SAP BW4HANA Reviews

SAP BW4HANA is used in our company for analytical purposes. My company uses SAP HCM with SuccessFactors for human capital management. SAP HCM is the core module in SAP S/4HANA, while SuccessFactors is an advanced layer of the cloud-based solution. SAP BW and SAP BO offer features like an on-premises product, and both the products are catered to users using SAP S/4HANA and SAP SAC, making them products that are leveraged and facilitated by customers who want to use some specific features.

Once you have the real-time data warehousing analytics and forecasting of the reports, depending on each and every quarter in the fiscal year, SAP BW helps fill the data and help us get the required data for the planning phase on the systems. The data warehouse part of the tool can handle the processing to generate reports in a few seconds, and it helps businesses make quick decisions.

SAP BW4HANA is a standard product that works as a very applicable system for our company. SAP BW4HANA aims to reduce all the problems and issues related to SAP BW. SAP BW4HANA is helpful in areas where my company sees any issues with the product, like the transaction data, SAP SAC, integration-related areas, or non-SAP aspects. The product is a stable and scalable tool. The cost of the product might be an area that might introduce some restrictions or limitations to customers, making it one of the aspects where improvements are required.

I have experience with SAP BW4HANA for three and a half years.

It is a stable solution.

The data warehouse part of the solution is always stable. While using SAP HANA In-Memory Database, I have seen that the product offers scalability and allows for the required customizations or changes. SAP offers stable products compared to the other ERP tools in the market.

It is a scalable solution.

Globally, there are many users of the product. My company deals with around three to four customers to whom we provide SAP BW4HANA.

You need to raise an OSS note or message to contact the technical support team. You can raise an issue by using the online support services provided by SAP through OSS notes or messages. SAP releases a node that can be deployed on the existing system to remove the bugs or issues if there are any bugs or any issues within the product that affect a particular business process.

SAP SuccessFactors is used for the company's human capital management, payroll part, and hiring. The tool is used for the overall workforce planning part.

Whether the product's initial setup phase was complex or straightforward depends on the line of business. If you operate in the retail process or FMCG industry, the tool does take some time. If you are from the manufacturing domain, your system can be ready within a couple of months. The setup process is something that depends on your line of business and how much data you have in your system. You will have more data if you are involved in the manufacturing of many products. For the FMCG industry or retail businesses, SAP BW is a very essential tool, but it takes around six months to get the system ready. The system can be made ready in only three or four months for manufacturing units.

After running through the implementation processes, the product goes live. The deployment process involves the need to identify the business scope, the overall business processes, and expectations, after which they need to get done with the documentation part.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises model.

For the on-premises version of the product, the solution offers a perpetual-based licensing model to its users. In general, SAP offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model to its users. The product's customers state that the solution is expensive. SAP is always open to negotiations with its customers.

The product has improved data analysis and reporting processes because it helps with the analysis and forecasting of reports. The product keeps the company's tool and landscape in place as it does not mix the organization's transaction data with analytical data. In our company, SAP BW4HANA caters to our requirements if we want to do anything with our reports by adding any key characteristics or figures to our data sources. The product can drill down to a deep level, ranging from company code-wise angle to G/L account number and cost element. With SAP BW4HANA, it is possible to get everything by drilling down at a deep level, and it helps my company come up with real-time business analysis and forecasting for the required decision-making area in our organization. The product also provides BO reports for dashboard development for some of the product's customers who want to see the dashboard area included in the reports. With the help of SAP and SAP SAC, some standard templates can be easily made available, as per the system requirements, which are good features for data visualization and reports since it makes it easy for the customer to identify what exactly is their business. The product provides details about sales, production, and what should be the focus of the business in the upcoming quarters of a year. In general, the tool makes it easy for customers to do planning and indulge in forecasting for the future of businesses.

The solution supports our organization's big data and real-time analytics in the area of decision-making. My company operates as a service provider, and we have seen that for each and every organization where we provide services, the tool has made available leverages for planning and forecasting, which helps in the area of quick decision-making. In the initial system, businesses have to extract data, after which they need to be involved in the planning and forecasting stages using a database view, SAP data with Qlik or Qlik Sense to make reports and then upload the reports by using flat files through the required databases consisting of Excel-based maintenance of such reports so that businesses can get help to decide on the outcomes on the basis of which reports were getting generated. The amount of reports generated by the product on a weekly or monthly basis has reduced a lot since it allows generating reports with a click, ensuring that the decision-making process is made faster for businesses. If you develop a report today, the decision-making process can be carried out tomorrow, after a week, or maybe after a few days.

