SAP S/4HANA Room for Improvement

VARUN-JAIN - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Manager - Strategy and Transaction at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

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. 

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Juzar Badami - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of SAP Center of Excellence at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees

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

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VW
Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

During parallel preparation of go-live processes, SAP B1 and S4H transactional data alignment can be difficult to track. The approach is to have the same sales order amount and quantity to compare the correctness so both sides are matched, according to FI concerns. For project purposes, we need to figure out if there is any solution or approach when considering data migration for sales orders and purchase order imports. Any resolution for an add-on program to validate reports can be useful. 

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Buyer's Guide
SAP S/4HANA
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP S/4HANA. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RohitKumar15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Consultant at ITC Infotech

The product’s pricing could be improved. It needs a high CPU and memory to analyze and compute that data. Thus, it should be natively supported from the cloud platform. We should get the bundled image so installation and configurations are not done manually. All those should come as a bundle learning package. A virtual machine could exist to make everything available on a single deployment. That will save some time for any project timelines.

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Richard Spithoven - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Slim

Oracle has its own data center, hardware, virtualization layer, and database. They offer a complete solution, which SAP currently can't match. This is a weak point in SAP's proposition.

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MF
Co-owner / Board Member at ITS

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. 

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Haseen Perwez - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Chief Architect at Tata Consultancy

Small businesses that have a small user base find this solution too expensive. I would like to see the price come down.

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PG
Senior Manager at Capgemini

The initial setup could be simplified. It needs improvement.

I would like to see the AI included to help from a data standpoint.

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Prashan Thilakawardena - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP MM Consultant at Applexus Technologies Inc.

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

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

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GP
Senior Partner at AGLC Consulting

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.

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Shylaraj AK - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Architect at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

It's been just one year that we started using this product, due to the fact that we need to have different integrations as well to other systems. With S/4HANA, when SAP started, everything worked in a single SAP system. Slowly then it's been delegated or divided into multiple SAP systems. That's why we have around 25 different SAP products running in our landscape. Yet, at the same time, S/4HANA is the core. It's the core component.

Going forward, I believe more systems could be consolidated into S/4HANA. We need to reduce the number of SAP systems running in our landscape. S/4HANA has the capacity to host many other SAP products, therefore we can discontinue some of the SAP products. Currently, we have now the Global Services, the Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and Enterprise Portal, BW, Supply Chain Management, Warehouse Management, et cetera. If SAP could consolidate many of the systems so that we can reduce the number of systems, that would be ideal.

The solution can be a bit expensive.

We would like to see more DevOps capabilities in the future.

The solution would benefit from offering more serverless features in the sense that when you deploy SAP, it's a pretty big deployment and you have a lot of dependencies or you are closely tied up or you have a dependency with the hardware vendor and the hardware providers and the certified hardware and items like that. At the same time, all these deployed components and these files are possible to deploy without a server as well. Slowly SAP is providing some of the features so that you can deploy this in containers and so you don't have any dependency on the running hardware. That way, you can restart the systems without any downtime or the end-users will not feel the difference. Aspects like that need to be improved. 

We do have here monthly maintenance due to the fact that sometimes we need to recharge the system and we have seen from the end-users there will be certain downtime as well. If there is no dependency with the hardware and if it goes serverless, then we can have zero-downtime maintenance.

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Steven Leung - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director at DynaSys

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

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Sahil Doshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate director at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

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. 

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Alaba Ayotunde O. OLUWAYIMIKA - PeerSpot reviewer
It Asset Management Lead at Dangote Industries Limited

The Capex and Opex could be improved. It would be nice if they cut back on the cost. Otherwise, it's a very good product.

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NAWAL SAXENA - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Project Manager at Saudi Cable Company

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

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AM
Chief Executive Officer at Redment

Thi solution can improve the Bill of Materials (BOM) and production planning.

In an upcoming release, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) in SAP is very simple, and SAP should extend PLM in the ERP system. Additionally, SAP S4HANA should add more advanced features for monitoring in the database, such as in the Oracle solution.

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VijaySingh - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Haldiram Foods International Pvt. Ltd

The solution is quite expensive.

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Shubham Desale - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Inteliwaves

Considering it's not a small product, improving pricing would be helpful.

So, there is room for improvement in pricing. HANA is not a simple product; it's quite complex by design.

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LH
Senior Media Strategist at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It should have more support. Documentation and support for mobile apps can be improved.

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RL
Senior Functional Consultant at Cognitus Consulting

The documentation for this solution can definitely be improved and I'd also like to see more support, more numbers of Android or iPhone apps.

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Anshuman Bansal - PeerSpot reviewer
Head - SAP & Digital Transformation at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution could have a better user experience. However, they are working a lot on the user experience and they have come up with various applications, such as mobile applications. This was lacking over the last two years.

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MH
Vice President, Corporate IT at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Every business has some unique requirements which can mean customizations are required. What I'd really like to see is the development of an industry specific solution for the food industry, in particular the supply and demand side that's very critical to us, given that there are issues with products that have a shorter shelf life.

