SAP S/4HANA Reviews

I have two major clients for SAP S/4HANA. The first is in the UAE, using real estate modules, and the second is US-based, CVS or Century Business Solutions. In the US, the solution handles all customer-related activities like sales orders, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and refunds, integrated with both mobile and web apps. For the UAE client, it manages real estate information, allowing customers to place orders and receive offers online via mobile and web apps. After customer confirmation, it facilitates contract agreements and integrates finance and accounts-related information. 

Clients share their requirements via emails, and if I have any confusion, I directly communicate with them through video or audio meetings using Google Meet or other resources. As a technical consultant, I handle both technical and functional aspects. We primarily use FSR forms, which clients deliver via email. We read and verify these requirements from the customers and strive to use standard functionalities to the fullest and implement the required functionalities directly using the standard system.

Regarding migration from previous system to SAP S/4HANA, it had no negative impact on business productivity as data was smoothly transferred using tools like BDCs and LSMWs. Data is crucial, and SAP S/4HANA easily integrates with previous systems, ensuring no errors or hurdles for clients.

SAP S/4HANA delivers all essential possibilities to customers for various sections. In the current modern age, we use SAP for graphical outputs, reports, and smartphone accessibility. If users want to see financial outputs via diagrams, we use SAP by Design. For specific confirmations via mobile app or web app, we use few other applications. If users want only source forms and not hard copies, we use AR forms.

The most advanced functionality in S/4HANA is the OData service. It's crucial because everyone wants to integrate third-party applications with SAP S/4HANA. SAP HANA uses advanced OData services, integrating with Azure HANA. We also use SQL services and Java security, allowing every language to interface with SAP, choosing tools specific for our requirements.

In my opinion, there's room for improvement in SAP S/4HANA based on customer requirements. The solution already includes advanced technologies like AI functionalities, but improvements can be made in areas like UI and pricing. For example, making the UI more user-friendly or reducing the cost could enhance the overall experience for clients and customers. The goal is to provide everything customers need with just one click, ensuring convenience and efficiency in accessing information and performing tasks.

In terms of stability, I have a good impression because when we meet all customer requirements, they are satisfied and find it reliable.

I would rate the scalability of SAP S/4HANA as good, around eight out of ten. Our clients vary in size, ranging from small to medium to large enterprises, covering different levels of businesses.

My experience with the technical support, is about a ten to twenty percent involvement on my end since I primarily handle technical aspects.

My experience with the initial setup of SAP S/4HANA is quite easy, as I've been working with SAP for around nine to ten years. Regarding deployment time, it depends on the complexity of the requirements, ranging from a few days to a maximum of one month.

As for pricing, it depends on the business size and flow. If it's a medium-sized business, it might seem affordable, but for larger businesses with complex processes, it could be considered expensive.

If a client faced challenges with their previous system, I would directly communicate with them, understand the issue, and demonstrate how SAP S/4HANA can address specific reports or modules, ensuring around a ninety-nine percent success rate in resolving issues.

I would rate SAP S/4HANA a ten out of ten because of its seamless integration with third-party software and ease of use.

I'm an architect. S/4HANA is an intelligent enterprise. When an organization needs an application or software to run its operations, S/4HANA comes into play. SAP is the market leader in ERP. S/4HANA is not a traditional ERP anymore, but an intelligent enterprise. That's the power of S/4HANA.

The integration capabilities of SAP S/4HANA and AWS are excellent.  SAP S/4HANA is an intelligent enterprise. It can harness data and provide the right data at the right time for decision-makers to carry forward the operations. 

For integration, you have SAP BTP, a platform as a solution that can work with S/4HANA. There are also other tools like SAP CPI and SAP Process Orchestration. So, there are a lot of tools available for SAP to integrate with the outside world.

AI capabilities are good with SAP S/4HANA. When WE combine SAP S/4HANA with SAP BTP, there is a use case in the healthcare industry where it can detect yearly symptoms and save lives. This is referred to as SAP Business Technology Platform.

S/4HANA is a very large application. There is no one specific tool I can pick. It depends on the customer, the use case, and what the business needs. Different industries will find different business functions helpful. 

