SAP S/4HANA Reviews

We use the solution for a retail customer. As an administrator, my activities involve system installation, troubleshooting, and performance management.

The tool could improve development, particularly during upgrades or conversions from ERP systems to the solution. Adapting the code to the new standards can be challenging, especially when customers try to keep their old ERP developments.

I have been using the product since 2018. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

SAP S/4HANA's scalability is good. 

I have contacted SAP's technical support, mainly for incidents rather than during installation. They're about 90% accurate, but sometimes they can be slow or misunderstand the issue.

Positive

The product's deployment is easy and fast. The deployment time varies depending on the scenario and environment. From development to production, it can take a few weeks. Starting the development system doesn't take long if you have all the preparations done - like sizing, setting up the final systems, and accessing them.

The tool's licensing is very expensive. They've changed their licensing model from the old ERP system to a new model using FUEs, which is somewhat better but still expensive.

I'm not directly involved in financial operations. However, from conversations with colleagues in finance, I understand there have been improvements since using the tool. The main challenge is often user resistance to change, as they're used to working with the previous system.

I advise new users to get an overview or take a course to understand the system's capabilities. Preparing the end-users for the implementation is crucial, especially when moving from old systems to new ones.

I rate the product a nine out of ten. It's a really powerful tool that has been improving since around 2016. The improvements in the Fiori interface and its integration with the system are particularly impressive.

There are a lot of options for deploying S/4HANA. It depends on the industry and the customer's budget. It is usually deployed on-premise in the public sector, but tech companies mostly choose the cloud option.

SAP provides you with single-tenant and multi-tenant options when you opt for the public cloud. When it is a single tenant, it's typically a private cloud managed by SAP, but the customer's budget also factors in. If they're working with a large budget, a customer might opt for a public cloud, but government clients might opt for a completely on-premise solution because of data security regulations. 

Most of our customers plan to move to S/4HANA. We usually start with central finance and later prepare a migration plan. By the time we're ready to deploy, SAP may have released a new version, so the customer might choose the latest edition depending on their budget go for the latest version, or they may only be interested in whatever version was on the market when we were in the planning stage.

S/4HANA is so much faster today than it was before. High performance is one of the best features, but the backbone of S/4HANA is its integration capabilities. They've also shifted to a focus on user experience. 

The UIs used to be slightly boring, but the user experience has dramatically improved since the acquisition of Sybase, Callidus, and several other companies. SAP stays ahead of the curve and is constantly improving. If you want a feature, they're already working on it. It's one of the best ERP solutions on the market.

The ERP market is competitive, and other solutions may have advantages over S/4HANA in some industries. I work in fintech, and central finance is essential to all industries. S/4HANA provides all the features there, but when you talk about ranking the industries, manufacturing would be No. 1.

Initially, S/4HANA was getting bested by PeopleSoft in the HR sector. Now, they are catching up. In particular, SAP wasn't strong in expense management, but they acquired a company last year and Ariba several years back. Their SRM was not hit. 

We've been using S/4HANA for the last two and a half years.

S/4HANA is stable. Many companies were skeptical because it was costly and untested. It has proven far more stable than people had expected. People thought they would only switch to SAP in 2025 once the solution had matured and provided services, ECC, etc. However, customers are now willing to spend on S/4HANA because they see it's stable and stacks up well against other ERP solutions.

S/4HANA is highly scalable because of the cloud, and it integrates with various publicly available software, it is highly scalable. S/4HANA has always been scalable, and now you have more ways to scale up with the subscription model as well as the multi-tenant and the single-tenant deployment options. Scalability is never a question.

SAP support provides resolves all our problems, but the response time is slower than our customers expect. Maybe it's because they have such a large customer base and are always occupied, but that's one area all our customers mention.

S/4HANA implementation is always complex because you need to configure it to work with your infrastructure. SAP only provides the license, not hardware, but they will connect you with a partner like HPE or IBM.

It's extremely costly if you ask for SAP to implement it, but you can deploy through some vendor like HCL, TC, Infosys, or Capgemini, and then you need to enlist a hardware partner. 

The complexity also varies by industry. If it's a small industry with $40 million of revenue annually, the business processes will be simple. However, deployment is tricky for heavy manufacturing, energy, etc.

Pricing is one area where S/4HANA has room for improvement. It's too costly for many people. They have come up with the subscription-based model also. The annual cost is $3,000 per user.

The only other expense is maintenance, but if you're paying for a subscription, you don't need to pay anything. However, there is a minimum commitment of $100,000.

Maintenance is always calculated as a percentage of your annual spending. For example, if you have implemented the solution, and it costs you $10 million in your first year, roughly 20 to 25 percent will be the operating cost. That is the maintenance fee SAP will charge. You will pay $2 million on a $10 million budget. 

You can think of that $2 million as $100,000 you would pay per employee to a team of consultants. If a company is relatively small and only implemented a few million, then we would recommend that they buy SAP business and outsource all the non-SAP activities.

I rate SAP S/4HANA nine out of 10. If you want digitization in your organization, go for it. S/4HANA is advanced and highly integrable. It's one of the best ERP solutions, but it depends on your budget because SAP is always costly.

We use the solution as an ERP system for our retail operations and manufacturing. 