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Hisham Ismail - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Operations of Support / co CEO at Snag Free

Nothing was noticed, but maybe SAP Support Systems for system bug issues should be added. :) 

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MOORTHY ESAKKY - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Practice Head (S4 HANA,Group Reporting & BRIM practices)FPSL/PaPM at ERP Logic

The scalability could be better.

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Sergio Ortiz Vega - PeerSpot reviewer
IT systems consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The migration to SAP S/4HANA is hard.

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TM
System & Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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. 

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SY
Customer Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

SAP S/4HANA could improve by making the interface easier to use.

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PS
SAP Technology Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

If I can highlight one point that could be improved, when we talk about other ERPs, like Oracle, nowadays these ERPs provide free integration with other ERPs. For example, there is an API for banks integrated into every tool and every product form requires that bank integration in order to give real time data into the ERP. But SAP is charging a lot for that particular bank integration scenario and I think it should be free because other ERPs are providing this feature built in to the ERP. People always ask us about the integration and how much it will cost to go with that solution, so people are thinking about this.

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DP
IT Coordinator at Cooperativa Central Dos Produtores Rurais De Minas Gerais Ltda.

The initial setup could be better. They can make the process a little easier. The functions that we require will be available in the next release. We specifically need a new model, and I think we have some versions to implement. I already read on the SAP website that some functionalities we are waiting for are available in this new version.

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MC
Head of Procurement at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

I cannot recall coming across any areas that were lacking. 

Starting out on the solution can be a bit complex and difficult. I'd like to see them simplify the process of integration. It's very complex, even with the new solutions within SAP.

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DH
Digital Transformation Director at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The solution could improve by making customization easier. The on-premise version is a lot more flexible.

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SA
Senior Manager at Mazars India

When it comes to the delivery of features, I would like it presented in a more user-friendly way. Every year, when a new version is released, it comes with a very thick booklet of 300 or 400 pages and it is a little difficult to comprehend. This is something that should be simplified. A simple comparison between the older and newer version would be very helpful for customers and consultants.

The default UI has been the same for a long time and in my last few projects, I've found that it wasn't fast enough. 

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GB
Director at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

If S4HANA has more AI and machine learning, it will be better and easier for reporting and dashboarding.

Its pricing could be better.

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AK
Chief Executive Officer at Biz Tech Resources

We found that the implementing partners themselves are struggling with S4HANA's features. It's not an exact translation of the older ECC, so SAP has taken a new route to do things with S4HANA. Maybe it's a good product, but the implementing partners also like to have an in-depth understanding of the full feature set the product offers. There are areas where even the implementer has to go back to set, which takes time, so that's one of our major concerns.

The older implementations were cloud-based, but one is happening now in one of the larger utilities, which sells services to around 4 million consumers. That's an ongoing project that hasn't gone live yet. This will be the real test. In a year, we'll know, and we can give more feedback.

Another complaint I have is that the screen source is disjointed. When I say this, I'm speaking from a user experience perspective. I don't know the S4HANA database, so I can't say if it's good or bad. I am sure that S4HANA would have certain limitations compared to Oracle, which is the gold standard for databases. Maybe there are some challenges in the backend, but I don't dwell on those because I'm not a technician. But the graphical interface requires improvement, and its flow should be very smooth. 

Also, the Fiori app is very basic. They need to become richer because people tend to use Fiori to access the S4HANA application to save on license costs. Fiori gives you access because it's a web client, and they market it as an app. It's not really a full-fledged app, but the roadmap has to be cleared from SAP. And when its capabilities improve, it gives a native app experience when people use Fiori.

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EE
Individual Contributor at EJADA

This product would be improved by adding more reports. In the next release, I would like UDF or UDO to be added.

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Virendra Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Director- APAC at 2iSolutions

This is a very costly solution.

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CP
Associate director at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

This solution works with the configuration, if the prerequisites are very clear and can be configured it works perfectly. If you need to simulate something, as a predictive tool this kind of simulation is not very accurate and it has limitations. This is something that could improve.

In an upcoming release, the allocation process should be revised and improved.

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Kumar Saurav - PeerSpot reviewer
Director - SAP BTP at Incture

These days, most clients ask about mass upload. It's not possible to do that with SAP so there is an opportunity for them. Mass uploads have become a necessity for industry. SAP does have ways to do this but it's not user-friendly. I'd also like to have an easier option for hosting. Currently, I know that S4HANA can be ported on cloud versions, and they have started giving out ready-to-use kits but there are some hiccups and basic things are a struggle. I've worked with a few different teams that have had problems with that.

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PV
Project and Service delivery Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

S/4HANA could be improved with better integration. At the moment, a main issue I see is that there's so much growth in the functionality, complementary modules, and cloud solutions which were acquired by SAP and which extend the functionality of the SAP ERP suite. It looks to me that they tend to acquire more and more functionality from acquisitions, but they don't invest enough effort into making them integrated with S/4HANA or ERP. I would say that the functionality is great, but integration is something which still needs more attention. Instead of focusing on acquisitions, they should invest, integrate, and better the existing portfolio of products in SAP. It would help us, as implementors, to have a more complex or compact solution. 

