SAP S/4HANA Reviews

We use SAP S4HANA in a distribution business. We have the main site which purchases all material for management and then it goes through the main warehouses to the distribution sites. Finance controls, sales, and distribution are already there with the treasury added on top of the project.

The solution could improve by making customization easier. The on-premise version is a lot more flexible.

I have been using SAP S4HANA for approximately two years.

SAP S4HANA version 1909 is stable. We have not gone live with 2020 yet.

SAP S4HANA is scalable in terms of infrastructure scaling. The solution does not cover all aspects of the business. For example, there is no final solution from SAP for point of sale. They have no specific point of sales solution, you have to build something to cover this area.

Our project is at a large company with 8,000 employees.

We had an issue with localization, there is some sort of localization for S/4HANA for a specific country. We did not face a lot of trouble with the support. The response was good, but overall it seems the process itself takes too much time. You have to go through specific steps waiting for a reply and then the escalation takes more time. The support could improve their speed.

The SAP cloud itself was not easy to implement any project because it is very hard to do any customization for the business requirements.

SAP S4HANA is expensive and for smaller businesses, it is very difficult for them to have the budget.

My advice to those wanting to implement SAP S4HANA is to make sure they have their blueprint and design. People have specific imaginations but things can turn out differently. Align very well with the business and identify your scope correctly to be sure you are following a solid plan along with the project lifecycle.

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.

We use it for our financials and ERP.

It has got all our data more scalable, and it made it more workable for us. So, we're able to make things run faster, especially when our developer team was doing data modeling.

We're able to get all our processes flowing together. We're able to make all of our business processes talk to each other.

It should have more support. Documentation and support for mobile apps can be improved.

I have been using this solution for six months.

So far, it has been good. We had some problems with our customizations, but everything seems to be running fine.

Its scalability is fine. We plan to increase its usage and use it extensively.

All people who are using it are in IT. Some of them are in the finance department.

Their technical support is good. They were pretty knowledgeable.

We're new to that. We didn't use anything.

It was kind of complex because we didn't know the difference between the SAP Business ByDesign and SAP S/4HANA. It wasn't clear. SAP just has too many versions, and it was like, "Oh, give me a break, and tell me what to get."

For its maintenance, we have at least five people. They're in IT with different roles.

We used a consultant. Our experience was good.

We're not sure yet. I think it was six figures a year, over 100,000. It has straight-up licensing fees.

I would rate it an eight out of 10 because it has got great scalability. It has worked so far.

I'm a senior functional consultant and we partner with SAP. 

Previously, when a sales person had to register a deal, it meant logging onto Windows to look at the deals, now it can all be done from a mobile phone. That's a huge benefit for us. 

The best part of this solution is the Fiori design. 

The documentation for this solution can definitely be improved and I'd also like to see more support, more numbers of Android or iPhone apps.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

This solution is stable. 

The solution is highly scalable. We've scaled it more than 75% of what we initially had. We regularly scale and there's no excess consumption of resources or major tweaks required when we're scaling up. We have around 500 end users and we have a team of five or six people responsible for maintenance, including a system administrator. We use this solution extensively and will continue to expand our use of it. 

We had a good experience with technical support. They know what they're doing and the response time was good. 

We previously used SAP ECC. We switched because they discontinued maintenance of ECC and this is a new solution altogether. It didn't make sense for us to continue with SAP ECC.

The initial setup was moderate on the complexity side. Not too complex, but also not so easy. The deployment was done in-house and took several months. 

There are a lot of ERP solutions on the market - Oracle, JD Edwards, and the like, but when it comes to SAP, my experience is that once you implement the solution and you understand how it works, it becomes intuitive to work with. When you upgrade to a new solution or when a whole lot of changes come in, the user experience stays pretty much consistent.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

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.

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 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.

Our company analyzes material inventory and then processes the financial accounting which is handled by the system we created using the product.  

The most valuable feature is that the reporting is fast. We can see the results from that in that our commissions come in fast. That is the main advantage.  

This is an integrated system so it is very complex. It is not like Windows or like Microsoft products where you can use Word or you use Excel and it is familiar and easy to use. The interface is something that is very confusing from my point of view. It can and should be simplified. It needs some work on the front end to be more user-friendly and customizable to the user's needs.  

It is not a very good product from the perspective of ease-of-use. Trying to implement it is like you want to prepare some food. You have raw materials like spices in a pile but there is no recipe as to how to mix them. It is a recipe missing the proportion to mix the spices in.  

