SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs Epicor Eclipse

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Our analysts compared SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs Epicor Eclipse based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Distribution Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Epicor Eclipse Software Tool

Product Basics

Running a growing business comes with enough challenges — managing core processes shouldn’t be one of them. That’s where SAP S/4HANA Cloud by SAP steps in, a modern cloud-based ERP solution designed to simplify tasks like finance, procurement, manufacturing and supply chain management.

It’s built for mid-sized to large enterprises, offering real-time insights and advanced analytics to keep things running smoothly. It also integrates advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning.

Top features include its user-friendly interface, customizable dashboards and industry-specific workflows. It beats traditional on-premise ERPs with faster deployment, lower maintenance and automatic updates.

Users love the flexibility and accessibility, helping them simplify daily operations. It offers various deployment options to meet different business requirements, including public cloud, private cloud, on-premise and hybrid models.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers a 14-day free trial at no cost that includes guided tours and sample data to help you navigate the system. Pricing depends on company size, number of users and selected modules. However, SAP S/4HANA Cloud hasn’t mentioned it directly on the website.

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Epicor Eclipse is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software designed for mid-market distributors. It streamlines core operations like inventory management, order fulfillment, and warehouse logistics, providing real-time visibility and control across the supply chain. Its robust features cater to complex distribution needs, including multi-location inventory, advanced pricing rules, and kitting and assembly functionalities. Eclipse's strengths lie in its tight integration between modules, facilitating seamless data flow and eliminating manual work. Users praise its intuitive interface, customizable dashboards, and efficient reporting tools. Compared to similar ERP systems, Eclipse is lauded for its scalability, adaptability to diverse industry requirements, and proactive customer support. Pricing for Eclipse varies based on the specific modules chosen, company size, and implementation needs. It typically follows a tiered subscription model with annual or multi-year contracts. While not the most budget-friendly option, Eclipse's comprehensive functionality and potential for increased efficiency often justify the investment for distributors seeking to optimize their operations and gain a competitive edge.

