SAP BW/4HANA Reviews and Ratings

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

SAP BW/4HANA is certainly an excellent choice when it comes to setting up a data warehousing platform within a landscape of existing SAP systems ecosystem for realizing quick time to value and ROI over the long term. Many non-SAP analytics tools such as Power BI , Qlik also now offer connectors to leverage SAP BW/4HANA data as additional options to deploy third party visualization tools which make it a more open ended platform of choice.

But with the future roadmap of SAP and industry in general being focused towards cloud based offerings (SAC and Datasphere) infused with AI capabilities one has to make a judicious choice among these depending on the use case, capabilities of platforms and existing systems landscape and the overall long term IT strategy. SAP BW/4HANA may not be a good platform of choice if starting a native greenfield data warehousing implementation with cloud first approach which would require data integration across SAP and Non-SAP sources and one should consider other SAP cloud offerings which however still have some time to reach a level of maturity as SAP BW/4HANA has reached over the years.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BW/4HANA is primarily used in our organization as data aggregation for sales, finance and logistics reporting. This is used across different companies. In some instances is also used for planning features connected to our trade promotions management system. Data sources are mainly the ERP systems which are also SAP systems.

Likelihood to Recommend

BW/4HANA is well suited for SAP landscapes due to the premodeled data extractors which can significantly facilitate the implementation job. Performance is quite decent provided the data modeling is defined consistently.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BW/4HANA is being used in some departments such as Finance and Analytics Data Warehousing requirements. It helps to get reports near real time and create dashboards, KPI's to analyze and make decisions about the organization, and next steps. SAP BW/4HANA has facilitated decision-making for management areas of the organization.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently we are a BW on HANA shop, and have explored BW/4HANA in PoC environments, as well as established it as our target Data warehouse. It will address all of our Finance, HCM, and Supply Chain reporting and Analytics Data Warehousing requirements, providing access to data across multiple business process, sourced from multiple business applications, and together with BObj BI will provide our business users visibility to key insights.

Likelihood to Recommend

Solid data warehouse based on best-in-class in-memory HANA database with excellent integration into SAP solutions, as well as predelivered business content facilitating initial implementation. Leverages the best of SAP's architecture and flexible data warehousing capabilities, without compromising performance and simplification. Will be key enabler to our Finance and HCM analytics roadmap.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use BW/4HANA as the platform to host our operational data warehouse. We use a separate instance of BW/4HANA to host our profitability and performance management application (PAPM).

Likelihood to Recommend

Suitable for hosting large volumes of data and using multiple cloud-based reporting tools to create dashboards, KPI's, and reports that need to be available daily or in near real time. Good integration with most HANA applications although there seem to be some limits with others. It is not suitable for massive volumes of data given the nature of SAP's pricing for HANA. Large volumes and analytics may be more suited to a data lake external to BW/4HANA.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SAP BW/4HANA across the whole organization primarily for reporting and also as a data source for our broader data lake. Most users are on Supply (Logistics, Inventory), Planning (Sales, Demand, Inventory, Business), and Finance. It integrates with most of our landscape - ERP, Product Lifecycle Management Systems, Planning tools, and even Excel Spreadsheets.

Likelihood to Recommend

SAP BW/4HANA integrates well within the SAP Landscape (ECC, S4HANA, IBP, etc.), and you can easily implement it if already an SAP shop. You can also find several Public Cloud implementations, especially on AWS, that can accelerate your Proof of Concept and validation. If you are adding more tools and systems into the landscape, you may want to consider another agnostic toolset that can easily integrate with non-SAP products.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BW is being used in my organization as the tool that allows us to read and consolidate business (life or not depending on the kind of data). We use it only in certain departments, as not everyone is doing the analysis of this kind of information.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is great for processing data, super fast and clear. It improves business process agility and creates better efficiency across departments. I would definitely recommend the tool for its functionalities and good performance. Implementation is not that convenient, but the rest is just great.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAP BW/4HANA is the main source of metadata information in our company. Besides a lot of standarised reports made by a specialized team, we have the possibility to download any kind of data through BW. This possibility allows us to be more independent when we have a specific need. It's easy to use and fast enough to cover our needs.

Likelihood to Recommend

SAP/BW is able to offer you a lot of company data with the help of a simple query. I use it in order to see sales & invoicing data of my company every day. If you don't have permission to make/edit your queries, you may get lost trying to adapt an existing query to offer the information you want to see.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The SAP BW/4 HANA platform is used by our clients as a corporate data warehouse solution hosting information from all areas of the company and being the basis for reporting needs-oriented to decision making.

Likelihood to Recommend

A scenario where BW/4 HANA fits perfectly is for corporate data warehouse solutions especially when the source of data is a HANA ERP. It integrates seamlessly with the SAP Business Analytics Cloud business intelligence solution.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use BW/4HANA for analytics and reporting. It is used across the enterprise. Our initial deployment has been across finance with a view to migrate our classical BW environment over to BW/4HANA. Our currently classical BW has reached end of life and we need to commence the migration over to BW/4HANA soon.

Likelihood to Recommend

Hybrid data modelling is for sure a great strength. The ability to stick to traditional data modelling as well as modelling using HANA Calculation Views locks huge potential. Having access to multiple HANA native engines and features means less reliance on ABAP stack. All this whilst still leveraging traditional BW features e.g. master data infoObjects, time-dependencies, etc.