If it is a construction industry, probably something related to the construction function will help you. If it is a logistics industry, if it's a logistics function, it's a separate one. So, depending on the type of industry, you will have a different business function that will come into place.

Most of the Fortune 500 companies use SAP S/4HANA, so I don't think it's unfit for any particular industry. But if a customer has limited requirements, like only sales activity, then they can choose Salesforce. They don't need SAP S/4HANA. It's not a proper comparison because we can do a lot with S/4HANA, like HR, sales, distribution, production planning, quality management, transport management, and more.

In future releases, I would like to see more availability zones and VPCs so customers have more freedom to choose. Also, more training so customers can utilize the training enablement.

I have experience with S/4HANA for around seven or eight years.

AWS is premium. From a cost perspective, AWS might be on the higher side. The users have to check if the required availability zone is available in the customer's region. Sometimes, only Azure is available. I don't see any issues of that sort. It's very mature.

The customer service and support are very good. There are options for SAP called RISE with SAP. You can make a note of it. With RISE with SAP, customers can choose their hyperscaler. It can be SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, AWS, Azure, GCP, or even Alibaba. When it comes to support, you can go with a single contract with the RISE with SAP option, so you get one support contract.

The support comes from SAP, not AWS. The support is the same for AWS or Azure. Some customers will enter into an exclusive contract, while others will go with a generic contract. For the sake of an answer, I can give it an eight out of ten.

Positive

Every implementation has its challenges. Sometimes, the challenges are with the project timeline, sometimes with resource availability, and sometimes with the business process meeting the requirements of the business. 

Especially with a product like SAP, such a big project, there are challenges, and that's when project management comes in to make sure the project is delivered successfully.

We have multiple deployment options. We have S/4HANA on public cloud and S/4HANA on private cloud. Depending on the customer's appetite, we can choose which one they want. 

Even within the private cloud, we have options like greenfield, which means we implement from scratch; brownfield, which means we convert an existing system; or bluefield, which is loosely related to a data migration approach. So, it depends on the customer's appetite.

SAP S/4HANA is a solution, and AWS is just an infrastructure provider. Some customers might prefer S/4HANA on Azure or Google Cloud. It depends on the customer's requirements.

Customers will have access to the latest innovation from SAP and will be updated with the business process libraries. They can stay ahead of their competitors in the market because of the innovations provided by SAP. 

They also have lots of tools or options available to integrate with the outside world.

I would recommend using it. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The solution's use cases depend on the market in which clients use it. I usually work with manufacturing companies. They used the tool for manufacturing, using whatever they needed to implement SAP independently. Warehousing users use the solution to manage inventory. Both retail and manufacturing markets use warehousing, and that's another big area where the tool is used.

The main focus of moving from an old ERP to the solution is that the HANA database runs in memory and quickly answers questions. Since it's already in memory, reports need not be created after the data is loaded in the transactional tables.

The solution's most valuable feature is integration. You're still talking about modules, procurement, and business partners. All of these are different modules in SAP S/4HANA. Everything is connected easily because of the integration of the same database in the memory. It's already connected there. You don't need to change the view.

You can change the view from one perspective to another, but it's mostly the same thing. You are not jumping between modules in such a way that you are seeing the same data differently. Since you see the same database, you are not making mistakes when seeing the customer in procurement or inventory. You see exactly the same data because it comes from the same view.

Everything is integrated in that way. There are no more mistakes in the data not being updated. Every time you access something, it is already updated in real-time. From a business point of view, you see the same figure no matter how you access it.

SAP S/4HANA is an expensive solution.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA for 10 to 12 years.

If there are no customizations, SAP S/4HANA is a very stable product.

You can add more transactions, materials, customers, and vendors. Scaling the solution is not a problem because you are in a private cloud. You need more servers, but the system is prepared to work that way. The solution is more suited for medium to enterprise businesses. Some small customers want to have this kind of ERP, but the problem is that it is expensive.

Without any changes, the solution's initial setup is easy. The process is very, very easy to implement. If there are changes, we need to recommend that SAP incorporate those modifications because they may be standard.