Pros
  • Streamlined workflows
  • Real-time visibility
  • Scalable & adaptable
  • Good customer support
  • Reduces manual work
Cons
  • High upfront cost
  • Complex initial setup
  • Limited customization options
  • Reporting can be tricky
  • Integration costs for add-ons
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$40/User, Monthly
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$150/User, Monthly
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Automate Business Processes: Use intelligent automation, AI and robotic process automation (RPA) to handle routine tasks while optimizing others. This capability reduces manual work and lets employees focus on more valuable tasks. Our analysts give it a 100 for its intelligent capabilities.
  • Reinvent Your Business Model: Implement industry-specific solutions and best practices to introduce new strategies. Create customized products and explore innovative strategies to elevate how you do business.
  • Make Data-Driven Decisions: Access real-time data, embedded analytics and digital assistants to make informed decisions quickly. Engage with visual reports and use a context-aware digital assistant for a seamless, intuitive experience. Its standout capabilities earn it a perfect 100 for reporting.
  • Adapt: Address changes with real-time analysis and flexible tools for configuration, pricing, and quotes. These features help users quickly identify and manage changes. The system also notifies users of issues and suggests solutions. Our analysts rated SAP S/4HANA Cloud as the best solution in its category for procurement.
  • Accelerate User Adoption: Access a wide range of onboarding resources through openSAP and the SAP Learning Hub. These online hubs offer various learning formats to ensure users can easily understand and adopt the new system, no matter their preferred learning style.
  • Increase Efficiency: Equip employees with automation tools and real-time data insights to improve decision-making. This strategy reduces errors, saves time and money, and boosts productivity, driving better overall business performance.
  • Improve Usability: Built with SAP Fiori, the system is responsive, intuitive and designed to be simplistic. It provides a personalized and role-based user experience that can be accessed from any device. The system also supports 85% of functional requirements out-of-the-box so you have the features you need from the get go.
  • Centralize Data: In-memory computing stores all data in one unified system, avoiding fragmented databases. This centralization enables users to analyze large volumes of data at once and quickly spot trends, making data management more efficient.
  • Boost Time to Value: Start with guided implementation, quick technical setup and an intuitive interface. This helps the team to adopt the system quickly and deliver results faster.
  • Lower Expenses: Minimize total cost of ownership (TCO) with a subscription-based model. This cuts hardware, maintenance and upgrade expenses when compared to traditional on-premise systems.
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  • Boost Scalability: Scale from tens to thousands of users as the business expands. Access data or manage warehouses from anywhere with multi-cloud deployment. 
  • Grow Margins: Gain more control over warehouse tasks with the integrated wireless warehouse application. Maximize profit with the product prices recommended by the strategic pricing feature. 
  • Improve Productivity: Delegate work queues and manage warehouse activities. Work remotely with mobile apps. Expedite operation and save time with centralized tasks. Allow employees to focus on the customers and enrich the consumer experience. 
  • Increase Sales: Gain repeat customers by providing competitive customer service. Drive sales with eCommerce and get more customers in and out the door with quick order entry. Close more deals by serving customers in a mobile environment. 
  • Optimize Inventory Management: Track product life cycles, tap into third-party providers for optimal pricing, calculate price points between channels and use inventory insights to align the demand and supply ratio for effective inventory management.Ensure effective inventory management by aligning the demand and supply ratio. 
  • Improve Visibility: Get real-time visibility from forecasting to order fulfillment. Promote better supply chain management with advanced demand forecasting and automated replenishment, ensuring improved visibility. 
  • Manage Warehouse Tasks: Manage warehouse tasks including stock replenishment, putting away the expired items, inventory adjustments, cycle counts and more. It empowers workers with simple tools for problem-solving, which ensures effective warehouse management. 
  • Achieve Higher Customer Satisfaction: Manage long-term contract pricing for loyal customers and create a consistent and seamless consumer experience. 
  • Make Informed Decisions: Stay up-to-date with the changing landscape and make data-driven decisions to remain competitive in the marketplace. 
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  • Financial Management: The SAP S/4HANA financial and accounting management tool scored 100 in our assessment. Below are some key capabilities:
    • Run your business efficiently using built-in best practices, reporting and predictive analytics to maintain compliance and manage risks.
    • Analyze your revenue and costs in real time, allowing you to view data across various dimensions to understand profitability at any level of detail.
    • Automatically record financial transactions as they occur, ensuring reports are up-to-date while supporting multiple accounting principles for asset valuation.
    • Use KPIs to monitor and manage payables, receivables, and cash flow, giving you a real-time view of key financial metrics through a centralized dashboard.
    • Prioritize payments, track overdue invoices and identify high-risk customers to help your team manage costs more effectively and reduce the risk of bad debt.
    • Centralize tax and financial reporting, ensuring that all departments access the same consistent data, while guiding users through an interactive financial analysis process.
  • Sales Management: The SAP S/4HANA Sales module offers effective order and contract management, incentive and commission management, and support for sales teams. Its key capabilities include:
    • Manage the order-to-cash process efficiently across various revenue streams, including physical and digital goods, services, subscriptions, projects and bundles.
    • Oversee bundled orders from one place, tracking profit, cost and revenue for each order line item. Automate alerts for project changes, deadlines and expirations.
    • Equip sales reps to sell more effectively with a personalized home page, intuitive interface and quick access to tasks, applications and reports.
    • Create sales orders from unstructured data like PDF or image-based purchase orders using machine learning to extract information automatically.
    • Simplify incomplete sales order documentation with AI-powered autocomplete, which suggests missing fields based on historical data.
    • Automate invoicing by integrating billing and accounting, improving cash flow accuracy and simplifying accounts receivable, all while meeting local requirements.
  • Supply Chain Management: The SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain tool achieved an outstanding score of 100 in our assessment, surpassing Visibility ERP and Oracle Fusion Cloud. It offers users a range of capabilities, including:
    • Get real-time visibility into your supply chain with customizable dashboards. Track inventory, predict stock trends with AI and monitor deliveries instantly.
    • Automatically confirm and process customer orders, ensuring that they align with business priorities to meet customer expectations.
    • Help teams cut costs and reduce waste with easy-to-use mobile apps for packing goods more efficiently as part of the logistics process.
    • Shorten delivery times by making sure you have the right vehicles, optimized routes, and the right quantity of goods, saving both time and fuel.
  • Manufacturing Management: The SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing module is built on methods like lean control, continuous improvement and just-in-time replenishment. It can:
    • Optimize production by integrating processes smoothly, whether you're manufacturing to stock, order or custom specifications.
    • Meet customer demands by identifying and fixing capacity issues, bottlenecks or shortfalls early, using planning simulations to find the best solutions.
    • Balance supply and demand with real-time material requirements planning (MRP). The system immediately flags MRP exceptions and helps you resolve them quickly.
    • Ensure timely product delivery by tracking each container’s status with a real-time graphical Kanban board.
    • Deliver high-quality products by running quality inspections throughout the production process.
  • Procurement Management: The SAP S/4HANA Procurement module offers a scalable, value-driven and compliant process for managing operations. Its key features include:
    • Easily view and update all purchase requisitions at once. The Joule copilot simplifies how employees collaborate during procurement tasks.
    • Efficiently manage the entire procure-to-pay process, with real-time insights available at every stage.
    • Identify bottlenecks and cost-saving opportunities with a customizable dashboard that shows all key tasks. Automate workflows for purchase orders, contracts and invoices, and analyze them in detail.
    • Improve purchase contracts by setting up approval workflows. Track contract usage, plan renewals and negotiate long-term discounts with suppliers.
    • Predict delivery dates for purchase orders to improve planning and avoid production delays.
    • Make informed decisions by accessing real-time purchasing data without needing to open multiple reports.
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  • Customer Relationship Management: Access customer data from a mobile device, manage contacts, loyalty programs and more with an intuitive interface. 
  • Supply Chain Management:  Manage discontinued inventory and the supply chain from forecasting to fulfillment. 
  • Job Management: Handle quotes, orders, returns and progress billings. Quickly find product information using the mobile barcode reader or iBeacon. Build, manage and submit bids to the system for anywhere in the showroom.  
  • Integration: Integrate with other in-house applications, internet content, websites and third parties with API capabilities. 
  • Use System-Wide Business Management: Reduce supply chain costs, increase sales and improve customer service with in-built best practices for distribution operations. 
  • Control Warehouse Process:  Manage warehouse tasks including stock replenishment, putting away expired items, inventory adjustments, cycle counts and more. Empower workers with simple tools for problem-solving and ensure effective warehouse management. Manage activities such as picking, receiving, inventory adjustments, put-away and cycle counts. Give users the freedom to access these features anywhere, anytime. Use with Android devices. 
  • Data Analytics: Collaborate data analytics with the base modules for interactive dashboards and visual analytics. Eliminate the need for tedious and error-prone manual reporting processes with automation. 
  • Deployment: Install the system on-premise and take control over the infrastructure or host on the cloud. Access key business processes like CRM, order management, inventory management, business intelligence and more with mobile devices and cloud-based solutions. 
  • Freight Audit Queue: Minimize logistical expenses by preventing overbilling and other financial problems. Optimize paths, identify opportunities, review patterns with IT and human analytics. Automate processes and simplify logical operations. 
  • Procurement Management: Create a model based on the plan and make modifications based on further analysis. Manage more resources and make them available at the right time. Reduce cost and enhance transparency and efficiency. 
  • Demand Forecasting: Improve inventory management and optimize production planning by gaining real-time data with IoT sensors.Enhance data accessibility across the supply chain and boost collaboration between departments with accurate forecasts. 
  • Deployment: Install the system on-premise and take control over the infrastructure or host on the cloud. Access key business processes like CRM, order management, inventory management, business intelligence and more with mobile devices and cloud-based solutions. 
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Product Ranking

