I have been using it to manage the business of my company.
I have been using it to manage the business of my company.
We are a well-established enterprise with a century-long history, and we recently transitioned from an older version to the current support system. This move has allowed us to fully leverage the advantages of the new system, facilitating efficient management of our business processes, including those related to manufacturing and other aspects of our operations.
I'd like to share my experience during the migration from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud. My primary challenge in this migration was the requirement to open a ticket for every request during the project phase, not during operational or post go-live phases. Despite this, I must acknowledge that overall, SAP has proven to be very reliable.
To clarify the issue, after migrating to SAP S/4HANA, I opted to host my SAP solution on the private cloud by converting the license to SAP Cloud. The drawback I encountered during the project phase was the insistence on opening a ticket or service request for any issue or query I had within the project's activities. Looking ahead, I hope that SAP streamlines and simplifies this process for future customers, making it more user-friendly and efficient than my experience.
I have been using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for 3 years.
It is highly scalable and I would rate it 9 out of 10.
I haven't worked with products from other vendors.
I'm not directly involved in the pricing discussions; it's more of a concern for the finance team.
On a scale from one to ten, where ten is the best, I would rate it around eight or nine.
S/4HANA is an ERP solution that is distributed in various modules. We have modules for financial business processes and a controlling module that manages costs. The materials management module handles purchasing and inventory management, while the production planning module addresses manufacturing business processes.
There is a whole sea of modules for HANA, but I am an expert in only the materials management module. On the technical side, we have two kinds of consultants. One takes care of the cloud and on-premise infrastructure. We also have ABAP consultants who are programmers who define the logic. In S/4HANA, we have the technical side, which I'm unaware of, and the functional side. I am on the functional side.
I'm the solution architect here, so I deal with the solutions proposed by the consultants. I am utilizing the S/4HANA, but my role is different. I'm not designing the solutions. I am managing the solutions the consultants propose and ensuring the quality of the solution.
I come from a functional consultancy background, and S/4HANA provides excellent procurement solutions for inventory management. One of S/4HANA's best features in the manufacturing module is the ability to calculate product costs.
SAP has substantially improved the analytics component of S/4HANA to provide business intelligence. S/4HANA is increasingly recognized globally as the best analytical tool available. You can connect S/4HANA analytics with cloud solutions like Ariba and SuccessFactors, so you can integrate S/4HANA upstream and downstream.
The user experience has some room for improvement. S/4HANA covers various scenarios based on the best business practices, but users complain about its user experience. It is not a user-friendly ERP solution. I rate the current UX seven out of 10.
I started my career as a functional consultant.
I rate S/4HANA eight out of 10 for stability. S/4HANa becomes increasingly stable over time if you properly define your SOPs and hire the right IT staff experts to stabilize. It takes time, but you can make it stable with the right infrastructure and talent.
I rate S/4HANA 10 out of 10 for scalability. Scalability is the best part because you can cover the entire enterprise.
S/4HANA is expensive, but the return on investment is high. The benefits you derive from S/4HANA are far better than the cost.
S/4HANA is an enterprise solution that many can't afford. You must invest a lot to get the most out of it. It isn't cheap. I rate the price seven out of 10.
I rate SAP S/4HANA 10 out of 10. It's a strong product that is globally recognized as the best ERP solution. If you plan to implement S/4HANA, you have to build your SOPs and know your business. I'm coming from a functional consultancy background, and the first thing we do is gather requirements from the business. However, they often don't know their own businesses or what they need. It's clear why S/4HANA fails in organizations like these where change management is an issue.
You need a clear roadmap to understand what you hope to get from S/4HANA. Are you buying it for the brand? The key performance indicators must be well defined and you need the right staff. S/4HANA is like a Mercedes. You must have an expert driver who can actually drive that Mercedes. If you want to drive a Mercedes like a Toyota Corolla, it won't help you.
We use this solution to do a lot of mock up applications to mimic the user scenarios for a couple of our current clients. We try to use those scenarios to see how S/4HANA could be used as a system to better authorize the current client's ability.
I'm using version 1909. The cloud provider is AWS.
There are around 20 people using this solution in my organization.
We like the web portal or interface, which is great. The user experience is much better than the current traditional SAP landscape. Lots of business processes are simplified. There's less maintenance and less configuration effort needed. More importantly, the performance is good. Using the S/4HANA database could really dramatically improve the business performance on the database and could even change the business model overnight.
In terms of S/4HANA Cloud itself, we don't like the rate they charge us. It's pretty expensive. Maybe it's because of the individual instance that we paid for. I don't know whether this is also applicable for other commercial S/4HANA Cloud assistants, but for our training system, there are many bugs or things which didn't work in practice.
We didn't know how to figure it out, and if we posted any of those incidents to the SAP community through the SAP portal, usually SAP would ask what kind of license we had. It's not easy to facilitate the solution between us and SAP, so we have had to leave those issues open.
