SAP ERP Reviews

Primarily, I'm the account manager for an account that has the largest SAP implementation in the world in the utility segment. It is being used by a national utility service provider, and they use everything SAP, except for SAP SuccessFactors.

We primarily have on-premises solutions being sold in this region for the utility companies. In UAE, there are a lot of data residency regulations because of which cloud solutions are not preferred. Companies prefer on-premises solutions.

It is a utility-focused solution, and the deployment is very much aligned with utility service providers. If you look at the supply chain and the overall business model of a utility service provider, SAP is something that fits very well. That's because the company has invested tremendously in creating appropriate workflows pertaining to this segment or domain.

It could always be cheaper. There is no doubt about it.

In terms of features, it is as good as it can be. It cannot be anything more with its current structure. When a new challenge comes up, they're going to scale up to meet that challenge.

I have been working with this solution for quite a number of years. It has probably been more than 10 years.

I am absolutely satisfied with its stability and performance.

It is very scalable. There are only a few companies that can actually deliver an ERP or the overall business model solution at this scale. There are not a lot of players. We have SAP, and we have Epicor and others too, but we know that Epicor can never scale up to what a national service provider would need. We are talking about serving 80,000 or 85,000 people on a daily basis, so a different type of business scalability is required. Overall, we have about 10 clients who use this solution.

We have dedicated support from SAP, and there is nobody more knowledgeable than SAP when it comes to SAP products.

If we need to change anything, we can just call up SAP, and they would come down and do it for us because we are not an SME. If it were an SME, then obviously, SAP, Oracle, or other big companies will not be able to do a change for us, but because of the size that we have, if we need to make a change, SAP will go ahead, invest, and make the change in the application itself.

It is an extremely complicated deployment. The deployment is completely customized for my customers here, and it could not be made simpler. 

It could always be cheaper. They don't have a very easy model of licensing, but large entities would get the upper hand in negotiating the license.

For a large organization, SAP is the best way to go. It is also perfect if you are into manufacturing, oil and gas, natural resources, utilities, etc. If you're into finance, you can go with Oracle. If you are a small and medium business, you can go with Epicor or something else. It depends on the business requirements you have and the scale of your organization, business operations, customer base, etc.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. It is definitely up in the top three. No product will ever reach a 10 because the landscape keeps on changing in terms of the requirements within the business and the requirements of the customer. So, there is nothing that can be 100% aligned to meet all business requirements. We are in an evolving, constantly changing business environment, so it is not something that is practical. You can keep on striving, and you can keep on trying to improve your processes, tools, technologies, and the people who work on them, but at the end of the day, when you're looking at an ERP system, it is not about 100% alignment. It is about going for the best-fit approach, and in my opinion, SAP is a good fit for customers.

When the company merged, we decided that we wanted to continue using SAP ERP because all the processes were much more mature, especially when it came to finance. The main value was the convenience for finance to run and manage the business.

The finance team was more comfortable using SAP, so that's why it was decided not to change the solution.

I wouldn't say it has improved the organization. The company was already using it before we merged.

Continuing to use it enabled continuity of business. It eliminated strife or angst for the employees in terms of experiences since they were already using SAP ERP.

We're using the main database. We're using the leave modules and transfers.

SAP needs to be more intuitive. It should be easy to use, mobile, and employee-friendly. You need to know the transaction codes. You need to study it to be able to use it. SAP needs to change that. They need to be more intuitive. Like how Facebook is so easy to use, or Uber. No one teaches you to use these apps, but they're intuitive and you're able to use them. So the HR applications need to be the same way.

I've been using it since 2018. Before that, I implemented SAP ERP in my previous job and used it for two years.

It's very stable.

It's scalable.

There are currently 8,000 users who use SAP in my company. Our IT team maintains it.

We do not have plans to increase usage. SAP has said that they are dropping the ERP part. They advise moving on to SuccessFactors for HR. SAP themselves has said not to go forward with more usage, but to change the system.

It has good support.

We previously used Oracle. When the company merged the new finance team preferred SAP, so HR also had to move along with the finance team. 

The company was already using SAP ERP when we joined, so I didn't have to do any setup here. But in my previous job, we did set it up.

It wasn't straightforward. We had to first align the HR processes. IBM was the implementation partner. We had to speak with SAP and also IBM. They understood our processes and they proposed the best solution. Some parts we did not agree to, so there were workarounds, but it went through. Once the design architecture was finalized, the implementation was smooth.

The deployment took six months.

IBM was the implementation partner.

On a scale from one to 10, I rate SAP ERP a five. 

The primary use case of SAP ERP is for taking care of financials, procurement, production planning, and project systems for CapEx budgeting, sales and distribution, and from there to management accounting and human capital management. I'm the head of digital transformation.