#23

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Distribution Software

#59

among all
Distribution Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

92
82
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83
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Purchase Order Management and Procurement
Accounting and Financial Management
Inventory Management
Customer Relationship Management
Reports, Dashboards and Business Intelligence
Inventory Management
Accounting and Financial Management
Reports, Dashboards and Business Intelligence
Mobile capabilities
Purchase Order Management and Procurement

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Epicor Eclipse
+ Add Product + Add Product
Accounting And Financial Management Customer Relationship Management E-commerce Capabilities Integrations And Extensibility Inventory Management Mobile Capabilities Purchase Order Management And Procurement Reports, Dashboards And Business Intelligence Sales Order Management Warehouse And Transportation Management 99 96 60 72 99 82 100 95 95 95 91 72 83 44 94 87 87 88 80 77 0 25 50 75 100
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94%
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31%

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 2815 reviews
Great User Sentiment 140 reviews
87%
of users recommend this product

SAP S/4HANA Cloud has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 2815 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

85%
of users recommend this product

Epicor Eclipse has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 140 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

4.5 (730)
3.9 (27)
n/a
5.0 (2)
4.3 (338)
4.2 (4)
4.2 (388)
4.4 (76)
4.3 (1359)
4.1 (31)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated SAP S/4HANA Cloud and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Purchase Order Management and Procurement.

