SAP S/4HANA Reviews

SAP S/4HANA provides a standard setup process. Several third-party tools are available to integrate with the SAP ecosystem. Some customers of our organization find SAP S/4HANA very easy to use, and some are adopting the solution due to prior familiarity with the SAP ecosystem. The licensing changes implemented in Oracle JD Edwards have also made a few customers of our organization adopt SAP S/4HANA. 

The Order-to-Cash feature is indispensable and irreplaceable in SAP S/4HANA. Almost every customer I have worked with in my organization finds the Order-to-Cash feature extremely valuable. 

For Order-to-Cash using SAP S/4HANA, a company needs to consider the local regulations at one point. SAP can help with all such local regulations. I wouldn't recommend SAP S/4HANA for a small or medium-sized company.

The integration capabilities of SAP S/4HANA are as good as those of its competitor products. A reliable middleware product will be needed in SAP S/4HANA especially if discrete ERP, MES and CRM are present in the project. The integration of SAP S/4HANA will also be dependent on the strategies and vision laid out by the enterprise architect. Integrations for the solution can be done in both ELT and ETL, and both has its pros and cons.

The analytics part of SAP S/4HANA needs to be improved. The analytics feature provides decent warehousing and reporting capability, but the AI/ML components of analytics need improvement. Almost all current versions of different SAP family products either lack AI capabilities or are rudimentary. A plethora of third-party tools exist that can bring AI/ML capabilities to SAP S/4HANA, but such capabilities should be natively provided in the product. 

I have been using SAP S/4HANA for two years. 

The stability of SAP S/4HANA is better understood by considering the whole SAP ecosystem. For instance, if I carry out a brownfield implementation, there can be a situation where a customer doesn't identify any improvements in their business process after deploying the solution; in such cases, they might prefer to revert back to the older process, such changes will be inherent to almost every system, so the stability of SAP S/4HANA varies from customer to customer and the complexity around the product. 

The solution is highly scalable. Our organization was catering SAP S/4HANA across 47 countries, with an average of 60 to 70 users per country. A severely large team of at least 50 to 60 professionals is required for the deployment and maintenance of SAP S/4HANA. A company usually adopts SAP S/4HANA when there is a dire need for such a solution and not when competitors have been identified to make a transition. 

At our company, we are satisfied with the tech support. I believe service providers like SAP are always willing to help anyone out with product issues. If users are able to articulate the problem well enough, it becomes easier for the tech team to comprehend the situation and provide an ideal solution.

If a user is unable to articulate the product's issues, then there is too much back and forth through tickets, and it takes a lot of time to resolve the issues. A good enough articulation of the problem in a conversation with the vendor's support team will resolve the issues 90% of the time. 

The deployment time depends upon the complexity of the environment in which the solution is being used, the business environment, the number of divisions in the company, and harmonization needs. Theoretically, a greenfield implementation of SAP S/4HANA can be carried out in four months, especially if SAP RISE is used. 

The deployment process of SAP S/4HANA involves business processing, data architecture, fit-gaps, and the selection between on-prem/cloud and one model rollout at a time. The aforementioned deployment process is the most relevant one because it reduces business risk.  The models or business entities are rolled out one at a time due to the risk conceptions of customers, so either the finance, manufacturing, or another division is shifted to the new system one at a time. 

SAP S/4HANA is definitely a valuable product. For the majority of the customer implementation of the product through our organization, I have rarely used the greenfield path. Our company once took the greenfield approach for a customer who was using multiple ERP solutions, including JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and EBS.

The aforementioned company had the requirement to harmonize and that's why a greenfield approach was followed for SAP S/4HANA implementation. Any company using SAP S/4HANA won't find trouble in gaining value from the product.

A company will only struggle with ROI or obtaining value from the solution when SAP S/4HANA is not a good fit for them. For instance, if a small company with a single location presence and around 1000 users adopts SAP S/4HANA, it's very likely that they won't find a suitable ROI. 

I don't think any company would find the product expensive. For a cloud version, there is always the factor of how much data transfer is required, and the cost will escalate very quickly as for each data transfer the hyperscaler will charge it. The size of the company, the complexity of data transfer, and the sensitivity of the operational run rate are factors that will influence the cost of SAP S/4HANA. 