That is a long shot because SAP filters everything, as there are many customer requests. They filter them and implement only the ones they think are useful to everybody. Those modifications are taken into account for the next release. It's a problem for the customer if they need something that is not standard for SAP S/4HANA. If it is a standard for SAP S/4HANA, it's easy to implement.

I rate the solution’s initial setup ten out of ten.

Some customers needing this kind of software don't consider the costs. They think about the profitability they can achieve with the solution's implementation. People concerned about the costs need to evaluate whether implementing this system is profitable.

It depends on the perspective. You need to consider whether this investment is enough to get you to what you are looking for. It's basically a market evaluation of what you are doing.

With the solution's real-time analytic options, you don't need to use anything else. You already have the data in memory, and you can build any query to extract something that was hard to extract earlier.

The business process works fine because there are not too many steps now. Since everything is in memory, the processes are simpler than before. The business processes are cleaner because you don't need to go through too many steps to get the results done. You now have a 360-degree view of a customer.

Whether you are accessing the customer by invoicing or by a business partner, you get the view of these customers all around, and you don't need to jump between modules. Everything is now more easily integrated.

The first approach was to have this ERP implemented on-premises. Now, the solution is going to the cloud. The idea is to deploy the tool depending on the requirements of the customer or the client. The products are already built, and you don't need to do anything else.

You are accessing the solution in a way that is already customized for the customer. You don't need to do anything additionally. The ERP is already ready to be used. Then, you have hybrid implementations, partly in the cloud and partly on-premises.

Also, you can have everything on-premises but in a private network. So, it depends on the client's requirements. Everything can be done depending on the client's requirements, but the solution can be deployed everywhere.

Customers are currently looking to migrate from ECC into S/4HANA. The improvements or benefits will come from implementing S/4HANA. These customers are not so worried about how it is going to work because they want to do the initial migration. A lot of customers are doing that at this time, and it is a potential market for us as implementers on which we can rely for a long time.

SAP provides a module that facilitates migration from any system, not only ECC, to SAP S/4HANA. The idea here is to provide layouts already built. The customer or client only needs to populate this layout and then push it into the solution, which is easy. However, depending on the client, some things may not completely reflect what the customer or client needs. So, they need to do customizations.

Those customizations need to be done before in SAP S/4HANA, and then this special module for data migration needs to be modified. It could be totally different from what the standard SAP is doing. So, they need to do other programming to get this data loaded into specific modules being modified for that client.

The idea is to get the benefit of what SAP S/4HANA is offering. The idea is not to customize anything. However, we always have something that is not specific for a client and needs to be modified. The module itself is capable of modifying what is required. If you modify the tool too much, the next version will not be implemented quickly.

That's why the recommendation is not to modify anything. The processes already built into the solution are enough for any kind of market. However, if you are doing it, you need to comply with what SAP recommends. If the new version is coming, you can implement it quickly, or you will have issues like in the past. Heavily customized ERP systems are complex to migrate to the new versions.

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

Based on my knowledge and experience during the transformation phase with the tool, I think the product provides things in a very planned manner in terms of the data, migration with different phases and testing, and servers to move to, making it a very easy process and very comfortable to move to it from another solution.

The product's high cost is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA for a few days. I am not a user of the tool, but I work as a support in my company to help integrate the solution with some other software products. I look into the secondary sales systems. I am not the core user of the product.

My company's technical team and IT team may have had the need to contact the solution's technical support team.

My company switched over to SAP S/4HANA from SAP ECC, which was a legacy system and did not operate in real-time while there was need for some customizations leading to different challenges. Globally, every organization has moved to tSAP S/4HANA for improved processes and real-time analytics. I think the core objectives of the founder of the organization stems from the aforementioned details.

The solution can be deployed and implemented in a year because my organization has a very huge infrastructure of SAP. My company has bought different modules and data from SAP, so going through the documentation and everything takes time during the implementation phase.

Whether the product is expensive or not is something that may vary from company to company. If I consider my organization, I feel that the product is a bit expensive. Myorganization is not currently using big modules like S/4HANA and the other different modules. Though National Food Limited is a global organization, I think the tool is costly. National Food Limited wants to grow up with the technology since the founder states that they have a certain benchmark in the world. The product is worth the money.

