SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting
What is SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting?
Solution for group consolidation and financial statements embedded in SAP S/4HANA Finance (integral component), available on-premises, in the cloud, hybrid
About SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting
Self-description of the vendor
SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting BARC Review & Rating
Provider and product description
SAP was founded in 1972 as a business applications company. Today, with revenues of over €31 billion and more than 107,000 employees, SAP is one of the world’s largest providers of business software.
SAP’s data and analytics portfolio is built on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), which provides cloud-based data, analytics, application integration and extension services for all SAP products. It includes solutions for BI, analytics, enterprise planning and performance management. Strategically, SAP is investing heavily in cloud innovation while continuing to support and develop its on-premises solutions. SAP’s data, analytics and EPM solutions are spread across several product lines. While SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is the core offering for planning and budgeting, SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting is the strategic product for financial consolidation and close. For data management, SAP Datasphere and SAP HANA Cloud are the foundation of SAP’s strategic offerings.
SAP’s strategic financial consolidation and close offering is SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting. It integrates directly with SAP S/4HANA for Central Finance and is available in the cloud, on premises or in hybrid deployments. SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting provides consolidated financial statements and group reporting capabilities, including data entry, data validation, currency translation, intercompany reconciliation, postings and more. Integrations with SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Disclosure Management support data analysis, consolidated results publishing and plan data consolidation.
Strengths and challenges of SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting
BARC’s viewpoint on the product’s strengths and challenges.
Strengths
- Just like SAP BPC, SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting also relies on master data-driven customization, which is continually being expanded in each release cycle. Options to customize consolidation functions are flexible. Thanks to a deep integration with the SAP S/4HANA Finance module, its master data can be accessed, so reporting of the financial data on profit centers or cost centers, for example, can be provided.
- SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting uses a separate application for manual data collection: the aptly named Data Collection App. A special feature is the solution's direct access to accounting data when companies do their accounting in the SAP S/4HANA system (Central Finance). No further programming is required to retrieve the data. Data can be made available for consolidation at any time and is given an identifier to indicate whether it has already been processed in order to avoid double entries.
- Though most SAP products are IT-oriented, many of the rules and regulations for SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting are also accessible to finance users, as the Fiori interface is easier for them to use.
- SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting is SAP’s best-of-breed product in the area of consolidation. It is the only product that has SAP’s full commitment, with a roadmap until 2040, and the only product that runs in the cloud (either public cloud or private cloud).
Challenges
- SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting is SAP’s latest consolidation solution and has not been widely implemented yet. For this reason, some of its core functions are still not as mature as in other older solutions such as SAP SEM-BCS.
- SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting is primarily used by SAP customers and in conjunction with SAP data sources. While the product easily integrates with all major SAP enterprise applications, there are fewer native connectors available for non-SAP data sources, especially for competing business applications.
- Customer feedback in this year’s survey, as well as BARC’s experience in consulting projects, shows that several customers have expressed concerns about the business value of SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting, as well as dissatisfaction with its price-performance ratio, implementation support, functional capabilities and ease of use. However, customer quotes in BARC surveys confirm that the solution continues to mature and that SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting is an evolving product.
SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting User Reviews & Experiences
The information contained in this section is based on user feedback and actual experience with SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting.
The information and figures are largely drawn from BARC’s The BI & Analytics Survey, The Planning Survey, The Financial Consolidation Survey and The Data Management Survey. You can find out more about these surveys by clicking on the relevant links.
Why users buy SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting and what problems they have using it
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Full user reviews and KPI results for SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting
All key figures for SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting at a glance.
- Get independent information on software solutions, market developments and trends in data, analytics, business intelligence, data science and corporate performance management.
- Make data & analytics decisions based on numbers, data, facts and expert knowledge
- Access to all premium articles and all our research, including all software comparison studies, scores and surveys.
- Unlimited access to the BARC media library
- Consume unlimited content anywhere
Individual user reviews for SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Audit capabilities with a traceability log in the GRDC “Data Mapping” app.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Rising support costs.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Map out the required features and gain experience before expanding the scope of daily use.
How would you sum up your experience?
Well thought-out product with good integration facilities.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The UI.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Nothing really.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Easy to integrate.
How would you sum up your experience?
Cool tool.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Integration in S/4HANA und gute Performance.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Sehr teuer und hohe Hardwareanforderungen.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Kosten und Nutzen genau prüfen.
How would you sum up your experience?
Gut.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Herstellergeschulte Anwender kommen damit gut zurecht.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Aufwendige Schulung, Spezialfälle sind schwierig in den Griff zu bekommen.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Unbedingt einen Pilotbetrieb mit mehreren Reporting-Systemen (2-3) durchführen, was natürlich eine Frage der Manpower ist, somit ein aufwendiger Evaluierungsprozess.
How would you sum up your experience?
Selbst wenn SAP als Quellsystem im Hause ist, muss SAP S/4HANA Finance nicht die beste Lösung sein: Bei mehreren ERP-Systemen im Konzern wird die Konsolidierung schwierig.
