SAP ERP Reviews

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. 

I am currently working in a group of companies, and we have the SAP HCM module. It is not fully implemented due to cloud issues, but we plan to transition to it. We are also using SAP S4HANA and have incorporated some aspects of the HR module, primarily focusing on payroll.

SAP ERP has improved our organization in several ways. For example, since moving to SAP HANA around eight years ago, the company I used to work for has gained substantial experience and benefits. 

The deployment of SAP ERP has primarily strengthened our financial controls. Although our production planning initially relied on personal interventions and Excel, the finance aspect has shown significant strength and improvement, which is a primary focus for most companies within our group.

The most critical feature of SAP ERP is its focus on supply chain and finance, as our companies are primarily oriented towards financial operations and payroll management. Its customer support is highly rated, and the technical support provided by SAP is considered very good.

There is a need for improvement in the business analytics aspect in financial reporting and also in sales and marketing analytics.

Different companies are at different stages. I have used SAP since the year 1985 or 1986 when I was part of the Toyota group, and we transitioned to SAP HANA around eight years ago. Other companies, like Obertronix, began using SAP two or three years ago.

The support from SAP has been very good. When SAP ERP was used, we did not experience any significant issues. Their technical support is rated highly.

Positive

Prior to using SAP ERP, there was no similar solution in use. We started with SAP in around 1995 or 1996, transitioning directly from using forms, Google, and Excel. There were no alternate ERP solutions before SAP.

The initial setup was challenging initially. People did not understand much about what SAP could do. However, with experience, the transition to S4HANA became easier, as the capabilities of SAP were better understood.

The pricing of SAP ERP is extremely high and often seen as unreasonable. An SLA agreement on maintenance is required, and it constitutes an annual expenditure. The licenses must be bought in bulk, which presents additional challenges, making the pricing not very friendly.

SAP ERP is definitely recommended for larger companies, such as public limited companies, due to its extensive capabilities. However, smaller companies may find the maintenance and licensing fees prohibitive, and they should consider other ERP solutions.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use the product for accounts payable and accounts receivables processes. It helps us analyze the throughput time between goods receipt and the completion of the entire accounts payable process. It identifies any delays or lags in the payment of invoices and ratios.

The product’s most valuable feature is a centralized system integrating different departments within the organization. It works much faster compared to other vendors.

SAP ERP lags a bit compared to Oracle for reporting features. Oracle provides predefined standard reports for vendor and customer-related financial statements. This feature could be included in SAP for creating reports adhering to standardized compliance requirements.

We have been using SAP ERP for three and a half years.

The product is stable. There are a lot of clients that maintain their systems for several years.

The product is scalable and suitable for large enterprises.

The technical support services are good. However, they cannot provide solutions for certain problems.

Positive

The deployment process requires a lot of resources and is expensive. It takes a lot of time to configure and deploy SAP applications. We need around 50 to 60 skilled resources for configuration setup. For finance, we may need another 50 resources. The process involves technical modules. Thus, we need expertise in finance and cost to handle the functional models, including warehouse, production, and plant maintenance. SAP provides good support services to help us set up the application.

The deployment time depends on the size of the data records and their processes. Some implementations might happen for years together.

The number of engineers and architects required depends on the existing data and processes. On average, we need a minimum of 10 executives to work on each module. We have around 20 modules in total. We may need overall at least 100 resources to implement the product.

The product has high pricing. They provide a yearly basis license. The customers have to pay extra costs for support services.

I reviewed some articles and blogs and interacted with IT consultants to learn about Oracle.

SAP ERP provides a lot of features compared to other systems. It is a well-integrated and feasible solution. It is a perfect solution if you can afford to invest in SAP. They are improving themselves rapidly. They provide all the organizational level services, including transaction, dashboarding, reports, automation, etc. They need to improve a few processes, including transformation, intelligence, governance, modeling, etc.

I rate the product an eight out of ten.

