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.
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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.
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SAP S/4 HANA:
2. User Interface (UI) & User Experience (UX)
5. History
6. Deployment
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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 receivables, financial consolidation, revenue and cost accounting, cash management, settlement management, profitability analysis and grants management.
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. This is delivered via the R&D / Engineering modules within SAP S/4 HANA.
SAP S/4 HANA
Supply Chain Management (SCM)
SAP S/4 HANA ERP provides rich functionality for goods movements, inventory management, analytics and control, returnable packaging logistics, warehouse management, delivery management, transportation management and order promising.
SAP S/4 HANA
Sourcing & Procurement
SAP S/4 HANA ERP provides capabilities covering purchase order processing, purchase order approval matrixes, self service requisitioning and procurement catalogues, spend visibility and analytics plus invoice scanning and processing using optical character recognition technology (OCR).
SAP S/4 HANA
Human Resources (HRIS)
SAP S/4 HANA provides functionality for time recording, expenses management, holiday, absences and leave request management, plus an employee database with basic payroll functionality. SAP provides it's best of breed human capital management (HCM) solution for further capabilities.
SAP S/4 HANA
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
SAP S/4 HANA does not intend to provide a rich CRM solution, however it will cater for basic sales order processing, billing, contract management, master data management, sales rebates management, claims, returns and refund management.
SAP S/4 HANA
Service
SAP S/4 HANA enables rich back end capabilities for service management, although not a true end to end solution. S/4 covers warranty management, service request management, service order management, service billing and more.
Third Party Extensions & Add-Ons
As a Tier 1 enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, SAP S/4 HANA provides a great deal of out of the box functionalities. Despite this, SAP has partnered with third parties or solution extension (solex) partners in some areas, in order to expand the core ERP capabilities. SAP also has a digital store named the 'SAP Store' where further addons are available from SAP ecosystem partners. These partners include the likes of OpenText.
Third party solutions are integrated to different degrees, so it's always worth checking the level of integration and who ultimately you are contracting with before signing up.
SAP Solution Extensions and add-ons include:
- Opentext Invoice Management for automatic invoice and document scanning and reconcilliation.
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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 predaccessors 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.
ERP Vendor Overview
SAP S/4 HANA Industry Fit
Which industries are best suited to SAP S/4 HANA ERP and why?
Professional Services
SAP S/4 HANA offers a lot of functionality that can help professional services firms including integrated financial management & accounting, deep project management, billing, customer relationship management and more. This can be extended with SAP SuccessFactors for complete HR & Finance integration.
SAP S/4 HANA Pro's & Con's
SAP S/4 HANA Pro's & 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.
- Modern user interface.
SAP S/4 HANA Con's & Weaknesses:
- Support costs and agility can be hampered by the scale of the system.
- Implementations can be complex and expensive if not controlled correctly.
## SAP S/4 HANA History
SAP Business ByDesign was first launched in 2007 at a time when Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) was a very new concept. It is the first true Cloud or software as a service solution from Germany software giant, SAP. The product has experienced many ups and downs over that time, but today is a strong performer in the SAP product ecosystem.
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
As the name suggests, S/4 HANA On-Premise is the perpetual licensing option for SAP's market leading Tier 1 ERP solution. This version of the software can be deployed in your own datacentre or in a Hyperscaler or third party of your choice. S/4 HANA On-Premise (OP) gives organisations the greatest level of control over their data and their customization options.
S/4 HANA Extended
S/4 HANA Cloud Extended Edition
Extended Edition provides licensing, maintenance, product support, hosting and managed services as one annual subscription cost to SAP S/4 HANA customers.
S/4 HANA Private Cloud
S/4 HANA Essentials
SAP S/4 HANA Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is SAP S/4 HANA only suitable for large organisations?
SAP S/4 HANA is the successor to SAP's flagship enterprise resource planning software, ECC6. Like ECC6, S/4 HANA has been built to cater for the needs of complex and generally larger businesses. That said, there are many midsize and even some SMB customers running the solution, often because they have particular complexities or large growth ambitions.
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 On-Premise?
Yes, S/4 HANA provides deployment flexibility, it can be deployed on your own premises, in a datacentre or hyperscaler of your choice such as Microsoft, Google Cloud Platform or on Amazon Webservices, or SAP can host it via their Private Cloud, Extended or Essentials service offerings.
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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