My background is in providing support for software tools our company uses for order booking and for secondary sales software, which consists of mobile booking for markets and stores. For analytical dashboards, my company uses Power BI, which is connected to the software tools we use in the company. For integrations with SAP S/4HANA, my company has connected a few databases with inbound and outbound APIs.

My company is very satisfied with the tool and I believe that it is going to be a very good transformation for our organization. Before my company used to work on SAP ECC, and now we are migrating to SAP S/4HANA. Everyone in our company has very good experience with SAP. Now, my company is going to go live in a week or two.

My company uses the tool to make end-to-end processes easier, and we have a consultant named Reynold from PwC. My company uses the consultancy service offered by PwC to manage National Foods Limited and SAP.

My company plans to use the tool for real-time analytics or decision-making. I think the founder of my organization admires the fact that with SAP's technology, we are able to use real-time information and it is a good improvement in the strategic area and the directions. SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) Forecasting Algorithms can definitely be helpful.

I am not able to comment much about the solution since my company is still in the transformation stage.

The user interface of SAP S/4HANA is user-friendly. In different modules, like financial and production ones, I have experienced the use of the tool with different people who have mentioned that it is a very helpful product for them.

I have worked with Fiori UI/UX and also with SAP IBP and SAP SAC. In SAP, the dashboard can be managed in real-time.

The product helps increase the data processing speed, especially in areas like workflow. When it comes to the financial aspect, the tool provides very strong financial and credit limits, which is a very good feature of the tool, as it can help the organization move to a certain level.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

SAP S/4HANA is the predominant solution from SAP, replacing the earlier SAP ECC. It's widely used for overall enterprise resource planning, including running banking operations and other enterprise functions.

My client's organization uses SAP S/4HANA for real-time analytics and decision-making by leveraging embedded analytics that are part of S/4HANA. Some organizations integrate specialized BW layers or their own data house layers for analytics, using SCC or BI for visualization. Others extract data from SAP S/4HANA to other hyperscalers or providers to create visualizations.

SAP S/4HANA supports my client's business processes in finance, procurement, and supply chain management through end-to-end management. This is often done with other IT specialists or independently for smaller customers using SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA has been an excellent integrated solution for my clients, technically much easier to manage than the ECC solution. The embedded AI layer helps adopt intelligent AI directly within business scenarios, which has been very beneficial. These features enhance operations and efficiency for my clients.

Extensions to SAP S/4HANA have room for improvement, especially in integration with low-code/no-code platforms. Creating these extensions through Fiori transactions is more tedious than customers would like. Although the SAP build process has become more linear, further improvements could provide a huge benefit.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA since 2013.

It's a very stable system overall, but with new attacks targeting customers' SAP landscapes, the latest patches and versions must be applied. I would rate the stability an eight. 

The scalability of SAP S/4HANA is high, around nine. Typically, my clients are medium or enterprise businesses.

They are not excellent, but they are not bad either.

Positive

I would rate the initial setup of SAP S/4HANA as one because it is challenging. Implementing SAP S/4HANA involves integrating an organisation's processes, including different departments, geographical locations, and compliance requirements. Given the scale of these businesses, such as operations in multiple countries, it's complex and not meant to be simple.The physical deployment of SAP S/4HANA is not a challenge.

The deployment itself might happen within a day or even a few hours, given the accessible hardware. The time-consuming part is identifying the needed components, areas, services, and software. The actual deployment process is simple, but adjusting the software to meet your needs is complex. It's not the physical deployment of the application that is the problem.

SAP S/4HANA is usually deployed on the cloud through its own SAP
mechanism. This allows for deployment on both public and private cloud options.

Regarding pricing, I don't regularly deal with the financial aspects, but it is not a cheap solution.

When migrating to SAP S/4HANA, productivity initially dipped as organizations adjusted to the previous system. This is due to the need for change management and adapting to the new software. However, once the transition is complete, productivity significantly improves due to faster response times, a more mobile-centric approach, and better data handling. Overall, SAP S/4HANA helps users perform their tasks more efficiently.

