SAP S/4HANA Reviews

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. 

Our organization is into the technology stack. Our customers are big companies from around the globe that all use SAP, either hosting it on public cloud, private cloud or on-premise. Personally, I have 22 years of experience. I deal with the operating systems, databases and the installation of the applications.

S/4HANA is an ERP package that runs on HANA database and LINUX operating systems. Most big companies are running their ERP on SAP. 

S/4HANA is an end-to-end solution. It seamlessly integrates with all the SAP Business Suite products such as IoT, AI, Analytics and all other SaaS solutions. The product is very robust and comprehensive.

Small businesses that have a small user base find this solution too expensive. I would like to see the price come down.

I have been working with SAP and ERP solutions for 22 years. The package is very mature.

S/4HANA is very stable. All of the big companies are running SAP, for example, British Airways, and UK Babcock are both using it. The solution is reliable. 

The solution is scalable. We have customers that have a 500 user system with 500 clients, and we have customers with 50,000 users and 50,000 clients. S/4HANA is absolutely scalable.

SAP's technical support is one of the best.

The initial setup is very straightforward. However, we required very specialized expertise to implement S/4HANA as it requires customization for the customer. It takes anywhere from six months to twenty-four months to implement, depending on the landscape of the customer.

SAP S/4HANA is affordable for big companies, but is very expensive for small companies. The implementation costs of SAP are substantial.

For large companies, this is a good solution. I understand that CIOs need to walk a tight rope between time to implement and the budget. SAP as a product requires, to a large extent, business process reengineering. It is important that anyone considering this solution understands the mapping of their business processes and how it will run in SAP. You also need to ensure you have all stakeholders buying into the process.

I have seen many companies buy the product thinking that they will implement it within five months only to discover that after five months, nothing has happened and the stakeholders are not aligned. Further, if you adapt the solution independent to your own needs, it will become difficult to maintain and manage. 

It is important to have a core team that understands SAP, and not only rely on an external consultant.

With the right project plan, execution, blueprint, and fully committed stakeholders, the solution will be successful.

I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

The POD applications are very useful to us. There are a few POD apps which we are using for the different business scenarios. They are quite interesting.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The documentation is very good.

The solution can scale well.

The solution is stable.

It's been just one year that we started using this product, due to the fact that we need to have different integrations as well to other systems. With S/4HANA, when SAP started, everything worked in a single SAP system. Slowly then it's been delegated or divided into multiple SAP systems. That's why we have around 25 different SAP products running in our landscape. Yet, at the same time, S/4HANA is the core. It's the core component.

Going forward, I believe more systems could be consolidated into S/4HANA. We need to reduce the number of SAP systems running in our landscape. S/4HANA has the capacity to host many other SAP products, therefore we can discontinue some of the SAP products. Currently, we have now the Global Services, the Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and Enterprise Portal, BW, Supply Chain Management, Warehouse Management, et cetera. If SAP could consolidate many of the systems so that we can reduce the number of systems, that would be ideal.

The solution can be a bit expensive.

We would like to see more DevOps capabilities in the future.

The solution would benefit from offering more serverless features in the sense that when you deploy SAP, it's a pretty big deployment and you have a lot of dependencies or you are closely tied up or you have a dependency with the hardware vendor and the hardware providers and the certified hardware and items like that. At the same time, all these deployed components and these files are possible to deploy without a server as well. Slowly SAP is providing some of the features so that you can deploy this in containers and so you don't have any dependency on the running hardware. That way, you can restart the systems without any downtime or the end-users will not feel the difference. Aspects like that need to be improved. 

We do have here monthly maintenance due to the fact that sometimes we need to recharge the system and we have seen from the end-users there will be certain downtime as well. If there is no dependency with the hardware and if it goes serverless, then we can have zero-downtime maintenance.

We've been using the solution for the past year or so. It hasn't been that long.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable. 

The solution is scalable. At the same time, it depends on where you deploy your systems. If you deploy your systems in Azure, then it would be using the scalability of Azure. If you deploy in AWS, it uses the scalability of AWS. If you deploy in a virtual private environment, then it depends on where you deployed the system. At the same time, it depends on being compatible with all these different hyper-scalers. For the most part, it goes pretty well with the different platforms.