The core accounting model is robust, so we don't have any issues with it. It has industry-specialized modules like retail, hospitality, and manufacturing. Many industrial-specific modules are very helpful. It's a very robust, reliable, and simple-to-use product. In my experience, it's straightforward.

From a benefits perspective, the main advantage that SAP S/4HANA brings to our organization is that we can have one system for everything. It is used for retail, distribution, and manufacturing engineering. Having a single system allows us to meet our total requirements.

I would like to see improvements in the graphical user interface and core modules in SAP S/4HANA. Even after 20 years, there haven't been developments in these areas. The purchase order, sales order, and core modules like CRM have remained unchanged. The financial data and modules have also stayed the same. Fiori is available but hasn't brought many changes to the core modules.

I'd like to see more features in the core ERP module to make it affordable and manageable for small and medium-sized companies. Big companies can handle additional modules like CRM, but smaller businesses struggle to afford and maintain these.

The solution's implementation cost is high.

I have been using the product for two years. 

The solution is easy. 

Our current number of users for the product is 200, but it will increase. We have it implemented across multiple locations and departments. Our environment spans different countries with various currencies and services. For example, we operate in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, each with its own SAP instance and currency. The solution is easy to scale. 

We have support from an internal team as well as SAP. Its support is good. 

Positive

The tool's deployment is easy. 

The product's ROI is good. 

I rate the overall product a ten out of ten. 

We use the solution as an enterprise application. 

The tool's most valuable features are ease of use, high availability, and connectivity. 

The product should improve its cost. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate SAP S/4HANA's scalability a seven out of ten. My company has 2000 users who use it daily. 

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

A third-party consultant helped us with the deployment. 

SAP S/4HANA is expensive. 

We evaluated Oracle before SAP S/4HANA. 

I rate the overall product a six out of ten. 

We use it for the FICO {Financial Accounting (FI), Management Accounting (CO)}, SD, and MM modules.

We don't face any problems with the modules, but we have a problem with the web solution. The web access sometimes has difficulties with logging in.

The support should be improved. Every time we submit tickets to SAP, the process takes a long time.

Also, improved performance, reliability, and stability would be beneficial.

In my current company, we migrated to SAP S/4HANA last year in January. It means we started using it in January 2023.

It is not really stable. 

Based on the SAP support we currently use, the users access SAP through the web. In the web interface, we have a lot of connection issues. 

Although SAP claims they are addressing these problems, they have not taken any concrete action. Instead, they try to shift the responsibility back to the customer.

According to our agreement, these tasks should be handled by SAP. However, the support team consistently insists that these issues fall under their scope. This is the challenge we are currently facing.

It is scalable enough. We have over a hundred end users using it. There are around five administrators for this product.

When we want to raise a ticket on the SAP portal, the process takes a longer time, and there are many selections that confuse the user. SAP should simplify the way tickets are submitted. This is what we hope they will improve.

They need to improve the solution and streamline the process. We want to bring the issue in more clearly so we can know which option to select.  

Neutral

The pricing is okay. It is higher. It is expensive. 

We encountered an issue when we implemented SAP S/4HANA. It wasn't properly implemented with disaster recovery. The disaster recovery was an additional feature that required a separate payment to implement a disaster recovery plan.

Overall, I would rate the product an eight out of ten because the support is very bad. 

I have been a consultant for SAP retail, SAP Fashion as well as generic.  I also have been exposed to many business sectors. 

The user interface should be much more convenient and user-friendly. 

In future releases, there could be more use of AI.

I have been using this solution for more than five years. 

The solution offers good stability. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It is reliable. I have a lot of customers using this solution. There are more than 500 end users. 

The customer service and support are fast. SAP addressed my tickets quite quickly.

The initial setup is not complex; it's more at a medium level. Not too easy, but with the right knowledge, you can configure it.

For a migration process, it took around six to seven months, which was the fastest I've done. For implementation projects, it typically takes around one year, sometimes one and a half.

It was implemented in a waterfall approach, and one was brownfield. I would suggest, not from the SAP side, but from the client side, if the hardware components are powerful, the system would run faster. In migration projects, data migration can take a lot of time, so having a reliable server is important.

We recommend annual licensing. It is expensive, but for large-scale companies, it's manageable.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I would say that SAP should make the user interface more user-friendly, which would be a plus point, especially in pre-sales.

Our company implements the solution for customers. It is used for order management, finance, purchasing, and manufacturing. We currently have two customers using the solution. 

The solution's new UI called Fiori is user friendly.

The solution is very easy to integrate.

The solution is complex technically because both an old and a new path exist. Some more development work is needed for Fiori before a complete switchover can happen. Right now, they are enhancing and developing Fiori. In two to five years, things may change because Fiori will be finished and in the market. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support could be better so I rate it a five out of ten. 

Neutral

The setup is complex. We were given instructions but setup was not easy. 

We implement the solution for customers. Implementation can take between six months to two years depending on the scope and customer. 

The pricing model is based on an annual license. 

I recommend the solution for big companies because they have a lot of SAP users and can handle the specs of implementation. I do not recommend the solution for mid-sized or small companies because there won't be enough users or support. 

Because two systems are being used within the solution as it iterates over to Fiori, the system is currently very technically complex. A lot of workarounds are needed and this creates a bad experience for customers. 

I 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.