SAP S/4HANA Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is an expensive product.  

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

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

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

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

S/4HANA BASIS administration and technical architect solutions.

We have implemented for one of the customers and gone live recently, and its greenfield implementation. The customer was very happy as the implementation time took less than 6-8 months.

Easy integration with other tools.

• S/4HANA 1610: We found very less Fiori apps — a few apps not working.
• All module Fiori apps need to be tuned.

We are partners with SAP S4HANA and I'm company director. 

This is a very powerful solution with a user-friendly UI. They provide good documentation.

This is a very costly solution.

I've been using this solution for nearly eight years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is highly scalable. 

Nobody can match their customer service, it's very good. 

This is an IT tool so the initial setup is somewhat complex. It's gradually becoming simpler over time and they're developing different tools to simplify implementation and maintenance.

Licensing costs are high.

People are generally wary of SAP products but you can do everything in SAP in a very trouble-free manner. Customers need to be aware that this is a simple and powerful product.  

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

We use SAP S4HANA for manufacturing and financials because we are a manufacturing firm.

In an upcoming release of SAP S4HANA, chain management should be easier.

I have been using SAP S4HANA for approximately four years.

SAP S4HANA is a stable solution.

I have found scalability difficult to achieve in SAP S4HANA because the license is quite expensive. The hardware requirement is quite high and can require a large investment for scalability.

We have approximately 200 users using the solution in my organization. We do not plan to increase the usage.

We have internal support for SAP S4HANA but for the external technical support, we rarely use it. The system is quite stable and if we do follow the process, it should have no problems. 

The initial configuration of SAP S4HANA is quite difficult. The time it took for the implementation took seven months.

The implementation was done by a partner.

There is an annual license for SAP S4HANA.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate SAP S4HANA a seven out of ten.

Mostly I have dealt with project-based manufacturing companies where they do custom product builds, like heavy equipment, compressors, steam turbines, and stuff like that.

S4HANA is a completely integrated solution. It's an end-to-end ERP system with strong manufacturing and financial integration, which is not common among ERPs. And it's a solution that's driven by industry best practices.

Maybe its user interface and reporting can be improved across the board, but it is manageable.

I've been using S4HANA for about 16 years.

S4HANA's stability is good.

S4HANA is pretty scalable. We normally plan three to five years ahead and scale up accordingly. So as long as your sizing is done properly, you're good.

I don't have much experience with SAP's tech support, but I have used the online support system. It's okay for a company the size of SAP. But from a customer perspective, it can be time consuming to get help from them.

Setting up S4HANA is straightforward if you have a little bit of expertise, especially on the S4HANA side. You need to understand the appliances and hardware so you can set requirements for RAM as opposed to storage. If you have some experience in server administration, it's not like climbing a mountain; it's a small trip.

Most of the time, I've been able to quantify the soft savings, like savings in terms of time spent on processes and efficiencies that you gain. FDA reductions are generally difficult to establish over a finite period, but your soft savings are far more rewarding, and it's also more compliance related.

I have not dealt with licensing directly because our head office manages that. We only pay SAP to perform maintenance on the solution instead of doing it in-house. Given the size of an ERP system, you need some extra labor to maintain it, but it's justified if you look at the cost-benefit analysis. Some companies go overboard with hiring many people, and then they say it's too expensive.

I would rate S4HANA 10 out of 10. It's a good solution. I think some companies are penny wise and pound foolish. They invest a lot in other ERPs, and when they start to grow those systems, they create a lot of inefficiencies in the process. 

With our customers, we are currently administering their solution over SAP HANA and with different infrastructures such as cloud computing, AWS, Azure, GCP, and others that are also on-premise.

We have customers with new implementations and we offer this product to them. We handle the technical installation, then the high availability solution, the disaster recovery, et cetera. We are doing the administration of all the landscapes and a sub-basic administration. 

In all the other cases we have, the customers are immigrating their solution from SAP HEC. That is the other server for SAP. We bring it to the cloud with public clouds like AWS. Those cases are the most common.

The cost optimization that is shipped with cloud solutions is the primary benefit of the product. 

The integral services that we can administer to our customers are excellent. They are paying for an all-inclusive version of the service. We manage all the features of the operating system - such as ACE's, SAP systems, networks, security on the cloud, et cetera. We can administer everything that is associated with the landscape.

We're well trained on the solution and therefore find the implementation process straightforward.

The solution is quite stable and offers good patches for when issues arise.

The scalability is excellent, especially on cloud deployment models.

