Item: SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Rating: 8
Author: Jagadis B. Purohit

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SAP S/4HANA Cloud for managing our entire landscape and running the organization. It handles everything from hiring to retiring, to procure to pay and whatnot. We kind of run our company on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It is used by a department to manage the entire organization. SAP modules are being used by all two-hundred thousand employees as users on SAP S/4HANA Cloud whether they travel, submit claims or use it in their day to day work. So in a way - the entire organization is on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It solves a lot of problems starting with handling a huge amount of data for a sizeable company like us, with millions of transactions every day. It ensures we are up and running without any hiccups. It manages a whole lot of products, platforms and other non-SAP apps which are integrated to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and help run my organization very well.

Pros and Cons

Good with master data governance. It has simplified our entire dynamics of vendor and master data which was kind of redundant and it helped us to optimize.
Lot of limitations in the rebate process, and with settlement management coming it is helping to manage our contracts with regards to discounts very well.
It is super fast. I was amazed by its 8X improved performance.

It can be better in condition contract management. It has kind of covered what rebate was doing but there are few limitations that can be overcome. Customer discount payouts has a lot of problems.
Business partners. Configuration with regards to migration from customers and vendors. Here, the CVI process is a bit tedious and needs a lot of improvement. Also, the change management needs to be more robust so that end-users are not impacted.
BAPI's and classes that are modified need to be communicated upfront. There are a lot of scenarios we observed where it started giving dumps after going live and it impacted the business life cycle.

Return on Investment

It is definitely a good ROI as it has started delivering results. Reports are faster, transactions are moving smoothly, and the business is appreciating its performance.
There is a little bit cribbing on CCM and few other custom reporting areas where the impact was high - as we moved on from KONV to PRCD_ELEMENTS.
But overall, it is great move by my organization

Alternatives Considered

Ariba Contract Management, SAP Fieldglass, concur expense and SAP SuccessFactors

We have started moving onto the SAP S/4HANA Cloud platform and Fieldglass because a few of our partners are insisting. It is new so we are still evaluating and can't comment. We are kind of started up on SAP SuccessFactors, and we have also moved on SAP Fiori 2.0, HANA 2.0 and we have seen the difference there.

Other Software Used

.NET, Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Microsoft Dynamics CRM), Micro Focus LoadRunner (formerly HP LoadRunner)

Likelihood to Recommend

SAP S/4HANA Cloud has opened up avenues for a wide array of cloud, analytics, and various other products which give a lot of benefits to the end-users. We have started using analytical abilities, so our reporting areas have been appreciated by our clients and tools like BOBJ, CRYSTAL reports have run fantastically. Fiori views has also been fantastic. There are areas where it can be less favourable like CCM - where it is replacing Rebate. It has been a roller coaster ride for the end-user adjusting to the CCM process.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud - what you can achieve and some best practices.

Overall Satisfaction with SAP S/4HANA Cloud