SAP BW4HANA Room for Improvement

Joyee Sen - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Service Delivery Manager at SoftwareONE

The licensing cost could be made better.

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Srivatsav Andra - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP BW/4HANA Specialist at a government with 10,001+ employees

SAP is facing tough competition in the data lake and big data analytics market from other established vendors, such as AWS, Databricks, and Microsoft Azure Data Lake, among others. According to Gartner peer review insights, most customers prefer SaaS-based platforms offered by these market leading vendors.

Although SAP has its own data lake solution, SAP IQ, it lags behind market leaders in this domain. SAP is working to enhance the capabilities of SAP IQ to bridge the gap, but it still has a long way to go before it can compete effectively with other players.

To stay relevant in the ever-evolving IT landscape, SAP needs to adopt an open environment and allow third-party applications, such as Azure Synapse Analytics, AWS Redshift, and Google Big Query, to connect natively with its flagship enterprise warehouse solution, SAP BW/4HANA. This move will help SAP become the market leader in enterprise warehouse solution.

Many customers currently rely on third-party integration solutions to integrate data from various sources with SAP BW/4HANA. Enabling integration with third-party applications through cloud connectors and open-source APIs can enhance the capabilities of the solution and increase its appeal to customers.

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Hanif Shaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-founder & Partner at idiligence Solution

SAP BW4HANA is a standard product that works as a very applicable system for our company. SAP BW4HANA aims to reduce all the problems and issues related to SAP BW. SAP BW4HANA is helpful in areas where my company sees any issues with the product, like the transaction data, SAP SAC, integration-related areas, or non-SAP aspects. The product is a stable and scalable tool. The cost of the product might be an area that might introduce some restrictions or limitations to customers, making it one of the aspects where improvements are required.

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Buyer's Guide
SAP BW4HANA
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP BW4HANA. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
JH
Contractor at MISA

We tried integrating SAP BW4HANA with several platforms, but none worked properly. It lacks customization options. It's neither flexible nor elastic, making simple job creation difficult. There's no support for developing data cards or similar functionalities. Its data management and endpoint data governance features are lacking. 

We cannot integrate with third-party tools like Python or advanced integration options. You can't fine-tune tables within BW or generate specific views or reports.

The product roadmap and features of SAP BW4HANA are ugly and need improvement.

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Sivaiah Pa - PeerSpot reviewer
Specialist BI at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees

The product needs to improve with more performance and fewer data layers. 

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SK
FTTP Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

The tool is not cloud-compatible. It is an on-premise tool. SAP is bringing other tools into its place.

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Santosh Pallai - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP BPC Consultant at Tech Mahindra

BW/4HANA could improve query optimization. For example, there could be an error message that pops up when you hover over it if any query fails. That would make it easier to find out what went gone wrong. Guided SAP help tools would make it easier for us to go forward. 

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RAUL PAHUARA - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy IT Project Manager at Volcan Compania Minera SAA

I need a more efficient tool. I need more competitive tools, like Microsoft Power BI. The tool is not easy to use for an end user.

I need more analytics tools, especially optimizing the AfO tool for data analytics, since it is a critical point for us.

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LV
Co-Founder at AVIC Software & Service

It's complicated to use. You need to spend a lot of time learning about it. The interface could be improved. It's not intuitive to build a data model and use their ETL tools.

The product is complex, so I think it could be simplified.

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JJ
SAP ABAP Consultant at SNP Group

SAP BW4HANA is a new package with a steep learning curve. I am currently taking courses to familiarize myself with the features so that I can manage them smoothly.

I would like to be able to design new reports in a future release.

The price has room for improvement.

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Wonjae BAE - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Managing Director at dfocus

The solution is not easy to implement. It requires a lot of learning at the beginning. I would like to see the features be simplified.

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Sunishta Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Professor at Furtwangen University

Challenges arise with real-time client requirements when clients are accustomed to Microsoft Excel's extensive features for data analysis. They expect similar flexibility and customization in the solution, particularly regarding headers displaying keys and descriptions or just keys. Achieving this level of customization can be challenging, and it's an area that may need improvement.


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Arijit_Sarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Analytics Lead at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I love this product and have been working on SAP products for many years but the solution needs to be more user-friendly with an improved UI, particularly if you compare it to what Snowflake is offering. 

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PN
BI Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It has a lot of problems in terms of technical architecture. If I change something in BW, a lot of development becomes inactive.

The development time for any developer is quite huge compared to other products.

The setup is a bit complex.

If I want to have good reporting, then I have to buy a separate license. I have to pay for separate things. That's quite irritating.

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RM
SAP Technical Director at Key Performance Consulting

From a technical perspective, it could be even more related to legacy systems. The connectivity requirement is quite high and requires systems that are up-to-date.

There's a lot of competition. If a customer isn't already using SAP, they should also consider other tools.

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VC
Technical Manager at Vupico

The solution is not scalable. It does not have a data streaming feature as well. 

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AJ
ERP Application Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

There are certain areas, for example, HR or project systems, where the BW native adapters are still not fully enabled for you to have the standard offerings.

Support could be more reliable. 

It's quite agile. 

It is an expensive product.

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HW
Head of Enterprise Reporting & Analytics at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

They have taken out a few BW functionalities when they redesigned this. The way of multi-dimensional thinking and star schema got a little bit lost. It may be because of the cost, but certain functionalities that were previously implemented from the BW side should come back again in the whole product. It is a young product. It is version 2.0. In time, I'm pretty sure they will come back again because otherwise, it limits the potential of the product, and I have to do a lot of modeling towards that direction. For me, the analytics focus is too much. It is not cube-oriented in that way, so its functionality is limited. It is not really technically limited in the back end; it is more limited in the front end. It has a data-mining mindset for SQL developers. The navigational attributes should be easy.

