SAP ERP Review 2025
SAP ERP ERP Plans & Pricing
SAP ERP Comparison
Expert Review
Pros
Cons
SAP ERP ERP's Offerings
SAP ERP software offers four leading solutions for different sizes and types of businesses. Each solution is customized to your specific business needs, and therefore, pricing varies depending on the features you require. For SAP ERP pricing, call customer support to receive a quote.
The four solutions are
SAP Business One: SAP’s entry-level solution for small-to-medium-sized businesses. It offers modules for financial management, sales and customer relationship management, purchasing and inventory, production planning, project management, reporting and analytics, and HR.
SAP Business By Design: This plan is a SaaS solution focused on mid-sized enterprises. It offers the same modules as the entry-level plan, plus compliance and reporting, business analytics and intelligence, and integration and extensibility.
SAP ECC 6.0: This is SAP’s legacy solution, offering financial management and accounting, project management and accounting, supply chain management, supplier relationship management, human resources (HRIS), and customer relationship management.
SAP S/4 HANA: SAP’s tier 1 solution, designed for organizations with highly complex requirements. It covers additional modules such as sales and distribution, materials management, quality management, environment, health and safety (EHS), which can be tailored to be industry-specific.
Customer Support
The SAP ERP system has several customer service channels tailored to the type of query you may have — phone support, a chat feature, email, and web-based resources.
You can also sign up for a newsletter to receive learning materials directly to your inbox. SAP’s online presence (LinkedIn in particular) contains a wealth of information that is of interest to business owners.
I spent the majority of my time on SAP’s well-structured and easy-to-navigate website, looking through a comprehensive library of resources: FAQs, a learning hub, numerous studies, and white papers.
Also available, was an easy-to-locate and use chat function which was appropriate for my, specific questions that were answered quickly and accurately.
SAP’s online presence (YouTube and LinkedIn in particular) contains information that interests business owners, including links to topical blogs, informative how-to videos, and other resources.
SAP’s phone number was easy to locate on the website, and despite being a large global company, I wasn’t put on hold for a lengthy period. The agent I spoke to was personable and helpful.
While I couldn’t locate an email address for inquiries, a contact form can be filled out with questions on various relevant topics. I received confirmation of receipt as soon as I sent it.
Community — SAP has a large, active, international online community. You can explore the community by topic or read blogs from subject matter experts. The most popular boards, like Enterprise Resource Planning Blogs, have over 10,000 posts.
Thankfully, there’s a search feature and the ability to search by tag to help you find information quickly. The posts cover various levels of expertise and topics, from students and beginners to seasoned professionals.
The top authors in each forum are also listed on the right-hand menu, which gives the reader confidence in the credibility of the member writing or answering questions in the forum.
Features & Functionality
General Features
SAP ERP software has several essential modules tailored to specific industries and business types. Each module has its own set of features depending on the plan purchased. The modules are:
- Financial management
- Manufacturing
- Supply chain management
- Materials management
- Sales management
- Sales and distribution management
Let’s discuss each module separately, and I’ll go into detail about the different features it offers.
Financial Management
The SAP ERP software is a robust financial reporting tool for businesses requiring in-depth, real-time, and precise analytics. This portion of the initial setup and customization can be time-intensive. The system offers key business management tools such as:
- Budget forecasting: This helps business owners identify potential issues or risks early, and to regularly determine how the business is performing against expectations.
- Revenue management: Allows you to grow revenue and profit with data-driven insights and accurate planning.
- General ledger: A central repository of all financial accounting data that gives you an accurate, real-time reference.
- Multi-currency support: A feature that allows you to manage multiple forms of currency and allows valuations in foreign currencies.
- Financial reporting: SAP ERP has several features that allow the management of financial and accounting tasks, including creating financial statements, settlement balance information, and financial consolidation.
- Risk management: These are features that provide insights into risks and opportunities so your business can avoid losses.
- Procurement: These features allow you to manage the purchase of goods and services from the sourcing stage to payment.
- Compliance management: This helps you identify regulatory compliance failures that can lead to financial losses and damages.
- Audit trail: This enables you to track changes to data in the system, which can be customized.
- Inventory management: A core module that allows you to track the flow of goods through your supply chain.
Manufacturing
SAP ERP’s manufacturing modules allow businesses in the manufacturing industries to streamline operations to the point of efficiency, agility, and innovation. It’s designed to improve product quality and optimize resource use. It contains features for:
- Quality control: SAP software includes Quality Management (QM) to integrate inspection planning, execution, and reporting with other processes, ensuring compliance with regulatory and industry standards.
- Production planning: The Production Planning (PP) module supports forecasting, scheduling, and capacity planning to optimize your manufacturing timelines and resource allocation.
- Order processing: Features within the Sales and Distribution (SD) and Materials Management (MM) modules streamline production and fulfillment by integrating order management processes with inventory and supply chain systems.
- Material requirements: Material Requirements Planning (MRP) ensures the timely availability of raw materials by automating procurement and inventory checks based on production schedules.