Most of the customers of our organization who are adopting SAP S/4HANA already have an SAP product in their ecosystem and SAP S/4HANA provides an upgradation path to them. The majority of companies who implement such aforementioned upgrades don't always use a brownfield implementation, which translates the whole business process into the new system. Implementors are choosing a feedback and target process utilization path for SAP S/4HANA, a bluefield process.

There is also another greenfield approach for SAP S/4HANA implementation that involves beginning the implementation process from scratch. I have used all the aforementioned field processes, but mostly the brownfield path because most of our organization's customers prefer it for migrating from older processes. 

One of our customer's SAP S/4HANA migration process began in 2017 and it's still ongoing. For the aforementioned customer, the SAP S/4HANA deployment process will take six or seven years because of the geographies the customer operates in and their own unique business processes. I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I wouldn't advise businesses without a multi-geographical presence to adopt the solution. One of the prime advantages of SAP solutions is the wide knowledge of diverse geographies over several years. SAP has been successful in building numerous out-of-the-box business processes over the years. Customers looking for a solution like SAP S/4HANA always have a choice if they want to use the out-of-the-box process or if they want to build their own, but SAP is able to provide a unique process for each country, whether it's China, India, or Germany.  

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. 

We use it for the internal SAP database, for the information, multiple portfolios of products of SAP. It addresses the issue of managing extensive data resources.

Its analytics capabilities are valuable as they enhance data analysis and insights.

It could be improved by focusing on user-related challenges, as end users might face certain difficulties.

I worked with SAP S4HANA for two years.

The stability can be rated as eight out of ten.

The scalability is also rated at eight out of ten, indicating good scalability.

The quality of technical support from SAP can be rated as eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was difficult, presenting challenges for users.

The implementation was handled by a third party, and we did not perform it in-house.

We have observed a good return on investment, with calculations based on a five-year ROI plan. Most cases have shown positive returns.

The pricing of SAP S4HANA is high, however, it's higher compared to similar peer solutions.

I would recommend SAP S4HANA because it is a known solution that is stable and widely used by customers, thus making it reliable.

I'd rate the solution nine 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.

Overall, it's being used mostly for analytics. It's basically the movement of goods between various warehouses. That is also pretty much used.

The output that we get, maybe the analytics part, is even faster compared to what we used to see on the ECC system. It used to take a few days for the analytics reports to come out of the loading, etcetera. It took a lot of time. However, now it's just a matter of a few hours to get the reports generated. That is one of the things.

I don't see any additives as of now. Any of the standard APIs or whatever is available to be integrated is done so easily with the S/4. 

It's been four or five years.

The team regularly checks on the logs, audit logs, et cetera, and they review a few important KPIs as well. So no issues are present as of now since everything has gone through proper testing, et cetera.

There are no issues in terms of onboarding. Probably, in terms of scalability, we have to plan for that.

The initial setup was kind of complicated. It went through with proper planning, et cetera.

We have separate teams handling the introductory part and the application parts or the tech team's parts.

Moving from ECC to S/4 is a kind of transformation program which involves a lot of changes, including organizational change planning. That is very crucial. All these things should be taken care of when planning this transformation. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

My primary use case for this solution involves controlling leads and organizing deals. It also includes managing proposals and commercial proposals. This is essentially the use case for which I adopted this solution.

SAP offers specific functions related to my data use case. There are small solutions tailored to specific CRM Control processes. For instance, the solution is common among console solutions. It includes features such as lead perspective and inputting data for new prospects and customers. 

Additionally, it provides control over offered amounts in packages and time expectations for concluding calls, yet it lacks integration with platforms like LinkedIn or other similar tools.

The disadvantages of this product include the lack of integration with platforms like LinkedIn. 

I believe the solution was used one or two years ago. Currently, it is not in use, although it was used consistently during that period.

The system is good and not slow. Availability is not a problem.

I don't know about the system's capacity or specifications regarding IT hardware environment capacity. However, the available capacity for features is good, and availability is sufficient, with no other issues to mention regarding service availability.

I am not familiar with the customer service information. I have never used the support team, and there have been no problems reported in this area.

Positive

I didn't join the company at the project's start, so I lack information on the initial setup or implementation. My involvement began two years ago, so I cannot provide details on the initial project's phases.

If the scenario is similar to mine, I recommend this solution. There is no issue with recommending it to others if it involves large consulting companies like Accenture or Deloitte. 

I rate the overall solution nine out of ten.