SAP S/4HANA Reviews

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.

It is used for financial accounting. We are a system integrator, and we have some customers using it. Some customers are on-prem, and we also have some customers on Azure.

From a technological point of view, the in-memory database is one of the key highlights.

If S4HANA has more AI and machine learning, it will be better and easier for reporting and dashboarding.

Its pricing could be better.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

It is quite stable as long as you have the right infrastructure environment.

S4HANA has scalability features, but it depends on the infrastructure. If it is on-prem, you also need scalable hardware.

We have less technical support because of the fewer resources in the region, but we don't have any issues at the moment with that. We are also working with some partners.

Its initial setup is straightforward, but the rollout is quite challenging when the customization starts.

Its pricing could be better.

Normally, we engage with SAP sales to do the assessment. For a successful implementation, before implementing it, I would advise consulting SAP professional services, not just a partner of SAP. If SAP can provide a consulting service initially, it'll be beneficial.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We are consultants who help supervise our customers' implementation projects. Two of our customers use S4HANA. The older ones are on the ECC platform.

We found that the implementing partners themselves are struggling with S4HANA's features. It's not an exact translation of the older ECC, so SAP has taken a new route to do things with S4HANA. Maybe it's a good product, but the implementing partners also like to have an in-depth understanding of the full feature set the product offers. There are areas where even the implementer has to go back to set, which takes time, so that's one of our major concerns.

The older implementations were cloud-based, but one is happening now in one of the larger utilities, which sells services to around 4 million consumers. That's an ongoing project that hasn't gone live yet. This will be the real test. In a year, we'll know, and we can give more feedback.

Another complaint I have is that the screen source is disjointed. When I say this, I'm speaking from a user experience perspective. I don't know the S4HANA database, so I can't say if it's good or bad. I am sure that S4HANA would have certain limitations compared to Oracle, which is the gold standard for databases. Maybe there are some challenges in the backend, but I don't dwell on those because I'm not a technician. But the graphical interface requires improvement, and its flow should be very smooth. 

Also, the Fiori app is very basic. They need to become richer because people tend to use Fiori to access the S4HANA application to save on license costs. Fiori gives you access because it's a web client, and they market it as an app. It's not really a full-fledged app, but the roadmap has to be cleared from SAP. And when its capabilities improve, it gives a native app experience when people use Fiori.

I haven't been using S4HANA for long. It's been two years now.

S4HANA is relatively stable, but it's not as stable as ECC was. ECC had a long time to mature, so S4HANA still has a few years to go before it can achieve the level of stability that we've come to expect from SAP.

We've primarily relied on the local implementers for support, and there are challenges whenever they need to refer back to SAP's own technical support. It usually takes longer than expected in many cases. Sometimes they're pretty fast, but they're usually not, which is a serious concern.

We've worked with three of the biggest products in the ERP segment: S4HANA, Oracle EBS, and Microsoft Dynamics AX. Microsoft Dynamics is pretty straightforward. It's not as complex and offers a good user experience, whereas SAP through Fiori gives a certain level of user experience, but that's not as good as what Microsoft offers. But the rich line where you go through the desktop license — that user interface is still cumbersome. It's not as user-friendly I must say. On the other hand, Oracle is the middle of the two. I won't say that it's as good as Microsoft's user experience. However, while it is a bit more complex than Microsoft, it's not as complex as SAP. 

I would currently rate S4HANA seven out of 10. We tell our clients that SAP's roadmap shows us that S4HANA will mature in time. It won't happen tomorrow. They have to make an informed decision whether they want to live with certain delays in getting certain fixes or go with another solution. SAP is such a big name, so half the time, people are willing to live with those delays with the expectation that things will get better in a year or two. SAP is a trusted name, and I'm sure they must be doing something now to get S4HANA up to speed. I hope they understand that.

We are using SAP S4HANA for the OIL and GAS industry.

I have used SAP S4HANA within the past 10 Years

SAP S4HANA is highly stable.

I have found SAP S4HANA to be scalable.

The support quality depends upon the solution and the nature of the problem. It depends on which platform you working on it.

The difficulty level of the initial setup depends on the person's skills. If you know the basic knowledge of the database, then it will be easy, otherwise, it will be very difficult.

I would rate the price of SAP S4HANA a four out of five.

The price of SAP S4HANA could be cheaper.

My advice to others is for them to do their homework very well because if you move into production, you don't have any chances. Make sure your timelines are correct and select your consultant wisely.

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

My main use of this product is for finance and controlling.

This product would be improved by adding more reports. In the next release, I would like UDF or UDO to be added.

I've been using this solution for about two-and-a-half years.

This is a scalable solution.

This product is straightforward to set up.

I also work with Business One, and I find I need a lot of workarounds for it. But I find everything I need in S4/HANA. I recommend this solution for everyone, I think it's the best solution available. I would rate S4/HANA eight out of ten.

The solution can be used for many things in an organization, such as managing sales, operations, supply chain logistics, master data, and product management.

I have found the user interface very modern and it has simplified many user jobs, such as the embedded logistics. They have introduced central finance which has been a benefit.

This solution works with the configuration, if the prerequisites are very clear and can be configured it works perfectly. If you need to simulate something, as a predictive tool this kind of simulation is not very accurate and it has limitations. This is something that could improve.

In an upcoming release, the allocation process should be revised and improved.

I have been using this solution for approximately eight years.

The solution is very stable in this new version we have been using.

The solution is easy to scale. I have found this solution is the best fit for medium to large size businesses.

The technical support has been very valuable. They are experts and provide a great service.

The installation is a complex process compared to other solutions. The setup can be even more complex by adding areas of the organization you want to the solution, such as LAN networks, licenses, and infrastructure.

The client decides who does the implementations. Some do it themselves and others use a vendor.

I have found the price of the solution is on the medium to the expensive side of the scale. There is a license for this solution and there are additional maintenance fees.

I would recommend this solution to those looking for a similar solution.

I rate SAP S4HANA a seven out of ten.

I'm an SAP solution architect and we are partners with SAP.

This is a robust product with the best feature to my mind being the integration of all the modules which has made life much easier for our clients. It's one box with everything included.  

These days, most clients ask about mass upload. It's not possible to do that with SAP so there is an opportunity for them. Mass uploads have become a necessity for industry. SAP does have ways to do this but it's not user-friendly. I'd also like to have an easier option for hosting. Currently, I know that S4HANA can be ported on cloud versions, and they have started giving out ready-to-use kits but there are some hiccups and basic things are a struggle. I've worked with a few different teams that have had problems with that.

I've been using this solution for several years. 

Technical support is quite good, no complaints there.

Deployment was quite difficult several years ago but now it's improved greatly and is quite straightforward.

The cost is reasonable but it's important to check on the options they offer to ensure you get what you want and that you're not paying for things you don't need. It's about having a consistent experience. 

If you're a company that's already using SAP, ERP or ECC, then you'll know that you will get a consolidated system if you take on S4HANA. If you're not using SAP, you have the choice to go with it and make it accessible to your team.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.

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.