SAP has the edge over other solutions in the sense that they have better production planning. When it comes to CapEx budgeting they have an edge over NetSuite. In terms of manufacturing in the automotive sector, most companies in the industry use SAP. They've recently included some good new features. 

Our customers initially find the solution quite complex and not very user-friendly so that is something that could be improved. It takes some time for them to get used to it. 

I've been using this solution for 15 years. 

The solution is very stable. SAP has a lot of experience and has evolved over time. 

This is a very scalable solution. 

The technical support is as you would expect and could be improved. 

I've carried out deployments for about 10 customers. For those without experience, the implementation can be quite cumbersome and complex, although, over time, they realize that all the business processes are properly mapped. Maintenance requirements depend on the number of users, which modules are being implemented, and the like. It really depends on the scale and size of the implementation. 

There are several licensing options including paying an annual subscription or taking out a perpetual license. 

I would recommend the solution for those in the manufacturing space. I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use SAP ERP for running the entire business enterprise. Most large companies run an ERP for their supply chains. Starting from taking orders all the processes through to delivery, such as finance.

The most valuable feature of SAP ERP is the integration. It can be seamlessly integrated across the board.

The user interface can be more intuitive and user-friendly by having it be more menu-driven, this would be a large benefit.

I have been using SAP ERP for approximately 20 years.

SAP ERP is reliable and stable.

The solution is highly scalable.

There are different levels of support, with some requiring additional fees. I am not happy with any of the support I have received from SAP ERP.

The initial implementation is very complex. It is a very large complex system.

SAP ERP is a complex system, it takes a lot of people to maintain it. Depending on many factors of the implementation environment would determine the number of required maintenance or support staff. However, at least eight to ten people are the minimum required only to maintain and support SAP ERP. This number does not include the business or functional side of the operation of the solution, this number is only for the infrastructure side.

The solution can cost approximately $1 million a year for maintenance for a small-size company and can grow from there. Approximately $1 million is needed for a good-size company.

SAP ERP is one of the best solutions. It's complex, but it can do a lot of things. If you are considering implementing SAP ERP, make sure you have a business process straight before you implement such a large solution. Streamline your business process and try to achieve standardization, instead of trying to customize things, use industry standards.

I rate SAP ERP a seven out of ten.

It is for all business processes. It is for material management, financial accounting and controlling, sales and distribution, and HR.

Our SAP version is a little bit old. It is the ACC version.

The Material Management and Sales and Distribution modules are great. The Financial Accounting module is also great.  

One module that is not doing well is HR.

It should be less complex. It should also have better integration capability. I am using the ACC version, and in this version, the integration and the communication are very difficult and complicated.

We have been using it in our company since 2008.

It is stable.

I doubt if it is scalable. That's because it is on-prem, so you have a lot of parameters, and scalability would be a little bit hard.

We have 130 people, but in my company, only about 65 people are using it. It is being used every minute of every day. There might be a plan for expanding its usage, but I am not sure.

Every time we need technical support, we take the help of a local consultant.

I didn't do it, but I'm sure it's complex.

I don't know the price, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

It's a good solution as you get everything in one software. You get all modules in one software and therefore one doesn't have to look outside for any other software. 

The solution is quite scalable. 

The stability is excellent. 

The solution has a few problems here and there.

It's slightly complex and can be hard to understand if you are new to the product.

The product is very, very expensive, and therefore not really suitable for smaller organizations. 

It's very difficult to find people who are well versed in it. 

I've been using the solution for 20 years at this point. It's been somewhere around two decades. I have a lot of experience with it. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product can scale. If a company needs to expand it, it's not a problem. Users should be able to do so. 

It is scalable in the sense that tomorrow if you have 10 users, you can scale it to 50 users, 50 to 100. That's not a problem. It's pretty easy to scale. SAP is now pushing cloud. It used to be on-premise. When it was on-premise you would have to change your hardware. Now, that is not necessarily the case. 

In terms of maintenance, due to the fact that the solution is complex and nobody can know everything, it's important to have at least two people on staff for maintenance that can handle it and understand how everything - or mostly everything - works. That means either hiring out experts of having in-house personnel.

The pricing is very high. For enterprise-level organizations this may be okay, however, for smaller companies, it's likely not suitable. 

What happens is that if small companies implement it, the maintenance cost is very high for this kind of ERP. It's a problem for those companies who want to implement ERP, and they find implementation cost is higher and the license cost is extremely high. The maintenance cost is very high as well.

I'm an implementor.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. 

It covers pretty much everything. It's not that something is missing. There are better products than this, however, they are not necessarily as complete. If you're buying those products, you will have to spend money to interface with the backbone of SAP. 

