SAP ERP Reviews

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.

My experience is in finance and logistics. We use it for Treasury accountants, GL (General Ledger), Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, etcetera. It's actually with the SAP solution, maybe for treasury banks, managing bank accounts, and other solutions within SAP ERP.

The integration is a valuable feature. Actually, in S/4HANA, the most valuable part for me is the Universal Journal because, in one table, you have all financial topics or financial data. So it's very easy to report and manage this information and consolidate, for example, the intercompany transactions and manage treasury cash flow. For me, the most important part is the Universal Journal.

There is room for improvement in the integration of the solution, especially in the payroll area. Usually, mid-sized companies need a separate solution for payroll because the existing parts are from a different system. So, many companies require better integration of payroll into the ERP, especially for small and mid-sized companies.

I have been using SAP ERP for ten years, and currently, our company is the partner.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability of SAP ERP is very good, allowing companies to grow and expand their operations in various areas and industries. The scalability is the best.

Customer service and support are good.

Positive

The initial setup of SAP ERP is very easy because it provides best practices and building blocks. In the last version, it has greatly improved. For example, the user experience is now completely for the user. Users do not require training because the latest version of SAP HANA is very easy to use.

There is ROI in three years of business operations.

SAP is now the cheaper option, but if you compare pricing and the scope of the solution, SAP is the best option in terms of pricing because the scope is more comprehensive than other cloud solutions.

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

I like the solution’s features in finance, supply chain, sales, and distribution.

I would like to see more integration with other partners. Some of our customers already use specific or in-house applications for their business processes. They do not want to replace those applications.

I have been working with the solution for ten years.

I would rate the tool a nine out of ten. The tool is stable.

The tool is scalable and I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten. We have around 40 customers for the solution.

There are different teams based in various regions. They are available 24/7. You can raise a ticket either day or night. The support is very good and they respond within a short period of time. Our customers are comfortable with it.

The tool’s setup is straightforward. From the technical perspective, we can complete the solution’s deployment in less than a month. However, on the business side, the deployment depends on the customer’s requirements such as finance, supply chain, etc. It can take around four to six months for those aspects to complete. We follow the SAP Activate methodology for the tool’s deployment. This methodology has different phases to deploy the solution. Apart from the methodology, we use a tool called Solution Manager for the deployment.

The on-premises licensing model comes with annual maintenance whereas the cloud-based licensing model is a yearly subscription. The tool’s pricing is normal and not expensive.

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. This ERP solution is useful for large enterprises and companies with complex code structures. A lot of manufacturing companies in my country use SAP ERP. They have a lot of integrations with other products and legacy systems. The tool is a complete business solution that is continuously transforming and innovating. There is no comparison for SAP ERP.

We implement this solution on-prem and on cloud for our clients. Our customers use it for their entire business process and end-to-end operations. It involves everything from production, to financial planning, sales and procurement. 

The most valuable part of ERP is the well-integrated technology. The different modules talk to each other very seamlessly. The solution is also multilingual and multi-currency. It provides that level of support and is highly flexible. When it comes to integration with third-party softwares you can integrate with a lot of technologies and a lot of different data feeds. If I'm selling something on Amazon and I want to check product performance, I can directly interface with SAP and see all the dashboards and reports. That is the beauty of SAP.

We face a lot of challenges with SAP. The support is very slow. When you do get a response, it's not as technical or as detailed as a customer would expect. I've also found them to be lacking in flexibility in terms of their pricing and they are not competitive with other solutions. If you have budget constraints, then SAP might be beyond your reach; they never provide any discounts. Our on-prem customers don't want the cloud model for now because they are concerned about their data transparency, but SAP won't offer an on-prem license. Those are the challenges we currently face.

I've been using this solution for 15 years. 

The solution is stable but there can be product bugs or performance issues. A couple of our customers have high volumes and a lot of interfaces. They are facing challenges in terms of stability when scaling. Several of our customers with retail businesses are currently in this position. We raised requests with SAP but the response was very poor and customers were totally fed up. SAP eventually provided a workaround temporary solution. The system is running but it's not up to the mark. 

The technical support provides valuable advice but they don't respond in a timely fashion. There are delays which create pressure for the customer and eventually they will lose business as a result and will move away from SAP. 

Neutral

As a consulting company, we can deploy ERP quickly. Our clients are unable to implement alone, it requires some expertise. Our last couple of deployments have taken six to eight months. The solution is easy to maintain but it requires support, either external or internal. SAP charges a maintenance fee that is quite high at 25% of your initial license cost. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We are using SAP ERP mostly for production and financials.

There should be better support provided to be able to migrate to S/4HANA easier.

I have been using SAP ERP for approximately three years.

