The initial setup is the same as any other SAP product based on NetViewer. The installation can be done in one or two days. The post-processing phase to have the solution on our system may take a week, approximately. The prerequisites for deployment are pretty much standard. The HANA database must be installed, and an application server must be installed. The application server needs to be prepared with the required file system, OS libraries, and specific runtime environments.

For the solution's deployment and maintenance, we have two or three people. So, we have one senior consultant and two mid-level consultants.

The implementation of the data warehousing solution was carried out in a streamlined manner, with the aim of creating a single platform for enterprise-wide reporting.

The initial approach involved establishing analytical reporting for the primary lines of business, followed by the phased rollout of the reporting solution to other areas within the organization. The ultimate goal was to implement the reporting solution across the entire organization, ensuring comprehensive and accurate reporting capabilities.

Whether the product's initial setup phase was complex or straightforward depends on the line of business. If you operate in the retail process or FMCG industry, the tool does take some time. If you are from the manufacturing domain, your system can be ready within a couple of months. The setup process is something that depends on your line of business and how much data you have in your system. You will have more data if you are involved in the manufacturing of many products. For the FMCG industry or retail businesses, SAP BW is a very essential tool, but it takes around six months to get the system ready. The system can be made ready in only three or four months for manufacturing units.

After running through the implementation processes, the product goes live. The deployment process involves the need to identify the business scope, the overall business processes, and expectations, after which they need to get done with the documentation part.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises model.

SAP BW4HANA's deployment is not complex. You need five to ten people to handle the maintenance. 

The initial setup is straightforward. The administration team does it. The team buys the licenses from SAP, downloads the software, and installs it on SAP servers. The deployment did not take more than one day.

SAP BW/4HANA is easy to set up. It's a little tricky when it fails, but I did not find it challenging. You need to have all the help files installed before starting the setup. The deployment is fast.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward.

I was not the person responsible for the deployment, so I would not be the best person to speak about it. I was on the business side associated with the tool.

The solution can be deployed in a couple of weeks.

It takes three odd months to complete the whole implementation cycle of the product to deal with simple to medium-level use cases.

The initial setup was easy.

Initial setup was easy.

The initial setup is straightforward.

BW/4HANA is not easy to implement, it is complex. It requires four or five people to implement.

Before, in BW classic, there is BW Workbench. Inside Workbench, we could do almost anything without needing to go to the database level. Now, the architecture has changed. We need to use Eclipse to model the data, making it more technical than before. It is difficult to train our customers.

If an upgrade is needed, it takes about five months to implement, depending on what the client currently has. If we are implementing a new BW/4HANA from the beginning, it will take more time to analyze the requirements.

The solution is deployed on-premises and cloud, and the entire process took slightly over a week. I rate the setup as seven out of ten.

The initial setup is easy.

The initial setup is not complex because we use HANA Studio. For anyone not in the SAP domain, it will be more complicated. We have two admins. 

The initial setup is not straightforward. SAP is not at all straightforward during implementation.

It is not difficult to maintain. 

I would rate the setup as four out of five. The documentation has improved, so it's not that difficult.

The product's setup is easy. 

I would rate the ease of implementation somewhere around six or seven. We still have some teething issues, which hopefully we can resolve.

The deployment took seven months.

We engaged SAP for the initial explorer phase. And based on that, we sized our setup, and we put our requirements in place. The process was to look at the business, polish and design, and then implement.

There were six people involved in the implementation process. They were developers, functional specialists, subject-matter experts, and, of course, admins.

It depends on your experience, the approach, and so on. I took over the project when it was already started. It had been running for two or three months. I would have approached it differently if I was there during the kickoff. It is challenging when you are too much focused on old products, and you don't have a good model in place or a good understanding of the business model. For me, it was not so difficult. I did it a lot in my former positions and during many years of experience in multidimensional data modeling, but for most of my colleagues and my team members, it was quite challenging because they had more experience in reporting subs, SQL subs, and so on and not so much experience in data modelings and so on. 

In general, you need to acquire experience in this. There are not so many in the market. I also had a bad experience with consulting companies. I had to correct them and technically detail the process for how to do this.

It is simply the mindset. When we approach it with the mindset of how it was done in BW or HANA, you get a process that is not really efficient. When object-oriented approaches are not taken into consideration, everything gets built a hundred times, and instead of being more object-oriented, it gets quite complex. It always requires good modeling and an understanding of the business requirements, which can be quite challenging.

The initial setup was complex.

The initial setup is complex in terms of implementing the basic objects.

In terms of how much time it took us to implement, for the standard features which are provided by SAP then it doesn't take that much time. It can be done quickly, but if you customize it takes longer. It depends upon the complexity of the business scenario. It's time-consuming if I compare the data to other products available on the market. If I compare it with Tableau then it is tremendously time-consuming. 

Tableau belongs to a totally different league but SAP BW is still not that good. It needs a lot of improvement.

The initial setup was straightforward and similar to other ERP deployments.

It took three months to deploy this solution.

The initial setup is quite complex.

We are a worldwide team, we need quite a few people to manage this solution. We have a team of eight to manage this solution in Europe and close to the same to manage it in Asia. 

We have a team of 14 or 15 to manage this solution worldwide.

With a deployment plan, it takes approximately a year and a half to complete. The complexity of the initial setup is such that we need help from SAP.

The number of people required for deployment and maintenance depends on how big the project is. It takes between 30 and 40 people initially if it's a small to medium-sized project. For maintenance, 10 people would be enough.

The initial setup is rather complex. It can be up and running in two or three days but it takes a week to have it perfectly implemented.

We implement both on-premises and cloud-based deployments for SAP BW 4HANA.

The length of time for deployment, to get everything up and ready to work, depends on several factors. For example, if depends on the number of objects and the number of reports that are needed. When we implement this solution for somebody, we do our estimation based on those two.

One of the projects that I worked on took approximately one year to go from the initial stage up until the point where it could be used for reporting purposes.

The initial setup depends on what you need to do because if you requested a managed service, you don't need to do anything. SAP takes care of that and you only pay a subscription and they do whatever you need. You need to set up some modules but they will do it for you, you don't need to take care of that. You don't need to do much. You don't need to take care of that anymore, you just need to focus on your business.

I wasn't a part of the initial setup, so I can't speak to the implementation.

The setup process is easy. However, resolving technical issues regarding registration or adding some features after installation is complicated. Once the deployment is complete, we wait for the transport request to set it up in the production environment. It takes six months to complete and requires four executives to carry out the process.

The maintenance is easy, but it is difficult to trace the error due to the lack of details available.

The installation is complex.

The setup requires a specialist but it's not too complex.

The installation of this solution is not simple, although configuring it is not a problem.