In the case of S/4HANA, that recipe depends on how the organization requires it to operate. A better result depends upon the implementation partner's decisions in handling the wide range of choices offered by the product. If these decisions are not good, once the product is already developed, you may come to know after years of using it that it was not implemented optimally. Then you end up making customizations and work-arounds because of this initial implementation. That is bad practice. Customization and work-arounds will only lead to more complexity. It is a very big product that can not be understood in a short span of time and implemented quickly. Meticulous planning is ultimately important.  

A lot depends on the implementation partner and if they understand your needs. An implementation partner who rushes in too quickly with a solution can get it wrong and that can cause major problems in the long run.  

We started the implementation of S/4HANA in 2017.  

Any glitches and problems would all depend very strongly on the implementation, predominately. Our integration is very near perfect, but it needs a highly skilled team taking lots of time to understand and maintain it properly. Because implementation is less customized it is better than in most other industries. When it comes to our own industry and our own investment in our industry with our own company stressors, it has to be customized properly.  

One person will not be able to understand and manage all the processes of the modules. That is not practically possible to have that type of skill set. The product needs to be managed by a well-integrated team that can work together and separately with their own responsibility for maintenance and execution.  

Ultimately one person will need to have an in-depth knowledge of how the parts work together to orchestrate the result. All this has to come together at the time of designing. All of the team will be working with some lack of knowledge about the whole of the system or the in-depth knowledge of some other team member's roles. The integration of the team is as important as the integration of the product. 

The scalability of S/4HANA is as good as it can be. The reason that we moved from our old ERP was a lack of scalability. That is exactly the reason. We moved to S/4HANA because we knew the scalability was good.  

We use it company-wide on a daily basis and across multiple websites now. If we need to it is possible to scale up from there in whatever way we need to.  

Our specialized support team does sometimes work with SAP support. The support is good but it may depend on what you can provide. Sometimes we can trace volumes ourselves and we can get the solutions from that. It can often minimize the time it takes to get a solution. Using SAP to provide the solution takes more time. But sometimes we need them to keep moving ahead.  

We were having trouble with our other ERP solution which is a product that has not been very successful outside of Arab countries. That learning experience is why we are in a good position to implement S/4HANA as a better solution.  

The installation setup requires specific knowledge of the system and how it works. I am not from the technical side myself but I know a lot of configuration is required. It is more-or-less complex depending on the scope of how the product will be modeled for use.  

For the installation, we appointed a separate SAP IT partner. Along with that, our entire company was involved with implementing this project.  

It definitely requires maintenance from SAP support as well as our own specialized teams.  

This is an expensive product.  

My recommendation to people considering S/4HANA as an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is to invest in it if they can afford it and need it. But, I strongly recommend that the implementation should be considered very carefully. SAP software is a very capable solution but it is only worth it if you approach it knowing that you will be spending three, four, or five years just to be able to understand it fully. It is not just an investment in capital, it is an investment in learning and time.  

It is definitely a good product. It is costly and needs a quality team for maintaining and integrating the product.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would have a hard time making a rating of SAP S/4HANA that is useful for every user. If someone already has some expertise in ERP expertise, it is different than if they have none. The solution itself can be a ten for one aspect of its function and it can be a three or four in other aspects depending on what the user needs and understands. Cost-wise it can be anything from one to ten depending on the value it provides to the organization investing in it.  

Personally, from the functionality point, I think it is one of the best products. The integration is good and the SAP team helps with their continuous support to help users reap the fruit of their investment in the software system. We took the time to have the knowledge of business and how the product could work for us to make adopting this product a success. In our case, I think the solution is around a seven-and-a-half out of ten.  

We are in the food business so the solution helps with our business processes as well as the financial aspect - sales, purchasing, manufacturing - all the core business processes across all these modules. I'm the vice president corporate IT and we are customers of SAP. 

I think primarily it helped us work out our out-of-the-box best practices which was a huge benefit. It meant that we tailored our processes in line with those of the standard out- of-the-box solution. And I think overall it has given us much more visibility on our processes, on the data that is produced as a reservable process.

I think technically it's a very responsive, comprehensive and optimized solution. It's very fast and the S4 version is much more user friendly on the UI side than the previous versions and it basically provides a better experience. Everything is there and it's up to the user to put it to use. 

Every business has some unique requirements which can mean customizations are required. What I'd really like to see is the development of an industry specific solution for the food industry, in particular the supply and demand side that's very critical to us, given that there are issues with products that have a shorter shelf life.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

My key advice would be to get down your processes first before putting any new system in place. It's important to re-engineer the processes and streamline them before implementing IT solutions, whether it's SAP or any other thing. It's the process side that needs to be dealt with first. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.