SAP S/4HANA might not be able to address all business challenges directly, but other products can be integrated to fill these gaps. For example, difficulties like sustainability or energy rating do not have a direct solution within SAP S/4HANA. Similarly, areas like contact centre or customer call centre management are not directly part of SAP S/4HANA, but partner solutions are available to address these needs. 

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use the tool  as an ERP transactional system for financials, logistics, human resources, sales, distribution, and billing.

SAP S/4HANA dominates around 70 percent of the ERP market in Chile, and I believe this isn't merely coincidental. I've always maintained that if someone believes SAP S/4HANA lacks a certain functionality, they haven't explored it thoroughly. However, there's a widespread lack of understanding regarding its full potential and how to configure it.

Many businesses in Chile and elsewhere underutilize SAP S/4HANA, limiting its use to basic tasks like document entry or accounting, which is unfortunate considering its capabilities. SAP S/4HANA offers integration, consistency, security, and potential for user-friendliness. Nonetheless, initiatives like Fiori and SAPS/4HANA seem to be moving in the right direction to address this issue.

I can discuss one of our largest clients, a utility company. They specialize in generating and commercializing electricity, primarily for industrial customers. They utilize the tool, encompassing standard ERP features like logistics, human resources, and financials, and integrating their core business processes into the entire system. It adds great value to the company.

For instance, by integrating metering systems online into the ERP system, all billing and operational processes become online. The system connects with the CRM system and incorporates the physical network. Let me provide an example. If there's an outage at your home, contact the utility company, and the tool will identify your location and provide access to relevant client information.

The entire process is seamlessly integrated into the system. When the affected individual is eventually billed, they will receive a discount due to the outage, as per our loss analysis for such situations. It's all integrated, making the experience seamless, efficient, and pleasant for everyone involved, from the call center staff to the customers.

The solution's most valuable feature is integration. Our core data services are very powerful, and they allow a whole new reporting capability that was not present before. Another valuable feature is energy data management, specifically the processing of metering information from utilities, which has benefited our organization the most. It allows us to monitor real-time consumption data.

The use cases I mentioned before all involve customization in terms of parameterization and custom developments. We strive to keep things standard, but there are cases where centralization or more specific development is needed. Through both of these means, we've successfully delivered projects and provided meaningful solutions to our customers.

I think the user interface still needs improvement. While efforts are being made to enhance and make it more user-friendly, there are still shortcomings. Fiori is a great step forward, but work must be done. So, I believe SAP S/4HANA should focus more on improving GUI access. We also had a difficult time migrating the fixed assets. 

I have been working with the product for seven years.

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. 

The tool's deployment is straightforward. 

The solution is worth its costs. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. If your business processes are clear, the implementation will be straightforward. If not, it will not. Don't try to accommodate the system to your business process; instead, try to align your business processes with what's defined in the system.

I am a system integrator. We recently implemented it for a customer, and they are finding it easy to use.

We implemented the remote version of S/4HANA on Azure, and it is working well for the customer.

My customers use it for all functions, including finance, sales, and Oracle. 

They are using it for all six core functions: 

• Source to pay
• Record to report
• Order to cash
• Procure to pay
• Plan to produce
• Core finance. 

They also use it for other pharma operations.

The cloud-based feature of Microsoft Azure has been very valuable. It is easy to implement and use, saving the customer a lot of effort on infrastructure. The product is also very stable, and the customer is comfortable with it.

The customer has worked with previous products, and this one has brought a lot of comfort in terms of infrastructure handling. The infrastructure is managed by a different team, and the users are also comfortable with the interface. So far, they are happy with the product.

The product is user-friendly. The user interface, now called Fiori, is very stable. The product also has a lot of interfaces available to interact with cloud products, and it supports all kinds of integrations, so the amount of customizations needed from customers is greatly reduced.

The infrastructure resources are also effectively used. It is very optimized; used in a very optimized manner. The maintenance and handling of the infrastructure are very well taken care of with S/4HANA on Azure.

