SAP S/4 HANA ERP Solution Overview
Independent SAP S/4 HANA Overview Page. Learn about S4 HANA functionality, user interface, localization, industry fit, pricing independently.
SAP S/4 HANA
Find out everything you need to know about SAP S/4 HANA ERP, including functionality, industry fit, customer references, customer reviews, license pricing and implementation with our independent overview.
SAP S/4 HANA
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SAP S/4 HANA
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SAP S/4 HANA Functionality Overview
SAP S/4 HANA
Financial Management
SAP S/4 HANA provides finance and accounting covering general ledger, accounts payable and receivable with comprehensive support for disparate organisations operating over several locations, countries and operating entities. Reporting is embedded, as is artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities.
SAP S/4 HANA
Project Management & Accounting
SAP S/4 HANA offers a lot of functionality for professional services automation, including project management and accounting capabilities that support your operational & finance teams.
SAP S/4 HANA
Supply Chain Management (SCM)
SAP S/4 HANA ERP enables you to optimize material flow by managing demand and supply. Design, set up, and execute flexible warehouse and manufacturing processes to fit your products and business model and gain maximum insight into your business. Increase collaboration with your customers and suppliers.
SAP S/4 HANA
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
SAP S/4 HANA ERP helps you identify and manage the best suppliers for materials and services. Gain insight into order management, supplier invoicing, and purchase requests. Enable individual employees to perform self-service procurement and streamline operations.
SAP S/4 HANA
Human Resources (HRIS)
SAP S/4 HANA provides a light human resources capability for time recording, absence management and a basic employee database. For further human resources capabilities, S/4 HANA relies on SuccessFactors or other third party HR applications to enrich this core functionality.
SAP S/4 HANA
Sales Order Management
SAP S/4 HANA can handle basic sales order management for both products and services.
SAP S/4 HANA User Interface (UI)
SAP S/4 HANA takes advantage of SAP's award winning user interface technology, Fiori. Unlike SAP S/4 HANA's predecessors such as ECC6 or R/3, S/4 HANA has a modern, fresh user interface which adapts based on the users role and authorisations.
Much like SAP Business ByDesign, S/4 HANA also uses HTML5 technology in order to optimise itself for viewing based on the device you are using.
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SAP S/4 HANA Industry Fit
Which industries are best suited to SAP S/4 HANA ERP and why?
Automotive
Discrete Manufacturing
Financial Services
Professional Services
Pharmaceuticals
Aerospace & Defence
High Tech
Utilities
SAP S/4 HANA Pros & Cons
SAP S/4 HANA Pros & Strengths:
- Tier 1 ERP solution which can handle almost any business scenario and eventuality.
- Large ecosystem of wider SAP products which can expand functionality.
- High availability of consultancy resources within the market.
- Huge localisation coverage.
SAP S/4 HANA Cons & Weaknesses:
- Support costs and agility can be hampered by the scale of the system.
- Implementations can be complex and expensive if not controlled correctly.
- Wider functionality such as CRM, HR is loosely integrated with the core ERP platform.
## SAP S/4 HANA History
SAP S/4 HANA was first launched in 2015 as an On-Premise ERP solution. The ERP solution is the next generation, flagship ERP solution from SAP, succeeding predecessors R/3 & ECC6. Since 2015, several other flavours of S/4 HANA have been launched, including public and private Cloud offerings.
SAP S/4 HANA Deployment
SAP S/4 HANA can be deployed as a traditional On-Premise model or in the Cloud through one of SAP's Cloud offerings:
S/4 HANA On-Premise
SAP S/4 HANA can be deployed as an On-Premise solution in your own datacenter or in a hyperscaler or 3rd party datacenter of your choice. This option provides the most flexibility and control over the data and software but can have a higher TCO.
S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials is a pure software-as-a-service offering of S/4 HANA. The solution is hosted, maintained and upgraded on a quarterly basis by SAP, providing the lowest cost of ownership, but also a high degree of standardization.
S/4 HANA Extended
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Extended is a private hosted solution, offering customers hosting and upgrades as part of the solution, with more control over the upgrades process and a greater degree of flexibility than SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Essentials. This solution can be deployed in an SAP or Hyperscaler datacenter and is paid on a subscription basis.
S/4 HANA Private Cloud
SAP S/4 HANA Private Cloud offers software subscription and hosting within one subscription. Private Cloud offers flexibility but industries of scale on hosting.
SAP S/4 HANA Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is SAP S/4 HANA only suitable for large organisations?
SAP Business ByDesign was purpose built to meet the specific needs of small businesses (SMB) and small to medium enterprises (SME) organisations. The SAP Business ByDesign customer base ranges from organisations with as little as 20 employees up to several thousands.
How much does SAP S/4 HANA cost?
As with any ERP solution, ByDesign has it's own set licensing, implementation and support costs. The minimum cost of an SAP ByDesign subscription is around $25,000 annually, with implementations being 1-4x that cost.
Can I deploy SAP S/4 HANA as a Cloud ERP Solution?
Yes SAP S/4 HANA can be used On-Premise or offers a variety of Cloud options ranging from SaaS to private cloud.
What's the difference between SAP S/4 HANA and Business ByDesign?
SAP Business ByDesign is branded as a 'suite-in-a-box'. It offers a wide set of functionality in one product and it comes ready to go with business processes pre-defined within the system. On the other hand, S/4 HANA is built with a best of breed approach in mind. S/4 HANA comes with a great deal of functionality out of the box, but relies more on the wider SAP product set to extend those capabilities into other areas such as CRM, human resources and more.
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