SAP S/4HANA Reviews

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.

Many look for companies and partners who can help them implement SAP S/4HANA. So, we help in the implementation phase. We provide ongoing support as well.

The new features introduced by SAP S_4HANA are the ones I find to be valuable.

The support and price of the solution need to be improved. The solution should incorporate some new innovations.

I have been using SAP S/4HANA for a decade. My company has a partnership with SAP.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. We have small, medium, and enterprise-sized clients using the solution.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten. There are some problems with the support provided for the solution, so it is not quite easy. It takes some time for them to offer us support.

Positive

On a scale of one to ten for initial setup, where one is difficult, and ten is easy, I rate initial setup as ten since it is very easy.

The deployment process took about ten months. We need six people for implementation, which includes one or two system architects to handle the technical field, while the others are mostly business consultants. For maintenance, we have a team of about 20 people to support our customer base.

The solution is worth the money.

I rate the pricing a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is too expensive. It is an expensive tool.

Those planning to use the solution need to fully understand it because it's not quite fit for most customers. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

Our company implements the solution for customers in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. We manage transformational projects that include selection, upgrade, or replacement of systems that require ERP solutions. 

Our biggest implementation was for a chemical company's software hub that was custom-built on an AS/400 mainframe and they wanted to move to an ERP system.  After a six-month package selection process, we chose the solution combined with extensions provided by an implementation partner that added specific functionality and narrowed down customizations. 

Across all of our projects, there are 5,000 users of the solution. 

The finance solution and procurement functionalities are good. 

Items that impact the TCO should be improved because the solution is very complex to integrate and keep running. 

Integration with a portal or front end is needed. For example, the online collaboration part of SAP with vendors lacks functionality. Integrating with sales or service processes with a CRM or cloud for customers uses three different SAP systems. Customers typically choose Salesforce instead because the SAP system is not good.

There is a very large learning curve for different domains from an end user perspective. Some things are easy to understand and other things are complex. Users receive cryptic error messages when they do things that they do not fully understand. 

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable with no complaints from customers. 

On occasion, users get cryptic error messages that they cannot resolve themselves. Someone else has to assist which results in downtime from the IT side and that has a negative impact on business performance. 

Implementation partners handle issues with support staff and response times are very high. Support staff know the product in most cases and are good. 

It might take time for implementation partners to be notified of issues and then reach out to support for assistance. This support chain is expensive because the customer is invoiced based on the number of total support hours needed.

I rate technical support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup requires advanced knowledge and can take two to three days. In some cases, setup can take several days before demo mode is available.  

Implementation partners handle setups and our company handles project management and quality assurance from the customer's perspective. 

Customers do not manage the complex environment on their own but rather depend on service providers such as Deloitte or Capgemini. The price of operational support only makes sense or is efficient in instances with two or three FTEs. 

The solution often does not survive our shortlist round because it is very expensive when compared to other products. It is only appropriate or selected for very specific use cases and types of companies. 

In some cases, the solution is ten to twenty-five times more expensive than competitors like Dynamics because it requires licensing, cloud environment costs, and contracts for maintenance and support. 

Our company recommends various ERP systems depending on use case and customer environment. We have worked with Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Unit4, N4, Baan, and Vision. We work on transformation trajectories for customers who use ERP systems and want to replace, upgrade, or do a greenfield approach.

The solution is a good fit for use cases where customizations are required on top to cover sector-specific business needs, as opposed to custom greenfield implementations of Dynamics 365 with much custom development. The solution reduces the amount of customization that needs to be implemented.

Use cases for domains with no vertical solution built on top are not a good fit for the solution. 

The solution is complex to learn and user acceptance of NetSuite is ten times faster.

It is difficult to rate the solution. For some customers, it is a seven and for others it is a one out of ten. It really depends on the sector and fit gap between needs and business processes. 

There are many cases or exceptions where the solution is not a good fit, so I rate it a four out of ten overall. 

The features you have access to when using this solution depends on which format or version you use. If an organization uses the SAP ECC version, this is an older version and multiple things would be the same at a process execution level and architecture level. However, S/4HANA offers a lot of additional capability with respect to performance due to its built-in architecture for many functions including finance, production, quality, manufacturing, inventory or sales distribution and logistics. SAP offers many capabilities with respect to enhanced functionalities, process improvement and better analytics.

SAP has introduced a lot of management functionality from a sales distribution perspective. The finance module offers a lot of reports as well as the offering of Fiori, which is a UI5 based tool which can be installed in each and every handheld devices for the purpose of approvals.

In the transportation module, which is a part of the sales distribution, SAP offers modifications and enhancements.

SAP offers a lot of products now and all the capabilities are available from one service provider. However, the knowledge needed for the implementation of these capabilities isn't widely shared and so product knowledge in the market isn't comprehensive. This makes it challenging to fully take advantage of all the capabilities. We would like to have access to tutorials. 

The integration could be made a little simpler in terms of design and implementation. SAP should integrate easier with other third party systems. Industry specific retail or FMCG related industries can't directly rely on SAP with respect to the POS integration or the eCommerce integration. 

