the right tool in terms of reporting and security on top of the SAP companies. Most of the companies are SAP companies. If you need an additional reporting tool on top, this is a solution.

1.We use it to generate operational analysis for our internal operations, for example, HR analysis, financial analysis, etc. 

2.We use SAP BW4HANA to calculate data and feed to Tableau / SAP BO to visualize data.

1. SAP BW4HANA's memory computing help us calculate into much more detail data  such as accouting document level. And it's very fast.

2. We have capabliity to realize requirements related to big data, real-time anlysis.

1.It can calculate big data. One year ago, SAP BW took us a lot of time around four hours to finish our process chains, but now it's better. 

2.It can calculate data in detail. Before we could not calculate financial documents and accountant documents in detail, we could not do it at a document level but now we can. This is the most important feature. It also has predictive analysis funationlity.

We already had a lot of cubes built-in based on SAP BW.  We hope these BW cubes can support real-time anlysis without migration to SAP HANA modeling.

I have been using this solution for more than one year. 

We can draw down to the document level for a document. The problem is that when that document records are bigger than the platform, it causes the platform to slow down. 

I have opened tickets with technical support. They've been good. Sometimes they take a while to respond. 

The initial setup was complex.

I would recommend SAP BW/4HANA.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because it's expensive and its ecosystem is not very open.