The stability is SAP ERP is not good only because the version is old. They could work on improving the versions.

The scalability could be better, it is not simple to do.

We have approximately 300 users using this solution. We are not planning to increase usage.

We used Navision previously and then we moved to SAP ERP because of its larger scale and strategic direction from the management.

The initial setup of SAP ERP was complex and very rigid.

SAP ERP requires two people for maintenance and approximately 10 people for the implementation.

There is an annual subscription for the use of SAP ERP.

I would recommend others to use SAP S/4HANA because SAP ERP is out of date. It would be best to skip SAP ERP and go directly for SAP S/4HANA.

I rate SAP ERP a six out of ten.

We use SAP ERP to support and manage our business process in areas, such as sales, manufacturing, distribution, shipping, financials, purchasing, marketing, opportunities, and quotations.

The solution has improved our organization by allowing us to simply take a product from concept to aftermarket by following the process of developing service for the company.

The most valuable features of SAP ERP are the general operations. It has a good way to manage a business and do financial reporting. Overall we are happy with the robustness of the solution.

Reporting is why most companies need to acquire business intelligence add-on solutions, and when it comes to SAP ERP, they could improve the reporting graphical representation of the data.

I have been using SAP ERP for approximately 12 years.

The solution is highly stable.

SAP ERP is very hard to scale, it is very time-consuming, and once fully implemented it is normally fixed.

We have approximately 350 users using the solution. It is extensively used, every single position in the company uses SAP, which includes but is not limited to, customer service, customer service managers, purchasing, purchasing director, finance, and finance controller.

We do not use support from SAP but we have third-party support.

The implementation of the solution took approximately one year. However, this might seem like a long time but it is typical for ERP solutions.

We used consultants to do the implementation of the solution. I have heard from colleagues the experience was not very good.

We have an internal team of seven that does all the maintenance and support of the solution.

I would advise those wanting to implement the solution to use a good consultant.

The solution has been in the market for a long time. It does what it says that is going to do but it requires a lot of knowledge of the business and stabilization takes time. Once it is stable, it does everything it should be doing. Any additional changes make it a little bit difficult, once you make a decision, that decision has to be carried out for the life cycle of the solution.

I rate SAP ERP a seven out of ten.

The majority of the projects I was involved with were for production companies with huge manufacturing capabilities.

The solution is ideal for large enterprises. Normally, the companies begin bigger in size and have many production facilities. In terms of SAP ERP, it's best for very large organizations.

The detail of the configuration test thas appealed to me the most. I can do a lot of things in it. There are many great features on it. If you learn its code, you can do a lot of things. Generally, there's a lot of possibilities as the solution is quite vast and flexible. The possibility to configure it to fit any shape is great.

The solution can scale well.

The stability and performance are good.

The product is not a good fit for smaller companies.

It would be better if they completed the Fiori user interface. They really need to improve the interface. It would be great if even the older interface could be updated.  

The initial setup is complex. 

Technical support needs to be more helpful or responsive. 

The training is expensive.

I've been working with the product for three to four years at this point. 

The stability is good. The performance is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The scalability is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can. It's ideally for large organizations.

The technical support is not very good. We are not satisfied with the level of service we get. Microsoft, for example, offers better support.

I also use Microsoft.

The one thing different between this solution and Microsoft is, with Microsoft, normally the application training is relatively free or very low cost. The training for us for HANA or SAP ERP is expensive. They should think of reducing the pricing, or even offer free training, as that will help with awareness in the user and the better usage of the application. 

It's a complex application to initially set up. It takes time and you have to save a lot of small integrated details. There's so much configuration and features are available which makes the setup relatively hard. That said, it works. If you know it well, you can do it well. If you don't have the background, you will struggle.

The features on offer make it worth the price. It's not expensive in the sense that if the company needs the features, they will be willing to pay for them. They're necessary to the core business. 

I am an implementer consultant. I worked with a Microsoft partner and I've worked with an SAP partner, however, my work is as an implementer or implementation consultant.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I find it better than Microsoft as an option.

SAP ERP is kind of a big effort. Therefore, the more learning and time taken for the implementation, the better off you will be. That said, it's an excellent solution.

We are using this solution for enterprise resource planning.

The most valuable feature is the robust workflows that SAP provides to us in our organization. Overall, I find it the best ERP solution compared to other similar solutions.

The problem for us, we are one company that has seven home markets. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. When we need to configure, modify rules, change policies, or taxes rules, when we move currencies around based on our other financial results, it can get very complicated. When we try to join everything together we have some problems. However, the process good, all of our material and procurement processes are going well. The problem is trying to consolidate the financial reports and this is where I have problems.

I have been using SAP ERP for approximately six years.

I rate SAP ERP a nine out of ten.