I have used this solution for ten years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution but some companies face challenges in terms of migration when it comes to the material ledger, COPA cockpits or the introduction of the actual costing. It again depends upon the expertise of the consultants who are doing the implementation but is not part of a product bug.

We have consulted directly with SAP when it comes to completing the initial implementation. When it comes to going live and if we encounter any major issues which cannot be resolved by implementation partners, then we contact the platinum consultants at SAP. 

There is an option to pay for managed services and support from SAP.

The complexity of the setup depends on the organization. If the organization is using ECC then the setup is straightforward. If the organization is using another product like Oracle or Microsoft Dynamics, it is a big change migrating to SAP S/4HANA.

The size of an organization and volume will also impact the complexity of the setup. A mid-size organization would require an in-house team for maintenance. This maintenance is important as lack of specific activities or tasks could cause mishaps in the entire system. 

SAP is a costly product in terms of maintenance for an organization who has reached a particular level. For organizations, like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, they rely heavily on this solution and cost is not as issue for companies of that size.

I complete a comparative analysis when an organization is running on a legacy ERP. We provide the review services and pre-implementation services where this is a very common question. We complete a feature comparison analysis for Oracle versus SAP or Microsoft Dynamics 365 versus SAP. The most common outcome is that SAP is the best product overall. 

This solution can be implemented in multiple ways. One is the on-premise model where the organization has to manage servers and administration related activities on their own. The second is the cloud deployment model that requires some kind of public cloud or private cloud. There are multiple service providers who can help with cloud deployment. The third option is a hybrid model. You can complete a cost benefit analysis and have a mix of this kind of development.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. 

This solution is installed in the customer's system, and we perform SAP Basis administration. 

The migration to SAP S/4HANA is hard.

We've been using it for one year. It is deployed on-premises and in the cloud.

At present, it seems very stable because it is in the cloud.

The scalability depends on the tier you have. You may need to pay more as you scale up.

I have 10 administrators and 7 customers using S/4HANA at present. Our objective is to scale, but it's difficult because customers are scared to migrate to S/4HANA.

We used R/3 before S/4HANA. We switched to S/4HANA in order to stay with SAP solutions.

The initial deployment is difficult, and migration is hard when big data is involved. For a medium company, the initial deployment can take six to seven months, or maybe even one year to get it done perfectly.

For maintenance, you would need two or three people for a medium company.

Depending on the client, we have deployed it ourselves or have done so with the help of an integrator.

It is an expensive solution. On a scale from one to five, with five being the most expensive, I would rate the price at four.

I would rate SAP S/4HANA at eight on a scale from one to ten.

I have implemented many different versions of SAP S/4HANA (since 1511) with the latest version being S/4HANA 2021

Led Transformation Projects covering core processes such as P2P, O2C, R2R, A2R, D2O,H2R, etc.

SAP S4HANA could improve by having a more seamless easier integration, faster integration. The overall implementation timelines can be reduced by leveraging Agile methodology

I have been implementing SAP S4HANA for more than a decade now

SAP S4HANA is stable.

S/4HANA offers one of the best scalability options. It is one of the largest ERP solution globally supporting all Industry verticals.

The technical support could be improved.

Positive

None of the large-scale implementations of SAP S4HANA are straightforward. The ecosystem can be made a little better, to drive faster and simpler implementations, and reduce complexity.

I have been a consultant and an integrator, and I have hired and onboarded consultants and integrators. The number of consultants that are needed depends on the project, size, and scope of the project. It could be anywhere as low as seven or eight consultants and the number can increase to as much as 25.

The licensing models for On-Prem as well as Public Cloud versions are based on no. of users charged Annually. Apart from the Licence cost there is a component of approx 20% Annual Maintenance Costs.

Apart from Licensing costs there is a cost of implementation and associated hardware (in case of On Prem)

I rate SAP S4HANA 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.

SAP S4HANA is used as a complete resource planning solution for our organization.

The solution is flexible, has a lot of functionality, and has the ability to deliver more security than other comparable solutions.

SAP S4HANA is not suitable for all-size companies. If you have a small company there are better fit solutions for your needs.

I have been using SAP S4HANA for approximately five months.

We have found that SAP S4HANA is more reliable and stable than other solutions, such as ECC.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is very good. We have generated support tickets, and they have provided helpful advice and solutions to our problems in a timely manner.

I have used many other solutions, such as ECC and Business One.

The installation and cloud configuration was straightforward.

We had some issues with the installation of the solution. The implementation partner we were using was in India and they could not travel to where we are in Saudi Arabia because of the Covid-19 pandemic making resolutions difficult. Additionally, the communication was difficult. However, this was not the fault of SAP S4HANA.

We used the S/4HANA implementation team to do the full implementation.

There is a license required for the use of this solution and we are on a monthly subscription. The cost of the solution is expensive compared to other solutions. 

I would recommend this solution to others. However, they have to make sure it is the right fit for their environment. If they have a small company that has approximately 200 to 300 users then this solution is not the best for them, SAP Business One would be the better choice for their whole business cycle. S/4HANA is for larger-scale companies with more users.

I rate SAP S4HANA an eight out of ten.