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JG
CEO at CJG Consulting

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.

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DK
IT & SAP Head at kudos chemie limited

In a feature release, they could improve by adding budgetary features.

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AS
SAP Business Analyst with 11-50 employees

The procure-to-pay solution in the Contract Management angle could be better. If you look at it on Ariba, the Contract Management Life Cycle for Ariba is more robust. You can create documentation, SLAs, and NDAs. Apart from the procurement aspect of the contract, you have the legal side, but Ariba cannot do that.

From what I've seen, the features of the procure-to-pay model in S/4HANA and their Contract Life Cycle Management side primarily focus on the procurement side. I believe it would be good if this solution could handle a part of the legal side.

They will incorporate Extended Warehouse Management and Transportation Management into the S/4HANA cloud. Most big companies that use a solution like S/4HANA have a legal department within the organization. Suppose they can incorporate that to be in S/4HANA suites; I think it'll be good. It will be just like what we have with Transportation Management and Extended Warehouse Management.

The user interface could be better. They have too much information on the interface, and our customers still keep complaining that it looks complex. Even though many things have changed, they still complain that the interface or the screen they see is a bit complex. It's only when they see the Fiori interface that their mind becomes a bit calm.

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NH
Director Comercial at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

The migration form previous versions to SAP S/4HANA is a challenge both for customers and clients. 

there should be simpler ways to incorporate the new tools into a process framework. Many customers are still using the same tools but running in SAP S/4HANA

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VB
Works at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

In an upcoming release, it would be beneficial to have more practical intelligence in the system, such as protective maintenance, or artificial intelligence. This would not be too complicated to provide nowadays. If you have a mission learning or artificial intelligence, you have to have it in the cloud and have cooperation between the ERP and the cloud. It is not as good as it could be.

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PP
Lead Consultant at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The two things that need to be improved are price and customization. These are two dynamic changes that every customer will want.

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Steven Leung - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director at DynaSys

The solution isn't lacking any features per se. Clients aren't coming to us and saying "we need this or that."

The cost of the solution is quite high. It needs to be adjusted.

The integration could be better. They have many different kinds of house platforms, and then it becomes complicated to have integration within all of these different systems.

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AS
Mechanical Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.  

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JK
Associate IT Consultant at itcinfotech
  • S/4HANA 1610: We found very less Fiori apps — a few apps not working.
  • All module Fiori apps need to be tuned.
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NS
IT Director at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees

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

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ML
SAP Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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

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AT
Technical Lead / Solution Architecture / Software Development - SAP at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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AK
Civil Engineer at gieco

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.

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BR
Head of Information Technology at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees

The resource usage could be improved - it's memory-hungry, so mid-range servers struggle to run it.

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PV
Gerente SAP at a pharma/biotech company with 201-500 employees

An area for improvement would be integration with different kinds of legacies. In the next release, I would like the product to be prepared for blockchain technology and the best way to communicate with social networking.

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AW
Senior IT Manager with 501-1,000 employees

While the solution contemplates a competitively priced model, its pricing could be cheaper. 

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SV
Lead Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution could be more user-friendly for regular users and developers.

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JC
Director - SAP Practice at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We are always looking for a better user experience. We would like to see more consolidation in SAP S4HANA because of all the financial compliance and regulatory changes.

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MC
Head of PMO at a tech company with 1-10 employees

The common issues being raised right now by the end-users are mostly related to the usability. Especially on the Fiori interface. I think they're a manufacturing company and they're implementing lean manufacturing. They are actually counting the number of clicks and screens that are being used by their end-users so they can have a more efficient and intuitive approach on the Fiori apps.

In terms of what features should be included in the next release, there would be too many to mention. I would probably say right now, as part of the planning session, they're going to go through the entire gamut of features where they can improve and where we're lacking in some parts. We're planning to implement a trial for support and warehouse management. But it's a big list right now and I can't think of anything specific. 

In terms of what could be improved, I would say the usability aspect of it for the users. Additionally, from the corporate perspective, some of the more stringent integrations across modules and also allowing integrations from third-party applications.

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CA
SAP Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

There should be a place where I can get the best available applications in one place. Currently, Fiori applications are available in different tiles on the dashboards. If anyone wants to check the financial, sales, and inventory reporting in one place, it is not possible in Fiori. We would have to develop a custom Fiori application. If that feature can be incorporated into the standard Fiori, it will be helpful for us.

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FL
CTO at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

You will not see convenient user experiences with SAP S4HANA's website or application. It is not mobile-friendly either. 

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it_user852423 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Coordinator at Exzatech Solutions Ltd

MRP repost area should be improved. The production information report also needs to be improved. 

Planned Order List needs a change of screen.

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Buyer's Guide
SAP S/4HANA
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP S/4HANA. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.