The interface could be improved with more Fiori applications. There are still a few applications in SAP GUI. I think SAP is working on this, but it will take time. 

Additionally, the admin interface could be improved. Since the admin is not directly an end-user, it may not be in focus, but if the customer's team is managing it, it would be helpful. 

Bringing all the admin applications into one place would be very helpful for customers to lock this down and use it internally for management.

In future releases, I would like to see a centralized admin interface. A lot of admin activities need to be done at different places. Apart from that, the pain development and change management for developments could be improved. 

Some features are not yet available in the new interface, so bringing those in would make it easier for customers to manage from the admin side.

I've been working with this solution for the last five to seven years. I work with the 2022 feature pack zero.

Since SAP brings new versions, I would rate the stability nine out of ten as of now.

So far, the performance is fine. No major hiccups or conversations have been reported that would cause the product to fall into any category of material issues. 

All stability and performance-related aspects have been taken care of. We have positive feedback from the customer side in terms of performance and stability.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Scalability is quite flexible. With the solution on Azure or other cloud products, scalability options are very flexible. The backend hardware technologies have improved on the cloud side, so many options are available now.

In my last five years of experience, all the customers I've seen are on S/4HANA. I've hardly seen anyone use older versions. New customers are all getting on S/4HANA.  

Our customers are mostly enterprise-level businesses. 

The technical support from SAP is quite mature. It's been five to seven years, so the product is now getting into the maturity phase. The product support team is quite capable of solving issues on time.

Positive

For me, the initial setup is very straightforward. It may not be easy for the customer, but for the integrator, it is.

So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy. 

There were some generic issues in development, but the support from SAP was good, and they were resolved. All products will have some issues. The product support is good enough to resolve them on time.

Deployment time:

Implementing it for all the functionalities within the given scope took around one year, including various phases like development, quality assurance, and production. It depends on the scope, but with the current scope, including all planned interfaces and project management, it will be manageable.

We (my company) are system integrators. 

Deployment process:

We start with development, where all customizations are performed. It's then moved to the testing system for various tests like regression, unit, user acceptance, performance, and integration testing. 

Once approved and verified by the customer, it's taken to production for deployment. Then, there's minimal functional and engineering testing, followed by live production testing done by the end users. If everything is clear, we go live.

Since customers are adopting it and finding it valuable, in comparison to others, I can give the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive and one being cheap. It's not too expensive and not too cheap.

Additional costs to the licensing fees include maintenance or integration costs, depending on who manages it for the customer. Maintenance and support costs are general support costs for all products.

The product is mature and implemented in various industries. It's a very well-renowned and established product. They can go ahead and implement it. It depends on how they choose the integrator and the support for this product. 

The product is very stable, and finding integrators and support will not be difficult.

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

I am one of the implementing partners for SAP, specifically for HANA. I have worked on quite a few projects where I executed transformations with my clients, and I have found that the transformation has occurred. There is value that has been realized.

The user experience is quite attractive, and maybe the efficiency around the consolidation part as well. Everything is in one place, and the ease of use is significant. There is a lot of real-time interaction, and people have highlighted the efficiency and insights that come with it. 

Pure Infinity is especially effective in improving the user experience, and the preconfigured apps facilitate and expedite implementation time. From the governance point of view, I've seen positive changes, especially in finance and the transport management system as well.

More integration is necessary. Some struggles remain, especially regarding SAP's integration with other SAP modules. For example, integration between S/4HANA and Business for Logistics needs improvement. These issues exist within the integration space and present challenges during implementation.

I have been using the solution for almost over six years.

There are quite a few factors to consider, which may not be necessarily attributed to SAP and instead to other players. For example, issues related to the public cloud version, such as connectivity, could impact product stability.

The scale is quite significant. It is very scalable, to be honest.

I have a very good relationship, so I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup might be less straightforward, around four to six out of ten. Some elements are not as easy as one might expect.

It's quite expensive, to be honest. Technical upgrades, especially for those moving to SAP Cloud, can be significant. The cost might range between two to three million US dollars.

SAP for Canada is my primary job. Depending on the market, I focus on ground sales and private clouds. It's a good product. 

I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.