SAP BW/4HANA

Score8.3 out of 10

104 Reviews and Ratings

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What is SAP BW/4HANA?

Categories & Use Cases

Data Warehouse

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Screenshot of Next generation data warehousing with SAP BW/4HANA.

Data Warehouse Management
The effectiveness of the product’s tools for loading, transforming, sharing, and exploring data, schemas, and dependencies.
Category average: 9.5
Multi-User Support (named login)
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
Category average: 9.5
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
Category average: 9.6

Location-Based Data Governance
Refers to how well the software enables users to comply with data privacy standards regarding the use of precise location data for customers.
Category average: 9.1
Administrative Automation
The product’s capacity to automate administrative tasks such as patching, scaling, and creating backups.
Category average: 7.5
Self-Optimization
The product’s capability to monitor and adjust internal metrics and systems to keep performance as high as possible.
Category average: 7.5

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using SAP BW/4HANA.

Based on HG Insights installation data

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#1 most frequent

Manufacturing

21.9%

431 installations of 1,972

#2 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

21.5%

424 installations of 1,972

#3 most frequent

Information

6.9%

137 installations of 1,972

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BW/4HANA is used as the primary tool in our organization for data warehousing and reporting in various business areas like finance that integrates data from SAP sources like S4HANA, S4C and SAP ByD systems. We use SAP Analytics cloud as the visualizing tool that gets the data from SAP BW/4HANA via live connection and reporting also done via analysis for office excel add in.

Pros

With ODP based extraction, SAP BW/4HANA does well to integrate the data from various source systems like S4HANA , S4C.
With composite providers having the ability to integrate HANA calculation views, we are able to make the best of use of both application layer and data base layer(HANA) for mixed modelling scenarios.
with data tiering optimization higher data volume are effectively handled as we have the option to control the amount of data that is being stored in HOT , Warm and cold storage. With data volume grows over the year, DTO comes in handy solution to automatically move the delta to appropriate area based on temporature.

Cons

with SAP BW/4HANA 2023 version, we often see newer issues and need to reply on SAP tickets to resolve them. For example, we have cancelled background jobs for scheduled process chains. For some chains, we have the completed job for start variant and several cancelled jobs. Even after implementing notes and removing and rescheduling chains, the issues seems to come back again and again.
Decision variant with multiple conditions at process chain was not working.
Central info objects that was used in several info providers takes more than 1 day for activation and import into next systems.
We can list several such issues from our recent experience.
With the tool matured over several years, and underlying ABAP was improved several times, we didn't expect to see such issues.
With recent release of 2023, we have expected innovations to support AI/ML use cases directly in BW. But we see more innovations are coming only in the areas like BDC, Datasphere and Analytics cloud and nothing with BW
We also would love to see support for loading data from cloud environments to BW application layer directly. At the moment, its very hard to integrate data back from datasphere into BW and we dont see any innovations in this direction.

Return on Investment

with SAP BW/4HANA's ability to store historical data and provide trends data for analysis, it supports business to make strategic decisions based on not only current data but also with historical data from several years in the past. It has helped to improve the accuracy
with automated process chains for data loading and automated support to fix common errors, with support for automated data cleansing, the operational cost has reduced a lot for the business
BW being the Single source of truth for the reporting eliminates the ambiguity in reporting by different business area.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Database

Other Software Used

SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Datasphere, Microsoft Power BI

Verified User

Consultant in Finance and Accounting (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

BW/4HANA is used as a proper data analytics tool along side non sap world of the organization. There are majorly few BW/4HANA systems in organization, we are using specifically in finance area of commercial business of organization. We also use this for consolidation of planning data with actuals and generate reports based on the complete set of planned vs actuals.

Pros

Extraction from SAP
Tranformation of data , specifically when dealing with millions of records
Reporting, BW Queries and flexibility to introduce masterdata
Multidimensional reporting - Big boon to deal with huge data volumes

Cons

Better integration with HANA layer with BW/4HANA application
Flexibility to provide more secure API's to interact with non-sap Data bases
Integration with Gsheets as well like Excel(AFO) and introduce better reporting integration with various reporting tools.
Evolution to provide better data lake , data brick options like in BDC

Return on Investment

Still acting as important point of source for major decisions
After BW/4HANA Migration there is 20 % increase in the extractions to BW system
Still we are yet to find a better investment for reporting in SAP , though we use SAC, which has its own issues while dealing with huge volumes of data

Usability

Alternatives Considered

SAP Data Services

Other Software Used

SAP Data Services, Microsoft Power BI Embedded, SAP Business Warehouse

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SAP BW/4HANA as our one stop global and holistic data warehousing platform for business analytics that drive business decisions. It is also used for some financial planning use cases to seamlessly blend actuals and planning data to predict and project future outcomes which can be easily analyzed by the business in Analysis for Office and SAP Analytics cloud tools. The embedded BPC 11 component within SAP BW/4HANA is also used for month end financial consolidation as part of the financial close process. SAP BW/4HANA helps us consolidate and harmonize business data from multiple SAP and Non-SAP systems to help better manage and organize data in one central repository that ensure data integrity and identical results across various lines of business globally. I personally have been working with BW and BPC for over 25 years now right since its inception in 1998 and have seen the product evolve and mature immensely over the years and hence big fan of this platform.

