SAP BW/4HANA vs. SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Some scenarios where SAP BW/4HANA is well suited are retail industry, supply chain, finance, warehouse, stocking processes, BI, [and] some finance analytics reporting. Some scenarios where SAP BW/4HANA is less appropriate [is when] relational queries are needed [and] in some small business with infrastructure limitations. Another scenario that is less appropriate is for ABAP processes requirements.

Incentivized

In my company, SAP S/4HANA Cloud works best for managing global operations, real-time financial consolidation, and automating supply chain processes. We rely on its AI-driven analytics to optimize procurement, logistics, and compliance in regulated industries. However, it’s not ideal for highly customized workflows, as the public cloud version limits deep modifications. Smaller teams also struggle with its complexity and costs. For businesses needing flexibility or lower overhead, alternatives like Oracle NetSuite might be a better fit. While powerful, S/4HANA Cloud requires significant investment in implementation and training, making it more suitable for enterprises with strong IT capabilities.

Incentivized

• High speed data warehouse regardless of data volumes.
• Excellent integration with SAP systems and Data sets.
• Simplified data modelling due to columnar data base.

Incentivized

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud is entirely based on continuously monitored processes enhanced in numerous operational business areas.
• The solution allows the immediate analysis of company performance indicators due to enhanced functions.
• Ideally built on future technologies, the organization’s platform aims at providing a system intended to expand based on business complexity.

Incentivized

• Enterprise license pricing is very expensive and run-time license limits the usefulness of the tool.
• Integration with SAP Analytics cloud for write-back to BW/4HANA. Live connection is only read from SAC.
• Make run-time licenses more useful.

Incentivized

• I would like to have an offline functionality as well which is not available at the moment.
• I would like to see in-built templates that can be used according to organization needs and have to be industry specific.
• Navigation of this platform is quite difficult to learn and requires training. So, new users will find learning a steep curve.

Incentivized

The cost of SAP as an ERP is quite high and the switching costs associated with ERP systems are even higher. That being said moving from one ERP to another only happens once in a great while for large organizations. Those switching costs include retraining, IT hardware requirements, outside consultants and more

SAP BW/4HANA requires specialized skillsets around data warehouse modeling and the access to data, however the modeling capabilities are intuitive and have now become accessible to both SAP and non-SAP data warehouse specialists. This new model allows for Interchangeable skillsets and access to a broader pool of experts throughout the industry, as well as easier access to data.

Incentivized

SAPs usability is great. If there is one ERP where one can adjust about anything there is to be adjusted, this is SAP. This sometimes also means having to maintain some extra master data, but this is to be expected and is well worth the extra effort. We wouldn't have it any other way!

Incentivized

SAP Max Attention and general support for SAP BW/4HANA is broadly available. Truth to be told, MaxAttention has a premium cost but brings great engineers. So this being an enterprise capability and extremely critical, we did not consider cost as the main factor since support works well. Just keep that in mind when making your selection.

Incentivized

The technical support received by the ITT design teams and OS implementation team has been very useful in ensuring that the SAP ERP is well-tailored to our company's specific needs and operations. This coupled with the training materials, business process maps, and concept demos (sand-box demos) makes adoption easy on end-users.

More effective

Incentivized

SAP requires
a lot of internal and external resources to complete its successful
implementation. The cloud version requires a deeper understanding of the
different capabilities of the local systems (hardware) and the connection
towards your local IT team. We found several problems on our systems that we
couldn't foresee before the implementation and roll out.

Incentivized

SAP Analytics Cloud is complemented by SAP BW/4 HANA through connectors that work in real-time and allow the display of indicator information in interactive and user-friendly visualizations. SAP Data Services integrates with BW/4 HANA allowing to automate the loading of information in the system taking as a data source a wide variety of platforms.

Incentivized

As I already mentioned, it automated our tasks such as Report creation, PR creation, and many others. That's the major advantage of the S/4 HANA cloud over our previous ERP. Its robust indication system and pre-analyzed data enabled ease of decision-making, which was not incorporated in our last software.

Incentivized

• Faster turn-around to enhancements
• End users can query structures that are not limited to multi-dimensional models.
• Performance improvements means that business user can do more in the same time compared to traditional BW

Incentivized

• The financial management part ensures every process is well planned and allocated resources are used efficiently.
• The development of payroll management ensures that all employees are happily remunerated and, hence, very productive.
• The creation of solid financial reporting acts as the primary driver in decision-making, which brings more insights into development.

Incentivized