I use SAP ERP in my company for its entire package that provides masking and condition techniques, along with the details of all the employees and everything, starting from manufacturing, procurement, maintenance of facilities, onboarding, and warehousing.

A person gets to use the valuable features of the solution depending on how you have implemented the tool. If the tool doesn't have a required process, its user has to put that particular process into it, which is tedious.

SAP ERP needs to be made simpler. The tool is generally not very complicated to use and is easy to use.

SAP ERP needs to consider simplifying a few areas within the tool. Compared to SAP ERP, other solutions in the market are much more easily configurable and understandable. SAP has a lot of complex features. In the future, if SAP ERP offers small, medium, and large versions of the product separately, then the implementation process can be made easier.

I have been using SAP ERP for four years. I use SAP ERP with SAP S/4HANA 1809, but my company plans to move to SAP S/4HANA 1909 soon. I am a user of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a three out of ten.

The standard options of the tool don't work well, and for each and everything, there are new options. When SAP adds new options, the integration of the other modules is not taken care of, and then the fix-around needs a lot of time.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Around 400 people in my company use the tool.

The tool is used daily in my company.

SAP ERP's technical support takes a lot of time when it comes to handling errors and debugging errors. The coordination of technical support with different users takes a lot of time. I rate the technical support a four out of ten.

Neutral

Previously, my company used a product from Oracle. My company shifted to SAP ERP from Oracle after our company's plans to move to a manufacturing setup.

I rate SAP ERP's initial setup phase a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup, and ten is an easy setup.

SAP ERP's initial setup phase was quite difficult.

SAP ERP's initial setup phase was complex, as my company had to seek help from a third party while maintaining a lot of coordination and months of discussions with them to get the tool fully usable.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in twelve months.

SAP ERP has three modules or sections that help with the installation areas like the development, quality, and deployment of SAP. SAP takes or collects the data from each of the departments and the processes, and then it gets put into the area that deals with quality in SAP. The signoff of the UAT and any other agreements is done before proceeding with the final deployment.

The product's deployment was carried out in my company with the help of a consultant from SAP and a third-party integrator.

From a long-term perspective, I can say that the solution can offer a return on investment, but it may take around three to four years for our company to experience it. Currently, I don't think the product offers my company any return on investment.

I rate the product's price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap or affordable, and ten is really expensive. The solution is expensive.

SAP ERP's maintenance can be described as an ongoing process. Ongoing maintenance is required in the product, owing to issues like bugs and the fact that the processes are not integrated well enough.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

SAP ERP is essentially used for back-office functions, such as payroll and HR, as well as covering financials. It has many functional modules that can be used depending on the needs of your business.

Implementing SAP is typically very costly, and it takes a long time to deploy because of the huge amount of complexity. For smaller organizations, the implementation can be particularly challenging. Maybe the integration capabilities could be improved to increase the rest of the three tools. If you're trying to plug it into other best-of-breed products for HR or reporting, that's where you'll have charges.

I would suggest that the implementation lifecycle could be made simpler. Therefore, it would be easier and faster to implement and cost less.

I've been using SAP ERP for fifteen years.

It is a very scalable solution but it can be cost-prohibitive at the same time due to the time it takes.

The deployment process depends on various factors. For the bare minimum setup, the solution would take six to nine months to deploy. But the likelihood of it taking six to nine months is very low. It's probably going to be more like a year to eighteen months to get the whole thing up and running and fully working as you expect for an organization of over six thousand people. 

The time taken to deploy the solution depends on the implementation approach. More than likely, you would roll it out to one part of the organization, which could take six to nine months. Then you would expand it to other parts of the organization, which would take longer. So, there's a deployment that could be done in six months, but it's unlikely that the entire organization would be fully onboarded in that time.