I've been using this solution for almost two years.
It's hard to say because we haven't implemented any S/4HANA solution for our clients, but from the experience of using that demo system, it's pretty stable. We don't have outages.
It's scalable. For a company that doesn't have experience with SAP, there could be more scalability. If they start a project from scratch, I think they could deploy the S/4HANA solution for the whole company. But if the company has the footprint of SAP in a test and it has pretty complicated IT solutions using the old SAP systems, starting with a small scope, like a pilot project, and then gradually enlarging the scale would be the best option.
I would rate this solution 3 out of 5.
I was not involved in the technical setup of S/4HANA, but from what I understand, it's pretty straightforward. It's almost like an out-of-box solution for us, but it also depends on what kind of use case you have for that system. If it's only for training, you probably don't pay that much attention to all the details, but if it's for a production system for the business, then there are a lot more things that you need to consider.
It all depends on what your needs are in regards to complexity of installment.
I would rate setup 4 out of 5, on a scale of extremely complicated to being very easy.
From the SAP documentation and the best practice webinars, the length of deployment depends on the size of the company and the complexity of their current IT landscape, and also how much data and volume that they want to deal with. It could range from half a year to a couple of years.
We only need one person to administrate the user access and give the IP address to everybody so they have access.
We are a consultant, so deployment was done in-house.
I would rate the ROI 3 out of 5.
Through the experience of another cloud demo system, we know that if we wanted to implement any SAP cloud solution to a potential client, like IBP or S/4HANA, that license cost would be really a big burden for many companies, even for a larger sized company. For instance, SAP charges the license cost per company's revenue size. So if you have a higher revenue, you pay a lot more than a medium or small company.
If clients want to have more sophisticated functionalities or add-ons, they pay additional fees.
I would rate the price 2 out of 5. It's very expensive.
I would rate this solution 4 out of 10.
My advice is to evaluate the business case very carefully before implementing this solution.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud streamlines my client's business and, with the move to the cloud, it is more flexible and efficient.
The most valuable feature of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is its analytics capability. The ability to access and analyze data in real-time has significantly improved our reporting efficiency.
One thing that could be better in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, especially in the public cloud, is how easily you can make changes. Clients, especially those with a lot of existing processes, feel a bit restricted in adapting the system to their specific needs.
I have been working with SAP S/4HANA Cloud for five years.
I would rate the stability as an eight out of ten.
The scalability of the product is not at the highest level, but it is certainly above average. The number of users for SAP S/4HANA Cloud varies depending on the project. We have worked with small to big businesses.
I would rate the technical support for SAP S/4HANA Cloud as an eight out of ten.
Positive
The initial setup is relatively straightforward. As a partner, getting SAP S/4HANA Cloud up and running involves a few steps. We work closely with SAP, and they handle some initial activities before we jump in. The whole process usually takes about three to six weeks, during which we set up the environment and get everything ready to start working.
The return on investment for SAP S/4HANA Cloud usually becomes clear after about five years, depending on the business case. It is not immediate, but over time, the benefits start to show.
I would rate the costliness of the product as a seven out of ten. It is on the expensive side.
Overall, I would rate SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a six out of ten.
We are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a cost ledger and reports.
The most valuable features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud are the ease of use from the cloud, CapEx analysis report, and everything being connected together well.
The solution could improve by adding a planning model, such as BPC. Additionally, if we need to make changes in the profit center it has to be done manually. It is not connected to the cost center.
I have been using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for approximately 10 years.
The solution is stable. However, we have some connectivity issues but this is due to our network and our factory being away from the city.
The scalability of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is good.
We used a contractor for the support in our company. We had some difficulties.
I rate the support from SAP S/4HANA Cloud a seven out of ten.
Neutral
We switched from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA Cloud because SAP S/4HANA Cloud has better connections to our models and is newer. Most solutions only last approximately five years and a switch have to change.
The initial setup of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is easy.
I rate the initial setup of SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten.
The price of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is expensive. However, the benefits are good. We did not purchase any upgrades.
The solution is very good, I love it. It is a complete feature set.
I rate the price of SAP S/4HANA Cloud a four out of ten.
I rate SAP S/4HANA Cloud a nine out of ten.
S4HANA Cloud is reliable and accurate. Our existing team also has expertise in SAP, so it was simple to migrate to the cloud solution. S4HANA Cloud has advantages because we don't need to maintain the infrastructure, and there aren't any huge upfront costs.
We have to deploy add-ons integrated with the B1 when we are on the cloud option, and we face challenges with web integrations. Right now, when we attempt web integration, some of the ports are not open. There are infrastructure issues like IP conflicts and switches that need to be redefined.
