SAP S/4HANA Reviews

I used S/4HANA as a classical ERP system, so I used it to manage the data feeds of enterprise companies. One of them was an IT services company and the other was in the pharmaceutical business. They were two different businesses, but S/4HANA has so many modules and adjustments that you can generally adjust it to any kind of a business. 

S/4HANA can be cloud-based or deployed on-premises, but in both of my implementations, it was on-prem. 

One of the most valuable features, which we used the most, was the FI module, for finance. It involved controlling, account receivables, account payables, and complete financial steering. 

S/4HANA could be improved with better integration. At the moment, a main issue I see is that there's so much growth in the functionality, complementary modules, and cloud solutions which were acquired by SAP and which extend the functionality of the SAP ERP suite. It looks to me that they tend to acquire more and more functionality from acquisitions, but they don't invest enough effort into making them integrated with S/4HANA or ERP. I would say that the functionality is great, but integration is something which still needs more attention. Instead of focusing on acquisitions, they should invest, integrate, and better the existing portfolio of products in SAP. It would help us, as implementors, to have a more complex or compact solution. 

I used S/4HANA for about half a year, for two projects that I was running. 

I would say that S/4HANA is more of a stable product than a top-performing product, but that's because I don't have the same use cases with similar tools to compare it to. It's not fair to judge the performance if I don't have a like-to-like comparison with anything else. 

This solution is scalable. 

The technical support of SAP really depends on where your ticket is resolved. Sometimes you are lucky and you get an expert on the first trial, directly from Europe, and you get good advice very quickly and can continue with your progress. However, sometimes your tickets get stuck and maybe sent to India or sent to less experienced consultants, and you need to chase it to get your ticket resolved. It's hard to make a judgment on this because I've experienced both circumstances, either getting great support in a short amount of time or having to escalate the ticket for a couple of weeks because it's hard to reach the right expert. It's hard to compare because it depends, case by case. 

I'd say their technical support falls in the middle of the scale: it could be better, but it could be worse. At the moment, it's satisfactory, but unfortunately, this isn't always the case. 

Implementation is definitely not straightforward. It's straightforward if you have a proper expert in your sub-base team, but it's not installing Windows or Microsoft Excel. It's a corporate enterprise management system, so there are a lot of parameters you need to set up. The installation itself is the easy part, but the configuration for the business use case is complex. Typically, the installation took about one week. For the configuration, making it compliant with the business use cases, and setting up all the security and users, it took months—typically three to six months, depending on the size of the company. 

The team needed for deployment and maintenance depends on the size and complexity of the customer's business processes. It also depends on how far they would like to go with customizations because almost nobody is purchasing such an enterprise solution to use it as a standard. Almost every customer has some specific features they need to get configured, adjusted, or developed in the solution. From that point of view, it will decide the size of your team. 

If you have a small- to mid-size company—one hundred employees, compact business processes—then you can do it in a couple of months with five people. If you have an enterprise company with thousands of employees around the globe, then it takes almost an indefinite number of consultants because it depends on the complexity of your setup. So the minimum team of five could set it up in a couple of months for a small- to mid-sized company, but it could be a team of twenty to fifty people if you have a complex environment. 

I have implemented this solution for two customers. 

This is not the cheapest solution on the market, so you need to invest seriously in it. As a solid product, it has a solid price. It's definitely one of the more expensive tools on the market, but it's also one of the best products on the market. 

You need to pay for licensing. There are multiple models, but typically, it's a yearly subscription. Usually, when you implement it from scratch, you don't just purchase it for the first year, but for three or five years. 

Compared to similar products, I rate SAP S/4HANA an eight out of ten, because it can always be better. 

I would definitely recommend S/4HANA to those considering implementation. The greatest and biggest enterprises use SAP solutions. If you have a really serious business and you're looking for a rock solid solution with all the modules and functionalities you may need, then SAP is definitely one of the best options. On the other hand, you need to have a business which is profitable because this solution is not cheap, and implementation projects are neither cheap nor fast. You need to invest seriously in such a solution, but it pays off because there are no risks of malfunctions. You have enough contractors on the market who can help you with the solution, so you can always get support. 

We are in the progress right now in achieving the maximum utilization of the SAP HANA. We are exploring most of the available features.

I find the Production Planning Cockpit (PPC) and Material Requirements Planning (MRP) most valuable modules.

In a feature release, they could improve by adding budgetary features.

I have used SAP S4HANA for approximately three years.

SAP S4HANA is stable.

As for our requirements, SAP S4HANA has been scalable. We can extend our requirement to the system. We are using the new enhanced feature and there are many features that are available for the system allowing scalability.

We are receiving technical support from a local team here from India.

The price of SAP S4HANA is reasonable.