- Shop floor control: SAP ERP’s Plant Maintenance (PM) and Production Planning (PP) modules offer tools to monitor and control real-time shop floor operations, improving process efficiency and reducing downtime.
Supply chain management (SCM)
The SAP software is designed to optimize SCM by strengthening supplier relationships, improving forecasting, and monitoring inventory levels through predictive analytics and advanced algorithms. This high level of control assists with decision-making and insights, helping businesses avoid unfortunate situations such as stockouts and disruptions. SAP ERM’s supply chain solutions can be configured to specific industry requirements such as retail, automotive, and consumer products.
- Supplier Collaboration: SAP SCM offers tools like Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) to enhance collaboration and ensure seamless communication with suppliers, improving procurement efficiency.
- Demand Forecasting: SAP’s Integrated Business Planning (IBP) uses advanced analytics and machine learning to predict future demand accurately.
- Inventory Optimization: Real-time inventory monitoring ensures optimal stock levels, reducing excess inventory while preventing stockouts.
- Transportation Management: SAP Transportation Management (TM) optimizes logistics processes, including route planning and freight cost calculation.
- Industry-Specific Solutions: SAP SCM modules can be tailored to meet the specific needs of industries such as retail, automotive, and consumer goods, ensuring compliance and operational efficiency.
Materials Management (MM)
The SAP software’s MM modules handle procurement and inventory management for efficient supply chain operations — allowing businesses to avoid costly losses and situations like stockouts. It covers:
- Purchasing: This feature covers all business operations for obtaining goods and services.
- Material requirements planning: Identifies which materials the business requires, including quantities and timeframes.
- Inventory control: Assists businesses with managing goods, movement, and supply levels.
- Vendor management: A feature that helps business manage their relationships with external suppliers.
- Goods supplying and receiving: Helps businesses manage the flow of orders, both receiving and supplying, which can be done automatically or manually.
Sales Management
The SAP ERP system’s advanced features allow businesses to create, confirm, and fulfill orders with AI-powered tools and manage their billing and accounts receivable customer base. It also provides detailed insights and reporting to help businesses strategize and scale.
Sales and Distribution Management
This module facilitates sales forecasting, analytics, and customer management to ensure organizations have accurate data for decision-making. It manages all aspects of sales, with features like:
- Order management: This tool lets you manage your sale fulfillment processes more efficiently, such as shipping, returns, and sales orders.
- Pricing: Helps you make cost-effective purchasing decisions by integrating with your suppliers’ systems.
- Billing: SAP ERP streamlines billing processes with invoice management and aggregation.
- Shipping: Assists organizations with documents, transportation planning, and authorizations.
- Credit management: Uses data for credit analysis and determining risks of losses.
Additional Integration Features
Some additional features of SAP ERP software plans include their design to be future-ready — this is especially true of the S/4HANA plan. The platform is set up to integrate and support future technologies to ensure businesses stay competitive.
It also has advanced integration capabilities besides what’s considered standard, such as APIs and built-in connectors. It also allows for custom integrations, development tools, partner solutions, and third-party applications. Some more popular integrations include:
- Microsoft Power Apps
- Point of Sale (POS) software like Odoo or iVend
- CRM apps like Zendesk or Zoho
- E-commerce platforms like Shopify or Opencart
Track Expenses
Monitor and manage business expenses effortlessly.
Tax Preparation
Simplify tax compliance and reporting.
Time-Saving Automations
Automate key processes for improved efficiency.
Add-Ons
Enhance ERP capabilities with additional modules.
Supported Devices
Access ERP tools across a range of devices.
Performance:
SAP ERP software is highly complex, and though users may experience delays, these can often be attributed to factors like storage, memory usage, or incorrect configuration settings. After troubleshooting any hardware or settings problems, the software should run smoothly.
- Speed: The software loads quickly and responds quickly (no lag or delays noticed).
- Mobile performance: The mobile version offers a smooth experience, though it is less responsive than the web version. This may be due to factors like the iOS version or connection speed.
- User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX): Considering the complexity of many tasks performed with the software, the interface was intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Reliability: SAP ERP software is reliable, with rare downtime and fast response.
Ease Of Use:
Due to the complexity of Enterprise Resource Planning software as a whole and SAP ERP’s customization potential, some assistance is needed to set up the software and tailor it effectively to a business to take advantage of all its features.
I recommend discussing the module selection extensively with an SAP ERP product expert to ensure you get the most out of your plan.
Many companies rely on an experienced SAP software professional throughout the implementation process.
While the system has an effective UI, employees may experience a learning curve. I recommend available user training to avoid errors and lost time during onboarding. Companies with ERP software experience may find the transition to SAP smoother.
Verdict:
SAP ERP software plans are versatile, customizable options that businesses of all sizes can use. Still, due to its cost, complexity, and functionality, its user base is medium to large-sized enterprises. The features offered are extensive and tailored to many industries, and considering their complexity, they rate highly in UX and UI. It’s recommended that prospective users take advantage of the available onboarding, setup, and support to optimize SAP ERP solutions in their business environments.
Write a Review