It needs to be built in models. I see the data mark cube or understanding that the composite provider needs to be models in a cube coming back. The multi-dimensional star schema approach and the reporting need to be done as well as possible to leverage the star scheme below. This is definitely not understood by many consultants and even composite providers for star schema. They always think in terms of flat tables, which is limiting. You need to build the right dimensions, objects, and so on. If you can build this in BW4HANA, then you have this understanding that BW4HANA is not forcing you in this direction, but it should force you a bit better in this direction. Maybe a few elements which were in use in BW should come back again. It would help the community to determine the direction to build on the cube. You can have maybe 50 elements, and then you can expand it to what you need by leveraging navigation. So far, this functionality is a little bit limited in the tool, and it is not thought through, but I think it will come. They should also be adding more capabilities for the transformation between different objects. In BW, this is currently limited, especially towards composite providers.

It is a bit complex basically in the building. You have to have a lot of knowledge as well as know how to do it better because it is a bit different from BW. There is not too much expertise currently in the consulting markets. Many are trying to build something, but it may be based on their knowledge of what they have from the BW and HANA side. You have to find the right mix from both of them at this time. We also have HANA Native. These are our two different sync sources basically, and we have approaches to connect nicely, but it is hard to manage your team because a lot of coaching is required.

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it_user1202082 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees

We already had a lot of cubes built-in based on SAP BW.  We hope these BW cubes can support real-time anlysis without migration to SAP HANA modeling.

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PN
BI Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The performance for the reporting is very poor, there is no graphical report. The price to performance ratio is less. It's also very complex, for example, if I want to make a simple change I have to spend a huge amount of effort.

I cannot integrate it with my other tools. It's not possible to do something in the predictive analysis. Mobile reporting and automated reports are also not available. 

I am interested in seeing more graphical reports. SAP Cloud Analytics is an immature product on the market. They have started something to showcase to the customer that SAP also can do the graphical reporting, but still they need a lot of time. They should have similar features to Tableau and Qlik.

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NS
Sr SAP Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

One thing is that it costs more because you have to acquire that license for the product, which itself is a waste. If you can do that without the product, that's one thing. And then the performance. Performance is never so good with the old model, BW model that SAP developed because you need to extract the data, you have to load it, you have to put it into cubes, and you have to build your own warehouse, then it's ready for reporting, which is a very convoluted process. It's a long journey and a tedious job every day, every week, but that's how the world was working for several years.

If anything, they should only make it faster. You cannot blame the product completely because it depends on how well you built your cubes, as well as the database objects inside the data warehouse, and how efficient your SQL is.

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NM
IT Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

The HCM needs improvement, but as a company, they have stopped any development on this.

In the next release, I would like to see their BI component introduced with a mobile version, as it is not currently present.

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NM
Senior Strategy Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I would like more integration.

Cost is a factor. It could be improved.

The installation could be simplified.

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RD
Technology Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The speed of operations could be a little faster.

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RM
SAP Technical Director at Key Performance Consulting

I find the migration from an existing BW platform to be quite difficult. It is quite cumbersome for our customers to migrate to BW 4HANA.

The impact that it has on the ECC/ERP system is a problem because they are relying solely on the ODP tool to perform the extract.

It takes too long to escalate problems from the first level of support.

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SA
Lead Consultant at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

This solution is very costly compared to competitors on the market, which stops some people from implementing it.

SAP has to be more customer-centric. They are aware of the standard business use cases but if changes are made then they are not aware of them, which makes the product more difficult to support.

You receive a standard product, which is fine, but it needs to be made more customizable.

Connecting multiple sources is a challenge because you have to go through a lot of different setups. For example, if you want to use FreeSQL then BW4/HANA lacks the support.

Some of the options that exist are very complex, which makes it tough to integrate.

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FS
Director at Pixel Studio PTY

In the on-premise world, you have releases every six months or every year depending on what is required but in the cloud, you have new releases depending on what part of the ERP needs to be enhanced. This happens frequently. Depending on the module, you have sometimes weekly updates. Usually monthly but depending on what is being developed because the people that didn't use the cloud version are very keen on adopting new ways to do business processes. In that regard, everything that is in the cloud should be dynamic. They should keep up the pace because you will get the best version of this tool that gathers all the knowledge that is coming from many sources or many customers. It is continuously improving. 

I would like to see easier connectivity with other tools. No matter what, everything is in the cloud. All this stuff is in the tool but the communication between the tool is not so clear. Everything can be done, but you need to do several steps in order to get these things done. My recommendation is to improve connectivity. It should have a common kind of data model that the data is mapping to connecting applications.

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SP
SAP Enterprise Services Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I can't think of anything the solution needs in terms of features to make it stronger. It's a great overall solution.

The solution does occasionally get a few bugs, but this is typical for any product.

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SH
Senior Consultant SAP / BW / SAP BOBJ at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The product could be more efficient and easier to use similar to its previous version. The monitoring for the remodeling feature is very difficult to understand. It doesn’t provide any details about the issues.

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TT
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Other competitors provide better solutions that are more up to date with current technology. For example, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

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LH
Cloud Solutions Architect and Analytics at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Pricing would be a good improvement. A lot of customers think that it's very expensive and support is especially very expensive. 

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SH
Senior Consultant SAP / BW / SAP BOBJ at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The dashboard should be simplified and made easier for exploration and decision making.

Some customers have said that they would like to use the dashboard to send themselves data in an Excel file directly by email.

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Buyer's Guide
SAP BW4HANA
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP BW4HANA. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.