I would advise others when implementing to work very closely with the SAP team. When we are migrating from a legacy system to any newer system or SAP, we need to work on the mass uploading requirements, such as the master data, or open items, such as assets. We need to make another clean system before uploading all the data to the system.

I rate SAP S4HANA a seven out of ten.

Mostly I have dealt with project-based manufacturing companies where they do custom product builds, like heavy equipment, compressors, steam turbines, and stuff like that.

S4HANA is a completely integrated solution. It's an end-to-end ERP system with strong manufacturing and financial integration, which is not common among ERPs. And it's a solution that's driven by industry best practices.

Maybe its user interface and reporting can be improved across the board, but it is manageable.

I've been using S4HANA for about 16 years.

S4HANA's stability is good.

S4HANA is pretty scalable. We normally plan three to five years ahead and scale up accordingly. So as long as your sizing is done properly, you're good.

I don't have much experience with SAP's tech support, but I have used the online support system. It's okay for a company the size of SAP. But from a customer perspective, it can be time consuming to get help from them.

Setting up S4HANA is straightforward if you have a little bit of expertise, especially on the S4HANA side. You need to understand the appliances and hardware so you can set requirements for RAM as opposed to storage. If you have some experience in server administration, it's not like climbing a mountain; it's a small trip.

Most of the time, I've been able to quantify the soft savings, like savings in terms of time spent on processes and efficiencies that you gain. FDA reductions are generally difficult to establish over a finite period, but your soft savings are far more rewarding, and it's also more compliance related.

I have not dealt with licensing directly because our head office manages that. We only pay SAP to perform maintenance on the solution instead of doing it in-house. Given the size of an ERP system, you need some extra labor to maintain it, but it's justified if you look at the cost-benefit analysis. Some companies go overboard with hiring many people, and then they say it's too expensive.

I would rate S4HANA 10 out of 10. It's a good solution. I think some companies are penny wise and pound foolish. They invest a lot in other ERPs, and when they start to grow those systems, they create a lot of inefficiencies in the process. 

The solution has helped our organization with planning and consolidating our data.

SAP S4HANA has good performance and has allowed us to combine our systems.

The solution could be more user-friendly for regular users and developers.

I have been using SAP S4HANA for approximately 15 years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have been happy with the technical support from SAP.

The installation and migration can take a lot of time but it is expected. 

We had assistance with the migration from SAP. They were very helpful.

The price of the solution is expensive.

I would recommend others to use the latest version of the solution to receive all the benefits.

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

We use SAP S4HANA for our main backup processes. Most of the backups processes if for sales, supply, accounting, and financial. 

I like the user experience and usability of SAP Fiori, which is one of the main features that we are using.

The initial setup could be better. They can make the process a little easier. The functions that we require will be available in the next release. We specifically need a new model, and I think we have some versions to implement. I already read on the SAP website that some functionalities we are waiting for are available in this new version.

We have been using SAP S4HANA for just six months. We just converted the ECC to S/4.

SAP S4HANA is a stable solution.

SAP S4HANA is scalable, and we're running this solution at some banks we have here. It's easy to scale, but it takes a couple of months to do it.

Technical support is good. it's very nice because we have both local support and international support on their website. I think it's good.

The initial setup isn't easy because it takes six months to deploy the project. I think we also discussed it for almost a year before implementing it. 

I would advise potential users to plan extensively before they start. It's very important.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give SAP S4HANA a nine.

With our customers, we are currently administering their solution over SAP HANA and with different infrastructures such as cloud computing, AWS, Azure, GCP, and others that are also on-premise.

We have customers with new implementations and we offer this product to them. We handle the technical installation, then the high availability solution, the disaster recovery, et cetera. We are doing the administration of all the landscapes and a sub-basic administration. 

In all the other cases we have, the customers are immigrating their solution from SAP HEC. That is the other server for SAP. We bring it to the cloud with public clouds like AWS. Those cases are the most common.

The cost optimization that is shipped with cloud solutions is the primary benefit of the product. 

The integral services that we can administer to our customers are excellent. They are paying for an all-inclusive version of the service. We manage all the features of the operating system - such as ACE's, SAP systems, networks, security on the cloud, et cetera. We can administer everything that is associated with the landscape.

We're well trained on the solution and therefore find the implementation process straightforward.

The solution is quite stable and offers good patches for when issues arise.

The scalability is excellent, especially on cloud deployment models.

From our point of view, we are just a technology consultant. We look at the interfaces in terms of the functional modules we have. It's hard to really see what would be missing in terms of a feature. 

For clients, the most painful part of the solution is the implementation guides of the business or process applications. Okay. The business scenario, the graphic user interface, shown on the system can be a challenge. 

Maybe the commercial model for some other products developed for HANA could be adjusted to make it less complex and more affordable. The commercial laws that SAP has it's very complex. The customer has to acquire a very high license on the product and then they have to buy infrastructure on top of that.