Integrating SAP with other products like payroll solutions should be smoother. I wish there were some tools a consultant could build according to the client's requirements. For example, say I want to process debit and credits. In SAP, we have to follow SAP terminologies and patterns. I need a template to deploy my structure according to the client's requirements. There is no structure available in SAP that a consultant can mold.
This product is implemented in 35 domains across multiple organizations with different structures, so there is a bottleneck in multiple segments. The consultant needs different models to help with the financials.
I have worked with S4HANA Cloud for two years, but I have eight years of experience with on-premise SAP solutions.
S4HANA Cloud is stable.
S4HANA Cloud is scalable. Over the last six years, you can see how much it has improved. SAP has added multiple modules, new features, and patches. The usage depends on the company structure. Some companies need 20 to 30 licenses while others may require more than 100.
We submitted multiple requests to SAP for technical support, and their response was quite good.
S4HANA seems quite complicated when you first deploy it, but after you go through the setup procedure once, the next implementation is smooth. The maintenance depends on the complexity of the deployment and the company's structure. For example, plant maintenance requires three to four users. It all depends on the company structure, like the number of call centers involved, revenue, etc.
One consultant can handle the deployment by themselves. It's not so complex.
I rate SAP S4HANA Cloud seven out of 10.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is very powerful compared to previous versions regarding enterprise process management, data retrieval, and reporting. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is way better than the previous versions because of the data architecture and new technology adopted by SAP.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud's robustness in data accessibility and reporting, GUI change, end-user experience, and accessibility on mobile have improved our organization. The traditional layout change of SAP is improvised on SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
The reporting that we are doing from SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a valuable feature. Also, SAP S/4HANA Cloud has improved the data retrieval time, system speed, user accessibility, and user experience.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud's customization can be improved.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud can incorporate basic procurement, material management, and HR-related functionality like in other cloud-related services, such as SAP Ariba. The incorporation of these additional features could be a very good offer.
I have been using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for the last five years.
I would give SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten rating for stability.
I would give SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten rating for scalability.
The initial setup is a bit complex.
We do see a ROI with the use of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
The pricing of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is on the higher side. Traditionally, SAP is always a heavy product for any organization.
We currently use a free version. We started with a very basic version around five years back and then did two upgrades. Around 2,0000 people are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud in my organization, and we have plans to increase the usage in the coming years.
My advice would be to evaluate whether your organization needs this kind of product because it is a high-end product and may not be relevant for a small-scale or medium-scale organization. Your business processes should be standardized instead of adapting the tool because we normally believe adopting the tool is the solution to our business processes or business problems. First, fix the business process-related issues, streamline and standardize them, and then go for this implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. When I compare SAP S/4HANA Cloud on-premises with SAP RISE, I feel there must be some more control available on SAP RISE.
Overall, I rate SAP S/4HANA Cloud an eight out of ten.
We're a manufacturing company that uses S/4HANA for managing finances and other business processes.
I like S/4HANA's automated features, readymade processes, and user interface. It supports various processes required by large international companies, like logistics, procurement, payments, sales, etc. All of these features were available in previous SAP solutions, but HANA has an updated user interface and improved integration with other systems. The readymade processes make HANA a good option if you're adopting a greenfield approach.
S/4HANA isn't ideal for managing contracts and subscriptions. There isn't a feature to notify us when a contract for a service we need is approaching its end or a product is no longer supported. You need a separate solution for that.
I have used S/4HANA for the last eighteen months.
S/4HANA is stable, but it needs resources.
S/4HANA is scalable.
I have contacted SAP support in Germany and Spain many times and also SAP partners. SAP support is excellent, but the support from partners varies depending on who you get. Some are more experienced than others.
I have used other SAP ERP solutions that were more appropriate for small and medium-sized companies, like logistics warehouses. They didn't have good enough support. S/4HANA is easier to use and suitable for large, complex organizations.
You need to prepare before deploying S/4HANA. You need to do a feasibility study and have a team analyze the current processes. It involves several groups of employees, like testing, configuration, and interface teams. Before implementing, you need to know what resources are needed. It's easier if you are adopting a greenfield approach. It can take two years or more for a large company to deploy S/4HANA company fully. It's at least one year.
The system requires ongoing maintenance. You need people who can code and understand SAP logic. It's hard to maintain if you have to change something.
The license for S/4HANA is expensive, and the licensing structure is hard to understand. The admin license is something like 500 euros per user. Other ERP solutions allowed you to pick only the modules you need. The SAP ECC version requires you to take all the modules even if you are not using them.
You take the whole system and pay your monthly fees. S/4HANA can define licenses based on roles, series, etc., but there are so many kinds of licenses and fees. It's more complicated than the licensing for Microsoft Dynamics or other SaaS ERP tools.
I rate SAP S/4HANA eight out of 10. Before implementing an ERP tool, you should understand your needs, processes, and business requirements.