If you're a large, professional organization with significant complexity, then SAP ERP would be a good fit as it comes with out-of-the-box support for more complicated processes. However, if you're a smaller organization or a quick-build company that's not planning to grow larger, then SAP ERP may not be advised. It's more about the complexity of the business you're running, and we run a manufacturing distribution component that is quite sophisticated compared to something you would find with Dynamics or 365. But it's more about the organization's size and complexity that determines how useful SAP ERP can be.  It may be the right solution for some and not for others, so it's subjective.

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

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. 

We're using it for accounting, materials management, and sales and distribution. We are happy with SAP solutions. We are in the dairy products industry here in Chile, and there are good solutions for SAP in this industry.

The best improvement that we have seen using SAP solutions is that it shortens the cycle when creating financial reports. Before we installed SAP solutions, we had to do about 10 days of work to create the account reports for the managerial board. Now, ita takes about three days of work to do it. We are able to give information to the board in a more agile way.

The most valuable feature is the security. We have a very small IT team in our company, so a lot of the maintenance has to be done by the provider. So SAP gives us the maintenance and software solutions that we need.

They are not making a big effort to make it easy to integrate solutions from other vendors. It's not easy at all. When you have solutions from other vendors, SAP is not doing a good job integrating them.

SAP is giving us the solutions that they provide. They buy companies. They buy solutions. And they expect that we will choose the solutions that they buy. I suppose that's the reason that they are not making a big effort in making it easy to work with solutions from other vendors. I imagine Oracle is the same. 

Integration is what they can do better.

It works well. In our company, we don't have issues with stability. We haven't had any in 10 years, and that's a long time.

We don't have scalability problems. We can go 100 times our volume of transactions and we won't have any problems with it. We are not a very big shop so we don't have any problems, nor do we think that in the future we are going to have trouble with it.

We don't have problems with support. However, it's not as good as it used to be. In the past, they gave better support. I imagine they want you to go to Gold Support, or Platinum, or Titanium Support. We are using Standard Support, and it's good for us. We don't need anything more for the time being.

We were using an ERP that didn't have a big company behind it. The company started to have financial problems, the stock price went from $200 to about 10 cents. So we thought the solution would no longer be supported, and we didn't want to have our financials and materials management in software that didn't have a big company behind it.

So we started looking at ERP solutions in our industry. Here in Chile, the best option was SAP ERP. We spoke with people in the same industry in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. They had no problems with it, so it was the natural option for us to go with ERP from SAP.

When selecting a vendor the most important factor is the vendor's availability. We don't want to find that our provider has problems with availability. When we have a problem, they have to have a solution. The provider has to have a lot of clients that are similar to us, and it has to have been providing the solution for a long time. That way, if we are going to have problems, somebody has had them before and there will already be solutions for them.

I was involved in the setup and it was not easy. We had to bring a technician from another country, from Brazil. He had to come for three to four weeks to do the installation. So it wasn't easy at all.

But once they did it, they documented it. So today, it's not that hard because we have everything written. Today, we can install another system and do it with internal IT staff. So we learned from the process.

PeopleSoft was on our shortlist at that time, although today it's Oracle. But they made it very hard for us to go with them because they didn't want to do meetings. They didn't respond to our calls. That was the worst kind of vendor you can find when you are looking for a new one.

There was another, Meccano, here in Chile. It wasn't on the same scale as SAP ERP. So we went for the sure bet and went with SAP.

Check and double-check the fine print of the contract. Also, find a hardware provider that can scale to the volume of your business, and have a hardware provider that already has implemented solutions. In our case, IBM made a mistake when sizing the server that we needed and we had three months of performance problems. It wasn't the fault of SAP, it was the fault fo IBM. It was a bad way to start with a new system, but they didn't have enough experience in sizing the server for the solution.

I give the solution an eight out of 10. Everything works well enough, but something that could be better is their ability to work with customer's processes in the way the customer does them. I understand that they propose best practices, but when you have been in your industry for 50 years, you know what the best practices are. So you are not always going to change your process because your ERP provider thinks there are better ways.