Technical support has been declining. They aren't as responsive as they used to be.

The product could use some other integrations with leaders of the products with public clouds - especially if they are doing with another staff like ILP or on other applications. There could be more legal applications that could be integrated more easily with SAP than they're doing. Right now, we have to develop all the integrations. It would be so much better if this was already done. 

SAP often launches new solutions without first providing the proper documentation. We end up figuring it out, however, it would be nice to have that documentation up front.

We have approximately 15 years of experience on the books with this solution. We've used it since SAP was not HANA. It's now been with HANA, since 2014, if I recall correctly. Therefore, that may be about seven years of experience. Obviously, we've worked with the product over the last 12 months.

The stability is very good. It's, it's a very, very stable version. SAP is often releasing new patches. If we are having some issues, such as some problems with transactions or maybe some features may not work properly, we reach out to enterprise support and often just get a patch. 

The level of scalability you can achieve depends on the infrastructure that you have installed. In the cloud, in product public sites, it's easier to scale. We can scale both up and out and it's very simple to accomplish. 

Typically, we deal with medium businesses. Some others are large at approximately 5,000 users. Most are between 400 and 800 users.

Technical support used to be better. They seem to be less proactive than they were before. Previously they were very responsive and helpful. It's lagged a bit. We're disappointed their rapid response has declined. We're no longer satisfied with the level of service provided.

For us, the entire process is traditionally straightforward. It's not too complex. We manage it like the other systems in the past and obviously take into consideration any new technology within SAP HANA. However, in terms of setting it up, it's not a problem.

With a big cloud infrastructure, we can set up a system in less than a month. It may take between two to three months to take over the system and put it onto the cloud or on our hardware projects. On-premise it may be longer - sometimes around four months.

How many people you need for deployment and maintenance depends on the number of systems. However, with a team of four to five people we managed to do all the projects. 

We handle the implementation process for our clients.

While our clients may first evaluate other solutions, that's not something that we typically do.

We are experts in the technical implementation of the product.

We work with a variety of versions, and, of course, with eh latest 2020 updates. We deal with both cloud and on-premises deployment models.

I'd advise potential new users to really think about their infrastructure and the features they would like. Everything should be looked at and discussed in advance, from security concerns to functional modules. The more you understand what you need, the more likely you will get a solution that you want - and that does what you need it to.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are a pre-sales team and I have been working as a consultant for SAP S4HANA.

Most often, we deal with manufacturing CPG customers. We prefer the complete SAP S4HANA Suite, with all of the functionalities, and the use cases are typically everything that is offered from the processes in that suite.

The key modules that I find most valuable are material management (MM), financial accounting and controlling (FICO), and human resources (HR). I am not exposed to all of the core features, but these are the ones that we generally prefer and propose.

The two things that need to be improved are price and customization. These are two dynamic changes that every customer will want.

I have been working with SAP S4HANA for the past year and a half.

Our customers for this solution are mixed in size. We have small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale customers. The number of users also varies. It can be hundreds or multiple thousands.

I do not have experience with SAP technical support.

We have enough competency in our company that the initial setup is straightforward and we don't face many issues. There may be some complexity but it depends on the configuration.

The deployment model is a mixture of offerings and this choice is based on customer requirements. Sometimes it is a cloud deployment, whereas others are on-premises, and yet in some cases, it is a hybrid model.

We have an in-house team for deployment.

The price of this product is an issue for some customers.

I highly recommend this product for all SAP customers who want to digitize and have a core business suite of applications.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I am a consultant and SAP S4HANA is one of the products that I work with.

From a technology standpoint, the theory and analytics are fascinating.

When it comes to the delivery of features, I would like it presented in a more user-friendly way. Every year, when a new version is released, it comes with a very thick booklet of 300 or 400 pages and it is a little difficult to comprehend. This is something that should be simplified. A simple comparison between the older and newer version would be very helpful for customers and consultants.

The default UI has been the same for a long time and in my last few projects, I've found that it wasn't fast enough. 

I have been working with this product since version 1511 in 2015, about five years ago.

I am comfortable with its stability.

This product is definitely scalable. 

I would say that it is for medium-sized companies. For smaller companies, the scale of the project might be too large, so they may not be able to harness the complete power of S4HANA.

The support from SAP is excellent. It is very good, compared to other products.

The SAP Marketplace is a good source of support.

I have hands-on experience with a few other products that are on the market.

Compared to older versions, prior to S4HANA, it is very easy to deploy. Starting from a development environment, I say it would take about three to four months to deploy for a mid-sized customer.  

For ERP, I do not recommend anything other than SAP 4/HANA. For other applications such as CRM and planning, I may recommend a different product.

I think that the newest version is great and I think the idea should be to quickly push it to cloud completely.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.