They're making it more user-friendly. A user has to work smart and if he's not able to work smart, we spend so much less time training people. Unless you have a photogenic memory, SAP can take a bit of work.

Other software can be learned in 15 days, however, SAP takes a while. 

We use the solution primarily to manage financial business processes.

I have found all the modules related to finance valuable, such as account management and HR. The entire suite is very useful.

When evaluating the current version I am using now, the SAP GUI is old-style and needs to be replaced with something more modern and easy to use. However, the SAP GUI is very optimized for connection networks and is extremely good. Many people would like to have a WebGUI or something else to have access in a different way. Additionally, there could be some drag and drop functionality added because these features are normally in any website that this solution does not have.

We are not using the newest version of the solution, it is difficult to say what needs to improve when the improvements could have already been made in the newer version. I did however see a demo version of the newest version and they have made improvements in the overall ability to manage with the solution.

I have been using this solution for approximately 15 years.

The solution stability and performance are very good we are extremely happy. We have not had any problem and when we moved from the old database to SAP HANA it provided improved performance. 

In the company where I worked before, we had a large installation of SAP with approximately 10,000 licensed users. The solution was able to handle it without a problem and we were using the classic version of the Oracle database. 

In the company I work for currently, we do smaller installations of approximately 350 users. We have not had any problem or any issue regarding performance, it is highly scalable. However, working with S/4 HANA, where all the database is working in the RAM memory could pose some difficulties if you want to scale because you would have to have a computer system with a large number of gigabytes of RAM.

We have only used support a few times for some minor issues, such as the production system blockage, and our experience was good. The support agent was very helpful and quick to answer our problems. I felt we were receiving the maximum level of support.

I have an internal team working on SAP ERP and we are using a very large system integrator from Italy that is assisting us with the implementation, technical support, and safety. We are working together with this system integrator for any big project that we cannot manage internally. This is not for any competencies issues, we only want to increase the number of people working with us to speed up the process.

When you have a solution that is stable, reliable, and has a high performance as this solution, the price is going to be expensive. However, when you evaluate the service you are paying for the cost is quite reasonable for this solution.

I rate SAP ERP a nine out of ten.

We are a consulting company and SAP ERP is one of the products that we implement for our customers. Our primary role is to advise them on tools and strategy, including business use cases that they want to transform.

With ERP, we are working with customers who are looking for S/4HANA transformation, mainly from a greenfield approach. For RPA, we want to add some value in the business case because the business case of the S/4HANA transformation is not so easy to find. So we use some techniques like RPA to find more money around this transformation.

Right now we try to automate some functionality, which is not yet really good, within ERP. We really want to connect via API to the RFP tool to S/4HANA in fact.

We do business consulting or IT consulting, and do not provide support. We do advise them on tools and strategy, including business cases that they have to transform. We work with them up to this point and do not do the implementation.

The most valuable features are the claim management. We also find the automation for the process within the "purchase to pay" can be valuable as well. We know that SAP already has an RPA solution to automate the reconciliation between the invoice and the orders, so we don't think that we can find a lot there. We would like to have some use cases with logistics and so on, but we don't have much right now.

We have a "purchase to pay" process, which is in SAP Ariba but mainly within the ERP. We would like to have more around purchasing because with purchasing we have a lot of money to gain and it could be very good for the business case.

There are a lot of manual tasks that are used by a lot of people, so it is a very good candidate for RPA. SAP says that if you want to extend the solutions, you need to use some solution outside of SAP for RPA, on a platform as a service or whatever. So, if SAP could have some option, but this not the tool or the best platform that is in the market. So we try to find some solutions to better convince our customers.

I began working with SAP in 1992, about 28 years ago.

We have experienced no problems with stability.

Scalability has not been an issue for our customers. Our smaller clients have between 2,000 and 3,000 users, whereas a large company has between 10,000 and 20,000 users.

Normally our customers are in retail, the chemical industry, and energy companies. The setup is usually quite complex. When we want them to transform to S/4HANA it has been mainly customized. There are a lot of specifics because their processes are generally not straightforward.

The deployment will take perhaps two months, on average.

When it comes to financing or accounting, SAP is quite enormous. When a company has to produce on every quarter, the numbers that would be in the SAP report, it is quite good. It has very long, long, long life behind it. Logistics, it's still okay. But for the rest, we just started G-Cloud first with a software as a service application. For HR, you have Workday, for instance.

For key purchasing, maybe go to SAP Ariba. If you are looking for Salesforce automation, for instance CRM, maybe you will go to Salesforce. It really depends on which process you want to clone and you want to target, but for the core finance, S/4HANA is a good solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.