How to Interpret itelligence’s Massive Lies on S/4HANA

Executive Summary

• itelligence has a large amount of false information on its website around their S/4HANA experienced.
• We cover itelligence’s blatant deception in this article.

Video Introduction: How to Interpret itelligence’s Massive Lies on S/4HANA

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

 

The lies in SAP consulting firm websites never cease to amaze us. intelligence is one of these SAP consulting firms that has zero concern for whether anything it publishes is true. intelligence writes articles for people that can be tricked and essentially just repeats whatever information is provided to them by SAP marketing. You will learn about itelligence’s claims made on their S/4HANA website pages and our analysis of these claims.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

• This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem. 
• Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers. 

Digitization has nothing to do with anything. The ERP system that S/4HANA replaces is also a digital system. This would be like saying you are replacing your current car with a new car with an internal combustion engine. Yes, so does your current car.

S/4HANA has failed at the vast majority of companies that it has been attempted to be implemented. Lidl wrote off 500 M Euro due in part to a failed S/4HANA implementation. Nanshan is $336 M into its implementation and has suffered major dislocations. It is an odd statement that companies can not afford not to implement S/4HANA.

Secondly, S/4HANA does not contain functionality that is contained in ECC. Functionality has been cut, which we cover in our analysis in the article The S/4HANA Simplification List. S/4HANA is primarily a technical reorganization of ECC.

SAP is already offering post-2025 support at a premium, as we cover in the article Why SAP Will Charge a Premium for 2025 ECC Support. We have already predicted that the 2025 deadline will be extended.

S/4HANA is a question of “if.” Many companies will not move to S/4HANA. Many companies will move off of ECC. Many companies will postpone S/4HANA until it is stable. The statement “it is not a question of if, but when is highly misleading.

Case Study: Clemens Food

itelligence proposes that they took Clemens Food live. However, as itelligence has been lying throughout their web pages, there is no reason to accept this as true without analysis. 

There is no reason that the previous ERP system not have been capable of scaling for the anticipated growth. S/4HANA has no scale capabilities beyond other ERP systems in terms of volumes. 

If the company had 70 disparate applications that needed to be integrated into S/4HANA, this implementation cost must have been expensive.

S/4HANA is not a “modern integrated platform.” It has all of the same integration limitations of previous SAP ERP systems and is considerably more difficult to integrate than other non SAP ERP systems. It is also impossible that Clemens Food will be able to replace all 70 systems with S/4HANA. 

This is most likely overstated. Clemens Food may have been able to go live, but 2017 is very early, and S/4HANA still has maturity problems.

itelligence Falsehoods on S/4HANA Cloud

S/4HANA Cloud is barely implemented. And all of the statements around AI and ML are false. S/4HANA has no AI/ML functionality and does not need any. S/4HANA Cloud is not implemented for subsidiaries as proposed by itelligence. 

Is itelligence a S/4HANA Cloud Leader?

One can normally get whatever ranking one wants out of IDC by simply paying them. IDC has no integrity and is owned by a Chinese firm that has no standards of any kind. Secondly, being a leader in S/4HANA Cloud means little as there are so few S/4HANA Cloud implementations. 

S/4HANA Cloud Gives Constant Updates

The reason for these constant updates is that S/4HANA Cloud is still so immature it is unstable. This is why few companies can go live with the application, which is much smaller in scope than S/4HANA on-premises.

itelligence included an SAP video, which is a highly inaccurate description of what is in S/4HANA Cloud. Companies do not use what is described in this video. This video was taken down by SAP.

itelligence on C/4HANA

C/4HANA is not yet released; however, that does not stop itelligence from writing about it as if it is a completed product. The first question to ask intelligent is, can you sell me a functioning C/4HANA application? 

No, this is false. C/4HANA is a hodgepodge of acquired applications, including Hybris and CalladiusCloud (sales performance management), that do not have CRM functionality. CRM applications that follow a CRM workflow are not “legacy.” This continues SAP’s established pattern of calling any application that is not SAP “legacy.” 

Both of these products are not complete (SAP Analytics Cloud and C/4HANA), yet these videos discuss them as if they are finished products. 

Conclusion

itelligence misrepresented not only the state of S/4HANA but their experience to get S/4HANA projects.

itelligence receives a 1 out of 10 for accuracy for their articles on S/4HANA and C/4HANA.