To run any kind of analytical report, SAP BW4HANA with SAP SAC serves as a good product in terms of scalability and stability. The product also helps with the areas of planning and forecasting. The tool will offer its customers a good ROI if the product's costs are reduced.

With SAP Data Services and SAP Datasphere, you can have intelligent integrations and establish some connections that SAP BW4HANA provides to users. SAP has added various integration layers. The tool helps with real-time integrations.

I rate the tool a nine to nine and a half out of ten.

We use SAP BW4HANA as our data warehousing solution. We pull data from different sources and extract it into the central data warehouse. We analyze and visualize it using analytical engines such as Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud.

The solution seamlessly integrates with SAP products but lacks other advantages. 

We use it because underlying SAP products are compatible with easy integration.

We tried integrating SAP BW4HANA with several platforms, but none worked properly. It lacks customization options. It's neither flexible nor elastic, making simple job creation difficult. There's no support for developing data cards or similar functionalities. Its data management and endpoint data governance features are lacking. 

We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports.

The product roadmap and features of SAP BW4HANA are ugly and need improvement.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three or four years.

The product is stable, but if it fails to meet the basic needs. It doesn't support my development lifecycle for the data warehouse.

The solution is not scalable. 15-20 different departments are using it because there is no other solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability minus five out of ten.

There are no support issues. The overall product has concerns, including its dimension, roadmap, evolution with the cloud, and integration with non-SAP systems. Maintaining insight into these matters is crucial, and support helps to address them.

It's been 10-12 years since SAP BW4HANA evolved from its older versions, but the product hasn't improved much. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Snowflake, who continuously evolve their products, SAP BW4HANA lacks seamless integration with third-party connectors. This absence of support for good integration tools suggests a monopolistic approach. Simple integrations take excessive time, leading to low business efficiency. SAP's core applications are highly customizable and purpose-built, with continuous release cycles that align with market trends.

The maintenance of the solution is challenging due to its complex architecture. However, its dynamic design and comprehensive features make it unique. Even a minor with database knowledge can significantly improve the schema creation process.

I don't recommend the solution. It's not fair to compare bananas to oranges. There's no comparison. SAP doesn't fall anywhere close to other vendors.

If you are a static organization with basic SAP applications in the underlying architecture, SAP BW4HANA will be a better choice. However, with the evolution of data and the increasing amount of data being collected, along with emerging applications, it's not advisable to use it. It will complicate your life, leading to disappointment for your business and SAP's overall strategy for the organization.

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

I am working with multiple SAP clients. I am more of a tool consultant. We now have our own solutions for the supply chain, but they are more focused on complementing SAP solutions.

The problem is the expensive pricing of technical support, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using SAP BW4HANA for three to three and half years.

The solution's technical support can be expensive. If you pay the support team, the support team will offer you support. If you don't pay the support team, they will not support you. My company never had any problem with SAP, but it is very pricey.

My company uses SAP Analytics Cloud for dashboards. The data source could be BW, or it could be directly SAP S/4HANA, and sometimes we do it like that. For one of the clients, we did not do it in BW and went directly to HANA database because their requirements weren't much.

My company helps customers with the implementation of the tool. We also offer support and customize our products for the customers.

The product's implementation phase is not straightforward. A few things have to be taken care of, and it all depends on the people doing it. We have very experienced people to take care of the tool's implementation. Sometimes, people implement the tool very quickly, and if they have any issues, they will take more time, but it gets delivered. We don't have any problem with the tool's implementation.

The tool is affordable. In our company, we do have the capacity to offer the tool to others based on the cost, capability, needs and what someone expects from the tool for their overall project. Everything depends or varies because not all clients are the same. If clients opt for our company's complementing solutions, we give a different pricing model to such customers, meaning we have a model to support them.

There are multiple products in the market. People are looking for multiple things, but I am not sure.

I recommend the tool for companies involved in manufacturing and logistics. Our primary focus is on mid-sized businesses.

The clients know what is required for their companies. Our company's main focus is manufacturing and supply chain organizations. The tool can also be used in mining and certain parts of retail business.

The products offered by SAP have high levels of competence. Companies look for tools that can solve their problems at an affordable price.

My company integrates the product with other tools with the help of SAP OData's services.

Speaking about the tool's impact on the customers' data processing speeds, I would say that one of the main concerns is security. The tool is more concerned about the security of the integrations. That is the reason the tool is preferred through something like AWS or GCP. The security of SAP integration is a major concern for the client as they don't want to expose their data to unsecured links. Some customers are okay with the tool's integrations, but my company uses SAP OData for others. Sometimes, if a customer is not willing to share, we use RPA for some integrations.

