I like that SAP allows one to put in other APIs to be linked, especially in its function of plant maintenance. There is a module called SAP PM. The advantage of this is its role in plant maintenance. The part which is free and accessible to all employees encompasses the logging in of plant defects and the receipt of work orders. This feature is competitive when compared with other standalone CMMS solutions, such IBM's Maximo.
The solution links everything and allows us to integrate into our entire supply chain. We can integrate the entire business. Employee leave management resources can be linked and our employees can arrange time for doing work orders for maintenance completion ratios. In the materials section, when someone takes out a spare part or asset, asset life-cycle management can be undertaken within the same system. So, it allows for seamless integration of processes that we have in our process plants.
I feel the solution is expensive when it comes to what can be obtained with open source software. I have not explored all of its components. The price is higher than alternate solutions. There should be greater editing API capabilities, which could help to reduce the overall cost implementation and the OPEX cost for CAD which the end-user would incur in licensing fees.
While I give the solution points for its usage and ability to be interfaced with other third-party sites, the costs and licensing fees bring down its rating.
Furthermore, when it comes to the SAP PM material's module, it would be nice to see the inclusion of predictive analytics. This would help with the optimization of maintenance processes. Where batch two is involved it should be able to automatically change the frequency of a preventative maintenance schedule. This would save a person from having to invest in a search for predictive maintenance solutions since this feature would already be embedded or there would be machine learning capabilities.
Moreover, in respect of the RPA processes, a close look at the entire S/4HANA and SAP process will demonstrate, by its nature, the involvement of many clerks, meaning those who do clerical work that involves checking input, entering a particular system, verifying and getting reports. For some processes, the inclusion of soft bots would minimize intellectual assistance and allow for things to be automated. This would reduce the head count of the people who are needed as SAP administrators.
There are other applications which exist that, while employed in the organization, I do not interact with directly. They touch on GIS, which is already embedded and allows for remote identification of assets and interfacing with other process documents. I believe the solution offers this feature, but its implementation takes some effort and it is not very user friendly. Its use requires a certain level of skill-set. This means that when rolled out in the context of an organization which is in the process of upgrading it can pose a challenge to do so without having to incur high costs through the inclusion of parties needed to provide assistance without the use of one's internal results.
It would be preferable to be able to rely on one's own internal resources instead of needing outside assistance. From a business point of view, it is better to have something and to undertake upgrades, add patches and make changes and modifications.
We have only recently started using SAP S4HANA Cloud, but the previous version, SAP, I've been using for nearly seven years.
The solution is scalable.
The complexity of the solution's setup can vary. If an organization has much unstructured data then this can impede the rolling out of the solution. If, on the other hand, the organization equips itself in advance with many spreadsheets of data, this can make the roll out of the solution easy to implement. As such, the pre-implementation preparation is key.
Take a traditional organization which lacks a system, but uses an Excel spreadsheet for its processes. This equates itself with some structured data. When rolling out SAP S4HANA Cloud it is easy to incorporate this into the existing interfaces. The web base with which one starts means that it would be very difficult to accomplish this without using the solution.
The price of the solution is a bit higher than the competition's.
The version we use is S/4HANA Cloud.
I rate SAP S4HANA Cloud as a seven out of ten.