From our point of view, we are just a technology consultant. We look at the interfaces in terms of the functional modules we have. It's hard to really see what would be missing in terms of a feature. 

For clients, the most painful part of the solution is the implementation guides of the business or process applications. Okay. The business scenario, the graphic user interface, shown on the system can be a challenge. 

Maybe the commercial model for some other products developed for HANA could be adjusted to make it less complex and more affordable. The commercial laws that SAP has it's very complex. The customer has to acquire a very high license on the product and then they have to buy infrastructure on top of that.

Technical support has been declining. They aren't as responsive as they used to be.

The product could use some other integrations with leaders of the products with public clouds - especially if they are doing with another staff like ILP or on other applications. There could be more legal applications that could be integrated more easily with SAP than they're doing. Right now, we have to develop all the integrations. It would be so much better if this was already done. 

SAP often launches new solutions without first providing the proper documentation. We end up figuring it out, however, it would be nice to have that documentation up front.

We have approximately 15 years of experience on the books with this solution. We've used it since SAP was not HANA. It's now been with HANA, since 2014, if I recall correctly. Therefore, that may be about seven years of experience. Obviously, we've worked with the product over the last 12 months.

The stability is very good. It's, it's a very, very stable version. SAP is often releasing new patches. If we are having some issues, such as some problems with transactions or maybe some features may not work properly, we reach out to enterprise support and often just get a patch. 

The level of scalability you can achieve depends on the infrastructure that you have installed. In the cloud, in product public sites, it's easier to scale. We can scale both up and out and it's very simple to accomplish. 

Typically, we deal with medium businesses. Some others are large at approximately 5,000 users. Most are between 400 and 800 users.

Technical support used to be better. They seem to be less proactive than they were before. Previously they were very responsive and helpful. It's lagged a bit. We're disappointed their rapid response has declined. We're no longer satisfied with the level of service provided.

For us, the entire process is traditionally straightforward. It's not too complex. We manage it like the other systems in the past and obviously take into consideration any new technology within SAP HANA. However, in terms of setting it up, it's not a problem.

With a big cloud infrastructure, we can set up a system in less than a month. It may take between two to three months to take over the system and put it onto the cloud or on our hardware projects. On-premise it may be longer - sometimes around four months.

How many people you need for deployment and maintenance depends on the number of systems. However, with a team of four to five people we managed to do all the projects. 

We handle the implementation process for our clients.

While our clients may first evaluate other solutions, that's not something that we typically do.

We are experts in the technical implementation of the product.

We work with a variety of versions, and, of course, with eh latest 2020 updates. We deal with both cloud and on-premises deployment models.

I'd advise potential new users to really think about their infrastructure and the features they would like. Everything should be looked at and discussed in advance, from security concerns to functional modules. The more you understand what you need, the more likely you will get a solution that you want - and that does what you need it to.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for our manufacturing processes, sales, finance, pretty much everything.

They recently restructured the database and changed the table structures, which has made it much easier to manage the processes. The processes have been reduced from almost 10 steps to four or five steps. It's really been simplified.

The theory-side of the solution needs to be improved. They need to come up with a simple way to explain to their customers how to properly use it and perform analysis and move on from there.

In the next release, I would like to see more integration scenarios with the cloud, straight out of the box.

I have been using this solution for almost two years.

The stability is good. We noticed some areas, such as health and safety that were not very stable, but the other areas are quite stable and work fine.

The technical support helped us on almost every front.

It depends on what kind of agreement you have with SAP. We have a maximum attention agreement, so it's all good. For a maximum attention agreement, there are some extra charges, but I'm not aware of how much.

The simplicity of the initial setup varies from customer to customer. For us, it was quite complicated because we needed a lot of customization, but in the end, it was ok.

We had a detailed implementation plan that we followed step by step.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

It is really fast. It is also very stable.

I'm not a big fan of SAP S/4HANA because it needs a lot of hardware. It is really fast, but it needs a lot of hardware. The hardware for S/4HANA is too expensive.

We have been using it for six months.

It is working fine. It is really stable. We didn't find any issue, but we have been using it only for six months.

It is scalable. We have around 100 users.

We take the first level of support from a partner. They have not been very good. We are thinking of replacing the partner.

It was not straightforward. I took a lot of time to set up S/4HANA. The installation, implementation, and analysis took more than one year.

It is very expensive. It is not cheap.

It is stable, but it is expensive, and it needs a lot of hardware. Next time, we would go for another vendor. In our experience, Oracle is better.

I would rate it a seven out of 10.