Pros

Very strong out of the box integration with core SAP ERP platforms including S/4 as well ability to integrate non SAP sources of data. The additional bonus is the pre-delivered SAP built business content to jump start analytics projects and reduce time to value significantly.
Very well thought out data modeling, integration and monitoring tools besides strong ETL capabilities to transform and enrich business data.
Strong integration with the other SAP cloud offerings such as SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere make it an even more valuable platform. Not to mention the Excel friendly Analysis for Office tool that every business user loves and is very easy to adopt and deploy. The performance on HANA is also excellent to manage huge volumes of data as well as access it quickly for planning and analytics use cases.

Cons

It would be nice to see tools available within SAP BW/4HANA for cross platform esp. other SAP systems integration from a data extraction and scheduling standpoint. This is to ensure BW data stays consistent with its sources and is refreshed only after completion of core business process activities in its source systems. This is also relevant from a SAC and Datasphere integration standpoint for data being fed from SAP BW/4HANA as these platforms currently only support time based scheduling options with no dependencies possible against SAP BW/4HANA processes. Currently most companies employ an external third party scheduling tool to manage this.
With the advent of Analysis for Office the ability to publish AFO workbooks has been lost directly from the SAP BW/4HANA platform unlike its BEx Analyzer predecessor which had the Broadcaster. The use of BO Platform is not an ideal use case for this functionality which is very basic in its scope.
In this age of AI would be nice to see functionality introduced for AI co-pilots like Joule to speed by data modeling and scheduling activities as well as a natural language based querying options within AFO.

Return on Investment

SAP BW/4HANA has been immensely helpful in eliminating alternate silos of data creation by business users thereby ensuring data integrity and consistency across the organization. The focus is now more on data analysis as opposed to data preparation in spreadsheets saving users hours of laborious manual work in collating data.
We have been able to quickly integrate and leverage data from multiple SAP systems into SAP BW/4HANA to drive holistic decision making within the organization including streamlining the month end close process using BPC.
Excel friendly reporting tools such as Analysis for Office have made it much easier for user adoption and training making change management much easier and change the culture within the organization.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

QlikView and Microsoft Power BI

Other Software Used

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Datasphere

Robert Harper View profile

Product Owner - Management Reporting SAP S4 / HANA in Finance and Accounting at HP Inc (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

Near real-time data replication from HANA databases.
Strong BW functionality.
A host of cloud reporting tools can seamlessly connect to it.

Cons

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.

Most Important Features

Seamless connectivity
Ease of use
Scalability

Return on Investment

Eliminates data interfaces and cumbersome reconciliation from our ERP systems.
Ability to replicate data in near real-time.
Ability to standardize on cloud-based reporting tools.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau Desktop, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform

Other Software Used

SAP S/4HANA, SAP Profitability and Performance Management, SAP Analytics Cloud

Usability

Mirian Pitti

Engineer in Information Technology at Personalsoft (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

SAP GUI
SAP HANA Designer
User interface
Integrations

Cons

Security
Optimizing queries
Workspace

Most Important Features

The fastest respond times over a lot of queries
Possibilities [for] growth in terms of accuracy in our reports
Fast queries
High performance

Return on Investment

Expensive investment
Fast queries
Get data near real time

Alternatives Considered

SAP IQ (formerly SAP Sybase IQ)

Other Software Used

SAP IQ (formerly SAP Sybase IQ), SAP HANA, SAP HANA Cloud

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IBM Netezza Performance Server

IBM Db2 Warehouse on-premise edition

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SAP BW/4HANA

What is SAP BW/4HANA?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

SAP BW/4HANA Key Features

Top Performing Features

Data Warehouse Management

Multi-User Support (named login)

Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)

Areas for Improvement

Location-Based Data Governance

Administrative Automation

Self-Optimization

Who Buys & Uses SAP BW/4HANA

Most Frequent Users

Manufacturing

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Information

Most Frequent Users

Small Businesses

Mid-sized Companies

Enterprises

Most Frequent Users

United States of America

Germany

India

Most Frequent Users

Engineering

IT

Finance

SAP BW/4HANA Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Usability

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

SAP BW/4HANA Alternatives