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SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs ERPNext

Last Updated: November 18th, 2024

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

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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.

ERPNext is an open-source business solution that caters to small, medium and large-scale industries. It implements with minimum budget and resource usage, making it feasible for start-ups. It offers comprehensive processes to streamline retail management, track inventory, manage customers and increase ROI.

It has a multilingual website builder to manage content and eCommerce needs. It provides built-in integrations with Google, Slack, PayPal, Shopify and more to centralize business operations.

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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.

Automate Stock Replenishment: Create a material request automatically when the inventory level goes below a certain level. Replenish inventory at the right time, mitigating the risk of stock exhaustion.
Improve Customer Management: Maintain credit limits, view receivables, gauge total billing amount and analyze average customer revenue to manage customers better and make informed business decisions.
Customize On-the-Fly: Add custom fields in the form, fetch values to customize form behavior and hide specific fields based on user roles. Enable users to grab relevant information from the vendors or clients.
Facilitate Retail Management: Register a new branch with a couple of clicks and monitor various dimensions such as expenses, stock movements, profit and loss to assess business profitability as a whole. Facilitate the use of local language to ensure interaction with diverse customers.
Automate Routine Tasks: Set up assignment rules like load balancing to distribute leads among the team automatically. It reduces overheads and empowers the sales teams to meet deadlines while dedicating more time to respond to customers.

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.

Financial Accounting: Manage accounts, transactions and taxes through the accounting module. Manage income and expenses, set up notifications and track cash flow. Manage transactions, send invoices and view reports in multiple currencies. Auto-generate invoices for subscription orders via the subscription module.
Customer Relationship Management: Track the presales process from lead capturing and digital marketing to customer emails and calls. Get live desktop notifications of incoming calls to facilitate omnichannel interactions. Distribute leads among the team via assignment rules to reduce work overhead. Monitor the sales teams’ performance, analyze lead traffic and facilitate sales pipeline visibility.
Human Resources: Recruit talent, plan manpower needs, post jobs, review and email candidates, and store documents in a centralized location. Track expenses, travel requests and employee advances through configurable workflows. Leverage the HR module to manage leaves, submit attendance records and define employee shifts.
Sales and Purchasing: Manage sales tasks such as material requisition, quotations, orders and delivery tracking. Track inventory levels and manage suppliers, shipments and deliverables. Offer a real-time view of sales and purchases with dashboards to analyze critical information in one place.
Project Management: Organize, schedule and track project activities to speed up work. Break down vast projects into manageable tasks and assign them to team members to facilitate collaboration. Assess project progress and efficiency with clearly defined priorities, deadlines and milestones.
Asset Management: Manage and store asset information, including status, location, warranty, insurance, depreciation and more. Configure asset depreciation schedules, calculate amounts and dates and create accounting entries.
Order Management: Maintain a single view of products and stocks across multiple locations. Use serial numbers to track item lifecycle from procurement to delivery.
Manufacturing: Capture operations on the shop floor. View real-time job status, workstation location, employee assignments and more on a single screen. Manage batched items and scan item barcodes through device cameras to find stock. Track material consumption to mitigate expenses and utilize optimum resources.

Product Ranking

#45

among all
Manufacturing Software

#11

among all
Manufacturing Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

ERPNext

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User Sentiment Summary

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.

91%

of users recommend this product

ERPNext has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 223 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

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4.3 (8)

4.5 (730)

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4.6 (69)

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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.

Customization: The solution provides robust customization features, according to 80% of users. Based on the Frappe Framework, it’s easily customizable.

Usability: According to 100% of users who reviewed this pro, it’s easy to use. The tool has a powerful search field that allows users to find what they’re looking for quickly.

Reporting: About 100% of users who mentioned this pro said it has flexible reporting options.

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.

Customer Support: The support team isn’t knowledgeable and friendly, according to 67% of users.

Documentation: According to 75% of users who reviewed this con, detailed documentation about the system’s use isn’t provided.

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.

It can be set up with a minimum infrastructure budget. It has advanced reporting capabilities to create dynamic reports on the go. Advanced reporting enables creating robust dashboards to display the important business metrics and KPIs accurately. However, some users complain of the lack of detailed documentation about the software. The customer support team needs to be more responsive and amicable towards the clients.

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FAQ

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