SAP BW/4HANA Reviews & Insights

Score8 out of 10

77 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for SAP BW/4HANA are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Integration Capabilities: Users have consistently praised the platform's seamless integration with SAP Suite for data extraction, enhancing connectivity and workflow efficiency. This feature has allowed organizations to streamline their data processes and improve overall operational performance significantly.

Prebuilt Data Model: Reviewers have expressed satisfaction with the prebuilt data model, citing its significant advantages in accelerating implementation processes and facilitating quick setup. By leveraging this feature, users have been able to reduce deployment time and quickly adapt to changing business needs.

Real-Time Data Replication: Users have highlighted the value of near real-time data replication from HANA databases, enabling them to access up-to-date information promptly and make informed decisions. This functionality has empowered businesses to react swiftly to market changes and maintain a competitive edge in their industries.

SAP BW/4HANA Reviews

9 Reviews

BW/4HANA very recommended for reporting on you SAP landscape

Rating: 8 out of 10

February 23, 2024

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.

Pros

Integration with SAP Suite for data extraction
Solid knowledge base in consulting market
Prebuilt data model

Cons

Additional licensing to incorporate some data sources

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.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

SAP BW/4HANA improves your business

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 1, 2021

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.

Pros

SAP GUI
SAP HANA Designer
User interface
Integrations

Cons

Security
Optimizing queries
Workspace

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.

Mirian Pitti

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

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

BW/4HANA, best on-premise Data Warehouse...

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 16, 2020

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.

Pros

High speed data warehouse regardless of data volumes.
Excellent integration with SAP systems and Data sets.
Simplified data modelling due to columnar data base.

Cons

Better integration with external data providers.
More cost effective licensing model.
More flexible options for external systems provisioning data from BW/4HANA.

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.

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

BW/4HANA is a great tool for a number of use cases

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 6, 2020

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).

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.

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.

Robert Harper

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

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Great and Scalable Enterprise Business Warehouse Tool

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 27, 2020

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.

Pros

BI and Reporting out of the ERP Layer
Self Service Capabilities to build reports and cubes out of SAP
Great Performance for simple and analytical reporting out of SAP
Broad availability of BW Tools to integrate - such as Business Explorer

Cons

ETL implementation can be complicated
Integration with non-SAP systems can take a long time
Cost to implement and maintain can be high, even in Cloud

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.

Verified User

Executive in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Efficient data warehousing

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 11, 2019

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.

Pros

Easy to use.
Efficient.

Cons

Technical part can be difficult if you're not familiar with it.
Implementation.

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.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Fast and Reliable

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

November 25, 2019

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.

Pros

It gives you a lot of data

Cons

Could be more user friendly

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.

Verified User

Analyst in Corporate (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

A comprehensive solution for enterprise data warehousing

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 1, 2019

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.

Pros

Loading data from SAP ERP data sources.
Use of data virtualization to minimize load times.
Data hosting in memory since the underlying database is HANA.

Cons

Interface improvements so that all development is web-based.
Ease of connectivity with non-SAP sources.
Avoid the need to continue using the SAP GUI.

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.

Martin Lopez

Gerente de Consultoría in Product Management at SEIDOR Analytics (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

A quick review on BW/4HANA from a techie's point of view

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 24, 2019

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.

Pros

Better preformance
Ability to perform hybrid data modelling
Better integration to non-SAP data sources
Simplified data modelling

Cons

Still has reliance of ABAP stack.
Not all exception aggregation conditions are pushed down to HANA
BW-IP should be included in offering as it was previously.
BW workspaces could improved, has huge potential.

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.

Mark Villazon

Senior Technical Specialist in Information Technology at Rio Tinto (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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