The tool's modernized data modeling capabilities are mandatory, so it is no longer an option. Users need to have robust data, and if they don't have a robust data architecture, they will have a problem anyway. It is not only about their recurrent operations but also associated with future upgrades. Everybody is trying to be innovative sooner or later.

Speaking about the transition from a traditional data warehouse to an SAP tool and its impact on our customers' data governance practices, I would say that they will get all the data requirements fulfilled after migration. If they don't design it properly, then they will have a problem, and it can be technological or functional.

I recommend the tool to others.

The tool has its own challenges. Technology-wise, it is a very robust tool. From the cost and implementation perspective, I rate the tool as a seven out of ten.

We use the tool to analyze data from various sources, such as ERP. 

I like the tool's robustness and security.

The interface could be more user-friendly, as we often need to do low-level coding to get things done.

I have been using the product for more than five years. 

The product is stable. 

The solution is scalable, and my company has more than 2000 users. 

Technical support is knowledgeable and helpful.

The setup was reasonable, with no major issues. Our SAP team shares responsibility for maintenance.

We have a broad licensing arrangement, which is expensive but worth it for sizeable businesses.

I advise others to design requirements carefully before importing data and do incremental refreshes instead of full uploads to save resources. We can integrate non-SAP data sources using XML data exchange. It's important to plan work well and design solutions properly. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

The real-time analytics capabilities are good, but we often move data to a different platform for analysis. Overall, SAP BW4HANA provides a stable, robust, and scalable solution that integrates well with various systems, allowing us to consolidate data from different places.

We use the solution to build up complex queries that support data models and reporting.

The solution saves time and cost. Our dependability on SAP has reduced because we use BW4HANA as an intermediate system that works as a data source for different tools. We don't have to connect the other tools to SAP directly. Our data is secured. BW4HANA is like a staging environment. We can use it to supply data to other programming or reporting tools.

All the features are important. BW queries, BW views, calculation views, and calculated columns are valuable features. InfoCubes and InfoObjects are also valuable features. The product speeds up the data read cycle.

There should be a direct pipeline from Azure to SAP. Users must be able to deploy the pipeline and pull the tables directly.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten. The stability has some scope for improvement.

The tool is highly scalable. I rate the scalability a nine or ten out of ten. About seven to eight developers use the solution in our organization.

We have integrated SAP with Azure. We have migrated all standard tables and the output of standard reports on Azure. A different team in our organization coordinates with the solution’s support team to resolve the issues we face. I will recommend the solution to others. If a huge amount of data needs to be moved around for analytics purposes, we should choose SAP BW4HANA. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use SAP BW4HANA for revenue reporting. 

We can get good visualization and less redundant data. 

The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers. 

I have been working with the product for six months. 

I rate SAP BW4HANA's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. 

SAP BW4HANA's deployment is not complex. You need five to ten people to handle the maintenance. 

SAP BW4HANA has helped us save time and money. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

It is a data warehouse product. It is used to extract data from source systems, unify it, and gain business intelligence.

I like the reporting features of the solution.

The tool is not cloud-compatible. It is an on-premise tool. SAP is bringing other tools into its place.

I have been using the solution for ten years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool is stable.

The product is scalable. On-premises systems cannot be scaled easily, though. Cloud solutions are easily scalable. Approximately 200 to 300 people use the solution in our organization.

The tool was implemented in my company 15 years ago. For the last 15 years, we have been in constant touch with SAP.

The initial setup is straightforward. The administration team does it. The team buys the licenses from SAP, downloads the software, and installs it on SAP servers. The deployment did not take more than one day.

The deployment can be done in-house. Our organization pays SAP, and we download the software and install it. It’s straightforward.

The product is free if we have the ECC license.

The product is not relevant anymore. Other modern tools are better than SAP BW/4HANA. I will not recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Simplified tables, advance DSOs, and composite provider are valuable features.

I've been working with this solution for four years.

It is a stable solution.

The technical support is okay.

The initial setup is easy.

Price wise, this solution is on the higher side.

I would advise you to go ahead with SAP BW4HANA with minimal options to look into other solutions.

We found that SAP BW4HANA has better performance than NetWeaver Business Warehouse. Also, SAP BW4HANA has a simplified structure, advance DSOs, and a composite provider. These were not possible with NetWeaver Business Warehouse. This is because of the HANA database at the back end. Because of this, we have shifted 60% to BW4HANA and have 40% remaining on NetWeaver Business Warehouse. We have less than 5000 people using this solution.

Overall, I would rate SAP BW4HANA at nine out of ten.