We are deploying the solution in different countries. Currently, we have close to 10,000 users working in SAP. Yearly, we do the deployment in multiple countries. In two months, we deploy in one more country. There will be another 200, 300 more users will be coming. By the end of this year, there will be 2,000 more users. Currently, around 10,000 users are using this application.

The SAP S/4HANA technical support is mainly with the service provider. When you deploy SAP, you have different support teams. Most of the time, you will have a service provider or a supplier that you would be associating with. You will have a kind of application management or infrastructure management support with that vendor. For example, IBM, Capgemini, Accenture, DXC. They are the different vendors. However, then you get the OEM support via the SAP Support Portal for product-related issues. That support has got different priority levels based on the importance. Generally, we know how the SAP support works and it's acceptable. We're satisfied with the level of support provided overall.

The initial setup isn't too difficult. It's pretty straightforward for the most part. SAP has got some good documentation and there are different migration scenarios and implementation scenarios you can work with. With the help of documentation, things are pretty straightforward. 

Most of the time, you do the SAP deployment or the migration with a partner. SAP has got certified partners to help with the implementation.

SAP has got different license mechanisms. It depends on how many SAP products you run and then how do you negotiate with the SAP teams and what kind of offer you get. At the same time, generally, everyone says SAP products are a bit costly. 

Some of the SAP systems are licensed based on the number of CPUs that are being deployed, and some of the SAP products are licensed based on the number of primary users, and some of the SAP systems are based on the database footprint. Different SAP products have different license mechanisms, so there should be a person who is knowledgeable about SAP that can understand and then review the licensing agreement and get the right SAP product - and perhaps help negotiate the price.

We are customers and end-users.

We have around 25 different SAP products. We are using SAP S/4HANA in our company.

The production and the test systems are deployed in the virtual private cloud on-premise, and we have sandbox development and quality systems are deployed in the Azure public cloud.

I'd rate the solution at 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.

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. 

Most of my clients use it for controlling finances and for BI (purchasing and sales). Depending on the activity, we can also use it for logistics and plan management, like in energy module ISU — it's a specific module for energy, oil and gas distribution.

There's lots of improvement to be made on the user experience level and digital work. Since SAP is a transactional software, you can't use it like Salesforce. It's not easy to create automated reports.

For the user experience, they can try to get out of the strictly industrial point of view because it's an IT solution. It's not always the most fun application the use. It's pretty complicated and if you're not fully trained for it, it isn't easy to understand how it works.

I have been using it for the last four years.

S/4 HANA is the most stable solution provided by SAP.

The scalability is very good. That's the good thing about the S/4 HANA solution.

Support is quite good; they know their solutions. Over the last few years, they changed all the resources that were on the first S/4 HANA program. They're pretty efficient. There's always a contract with them for support. Normally, regular support is done internally, but when it comes to SAP bugs, when we can't solve the problem, we go back to SAP support and can rely on them.

Setup is complex. SAP is the biggest ERP on the market. We like to say it's the Rolls-Royce of ERPs. So it can't be deployed without a minimum of 10 to 20 consultants, plus approximately the same kind of resources on the business level.

Licensing is quite expensive. It works with yearly licenses and it's ugly. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

For maintenance of the solution, the number of people needed depends on how many users you have. Basically, now we use TMAs most of the time, but for smaller conditions, it would be a minimum of 10 people. It depends on the number of modules that you have. For example, with my last clients, we had a regional team of 20% plus an external team of more than 10% and it was really not a big deployment or activity.

For full deployment, the time it takes depends on the complexity of the deployment and the number of processes to review. In a normal situation, basic roll out would be between four to six months and a global project or program can take up to three to five years. It also depends on the number of sites because you have to deploy the solution, and once you have the core model, you need to perform a roll out on every site and do all the necessary training. I've worked on programs before that lasted five or six years with major companies where there were over 700 sites. It's difficult to do more than 50 or 60 sites per year, and even with that, it's complicated. With one of my prior clients, it was a 10-year program.

With regular companies, there are more than five to seven thousand users and with major ones, on my biggest project, we had 30,000 users worldwide.

The solution can be used on all levels.  On the IT level, it's a tool that we deploy to enable the tracking of client processes, but it can be used on every level. It's commonly used for finance control, sales and purchasing because those are the biggest parts when managing client TNLs. Depending on the activity, if you're not a big client, you can go down to MRP level, managing all the logistics and all the productivity. It can be used by everyone.

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.