Purchase Order Management and Procurement Award

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Real-Time Inventory Visibility: It optimizes stock levels and avoids stockouts with instant inventory updates, reducing carrying costs and boosting customer satisfaction.
Purchase Order Accuracy: Some users say automating purchase order generation based on real-time inventory and demand has minimized errors in procurement.
Production Planning: It refines production schedules and resource allocation with real-time data insights from connected machines and sensors, increasing efficiency and output.
Financial Reporting: Many users appreciate the ability to generate accurate and timely financial reports with automated data consolidation from all departments.
Sales Team Productivity: It gives the sales team the ability to access customer data and manage orders directly from mobile devices. This increases overall productivity and works efficiently from anywhere.
Automatic Updates: Users say that SAP manages regular updates and maintenance, ensuring up-to-date features and security patches without the need for external resources.
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Improved Inventory Visibility: Gain real-time insights into stock levels across locations for better management and reduced lead times.
Streamlined Order Management: Simplify order processing from quotes to returns with a centralized platform.
Enhanced Warehouse Efficiency: Optimize operations with barcode scanning, pick-and-pack functionality, and shipping management tools.
Actionable Insights: Make data-driven decisions with comprehensive reporting and analytics dashboards.
Seamless Integration: Eliminate data silos with integration capabilities connecting Eclipse to other enterprise systems.
Scalability and Growth: Accommodate future business expansion with a scalable platform that adapts to changing demands.
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Steep Learning Curve: It can be tough to transition from traditional ERPs to a new interface and cloud-based model. This could affect initial productivity, requiring user training to get fully up to speed.
Limited Customization: Users say the customization options are limited compared to on-premise systems. The ability to tailor the system for specific business needs is restricted.
Integration Challenges: Users find integrating with older, non-S/4HANA systems challenging. The process often requires additional tools and expertise, which can increase the complexity and overall costs.
Vendor Lock-in: Some users mention the reliance on SAP's cloud infrastructure makes it harder to switch to alternative solutions later. This dependency can reduce flexibility for future expansion.
High Subscription Costs: Some users say the cost of the software is a big barrier for small businesses since the initial implementation and ongoing subscription fees are relatively high.
Response Time: Customer support could be more responsive and efficient in addressing issues. Users mentioned that providing more thorough assistance would enhance the overall customer experience.
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Implementation Complexity: Initial setup and configuration can be complex, requiring significant IT resources and expertise.
Customization Costs: Extensive customization can be expensive, especially for businesses with unique needs.
Steep Learning Curve: The platform has a steep learning curve, requiring user training and ongoing support.
Limited Reporting Flexibility: While reporting capabilities are comprehensive, some users may find them inflexible for specific needs.
Integration Challenges: Integrating with certain third-party applications can be complex and require additional development.
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As a free trial user of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, I can confidently say it excels in simplifying core business processes and offers top-notch capabilities. Our analysts give a perfect 100 for their Finance, Procurement and Supply Chain Management modules.SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a robust ERP solution widely used across various industries due to its flexible, modular design and comprehensive functionality. After trying it firsthand, I was surprised by the initial setup. It was smooth and intuitive, with sample data and guided tours provided to explore all modules easily.The main menu and search bar were easy to navigate without redirects. I also liked how user-friendly the interface felt, especially for a first-time user.The finance module stood out to me. It provides a centralized dashboard where you can store and generate all sorts of reports, and it's easy to keep track of payments and overdue invoices. For someone looking to optimize manufacturing, it offers real-time visibility into operations, making it easier to meet customer demands efficiently.That said, the free trial had its limitations. I couldn’t access all features or sample data completely, which made it harder to fully explore the system’s potential.That being said, our analysts rated the Finance, Procurement, and Supply Chain Management modules a perfect 100. Many recent reviews have echoed the same sentiment, praising its real-time inventory view and automated workflows. However, others mentioned the inability to customize workflows during the trial.Users also pointed out the system’s complexity, but I personally found it easier to navigate than expected with the sample data. Still, I’m unsure how it would perform with real-time data in an actual business setting.Pricing wasn’t listed directly on the site, but compared to competitors, SAP S/4HANA costs—including implementation, licensing and training—are higher, especially for smaller organizations with tighter budgets.Overall, SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a powerful tool with advanced capabilities, though its learning curve and customization limitations may be challenging for some. For larger organizations with the budget and resources to implement it fully, it can significantly improve operations and drive growth.

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Epicor Eclipse receives mixed reviews from users, with praise for its comprehensive features and positive impact on business efficiency, but criticism for its complex implementation and steep learning curve. Many users find its real-time inventory visibility and centralized order management particularly valuable, enabling them to optimize stock levels, streamline operations, and improve customer service. One user noted, “Inventory management has become much more efficient, and we've seen a significant reduction in lead times.” Others appreciate its reporting and analytics capabilities, highlighting actionable insights for data-driven decision-making. However, some users find initial set-up and configuration demanding, requiring significant IT resources and expertise. This complexity, coupled with the platform’s steep learning curve, can lead to frustration and hinder adoption. Additionally, while customization options are available, they can be costly and time-consuming, making them less appealing for smaller businesses or those with limited budgets. When compared to similar products like NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365, Epicor Eclipse often stands out for its industry-specific functionalities and focus on distribution needs. One user commented, "Compared to NetSuite, Eclipse offers a more robust warehouse management system and better support for our specific industry requirements." However, these strengths come at the cost of ease of use and implementation simplicity, making it a less attractive option for businesses seeking a more user-friendly solution. Ultimately, user experience with Epicor Eclipse depends on individual needs and priorities. Those seeking a comprehensive and industry-specific solution with strong inventory management capabilities are likely to find it valuable, despite its implementation challenges. However, businesses requiring a more user-friendly and readily deployable system may find alternatives like NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics 365 to be a better fit.

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Screenshots

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