SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs Acumatica Distribution
Last Updated:Our analysts compared SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs Acumatica Distribution based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Distribution Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.
Product Basics
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software designed to manage core business processes like finance, procurement, manufacturing, and supply chain. It's best suited for mid-sized to large enterprises seeking a scalable, integrated solution with real-time insights and advanced analytics.
Key benefits include increased efficiency, improved collaboration, and enhanced decision-making through automation, mobile access, and machine learning. Popular features include a user-friendly interface, customizable dashboards, and pre-built industry-specific workflows.
Compared to traditional on-premise ERPs, S/4HANA Cloud offers faster deployment, lower maintenance costs, and automatic updates. User experience reviews praise its flexibility, accessibility, and ability to streamline operations.
Pricing is subscription-based and depends on factors like company size, user count, and specific modules chosen. It generally falls within the range of $50-$200 per user per month.
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Acumatica Distribution is a comprehensive software solution designed to streamline distribution management processes for businesses. It is particularly well-suited for small to medium-sized enterprises looking to optimize their supply chain, inventory, order management, and purchasing operations. One of the key benefits of Acumatica Distribution is its ability to enhance operational efficiency and provide real-time visibility into inventory levels, order status, and shipment schedules. This software stands out for its user-friendly interface and flexible customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the system to their specific needs. Compared to similar products in the market, users often praise Acumatica Distribution for its scalability and the seamless integration with other business systems, which supports growth without the need for frequent software changes. Pricing for Acumatica Distribution varies based on the specific needs and size of the business, with costs typically structured around a subscription model that may include per-user or per-transaction fees, ensuring that businesses only pay for what they need.
$40
$2,500
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Per User, Annually
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Product Assistance
Documentation
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Live Online
Videos
Webinars
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24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights
- Optimize Business Processes: With intelligent automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and robot process automation (RPA), SAP S/4 HANA automates several business processes while it optimizes the rest. This mitigates the heavy-lifting so employees can focus on identifying areas for improvement instead of completing monotonous tasks. For example, the system automatically replenishes stocks with demand-driven automation.
- Reinvent Business Model: Industry-specific solutions that incorporate best practices alongside innovative capabilities allow users to reinvent their business models. Generate customized products or offer subscription-based billing to customers to bring the way you do business to the next level.
- Make Data-Driven Decisions: With access to embedded analytics, a conversational interface and digital assistants users can review real-time company data and quickly make informed decisions. Visual reports and the option to chat with a context-aware digital assistant make for an intuitive and user-friendly experience.
- Become Adaptable: SAP S/4 HANA is designed to help users to adapt and respond to their ever-changing industry. Real-time profitability analysis and flexible configuration, pricing and quoting capabilities enable users to quickly identify and manage changes. The situations handling functionality further assists in adaptability by notifying users and proposing solutions whenever a situation arises.
- Accelerate User Adoption: Between openSAP and the SAP Learning Hub, users are provided with plentiful resources for onboarding users and understanding how to use their new ERP system. The always-accessible online platforms provide learning opportunities in various mediums, so users are bound to find something that will mesh with their learning style.
- Increased Efficiencies: With automated business processes, informed decision making and more, employees are armed with the tools for bringing their performance and productivity to the next level. These tools also decrease human error, ultimately saving time, money and improving the business’ bottom line.
- Ease of Use: 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.
- Centralize Data: In-memory computing keeps all data in a single, unified system instead of several disjointed databases. This centralization makes it easier to analyze a large volume of data all at once and quickly identify trends.
- Streamlined Operations: Acumatica Distribution enables businesses to automate and optimize their entire distribution process, from order entry to inventory management, reducing manual tasks and errors.
- Real-Time Visibility: With Acumatica, companies gain live access to their inventory levels, order status, and customer information, allowing for informed decision-making and swift response to market changes.
- Improved Inventory Management: The software provides tools for better forecasting, replenishment, and warehouse management, ensuring that businesses can meet demand without overstocking or stockouts.
- Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: By streamlining operations and providing accurate, timely information, Acumatica helps businesses improve their service levels, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Scalability: Acumatica's cloud-based platform easily scales with your business, supporting growth without the need for significant additional investment in IT infrastructure.
- Cost Reduction: Through improved efficiency and automation, Acumatica Distribution helps businesses reduce operational costs, including labor, warehousing, and inventory carrying costs.
- Compliance and Reporting: The software simplifies compliance with industry regulations and standards, and offers comprehensive reporting tools for financial analysis and strategic planning.
- Integrated Ecosystem: Acumatica seamlessly integrates with other business applications, such as CRM and eCommerce platforms, creating a unified system that enhances productivity and data accuracy.
- Mobile Accessibility: With mobile access, staff can perform tasks and access critical information from anywhere, at any time, ensuring business continuity and flexibility.
- Customization and Flexibility: Acumatica Distribution can be customized to fit the unique processes and needs of each business, ensuring that the software adapts to the company, not the other way around.
- Asset Management: The SAP S/4 HANA asset module manages a companies’ assets by planning, scheduling and executing maintenance activities. This is accomplished with the following:
- The system enables the completion of planned and unplanned tasks to flexibly manage malfunctions and optimize operations.
- Maintenance planners can monitor time-sensitive work across maintenance activities and spare parts inventory. With access to analytics on costs, damages and breakdown rates, maintenance planners can quickly make important decisions.
- Users can monitor investigations and follow-up activities to reduce illness, injury and incident rates. They can also watch for potential costs, fines, penalties and unplanned downtime associated with environmental health and safety.
- The resource scheduling feature helps optimize maintenance scheduling by tracking work statuses, providing executives an overview of due maintenance orders and building schedules based on scope and workload simulations.
- Sales Management: The sales module provides order and contract management, incentive and commission management as well as support for the sales team. Order and contract management capabilities allow users to manage order-to-cash processes across all touchpoints, channels and functions with access to multi-channel, role-based real-time information. Users can also implement variable-compensation programs via incentive and commission management, check sales pipelines and leads, coordinate and plan customer interactions and activities and analyze customers and territories.
- Financial Management: The SAP S/4 HANA financial management tool aims to improve processes and provide a complete analysis. The following are some system capabilities which support this goal:
- Users can access profit and loss inputs via automatic reporting, predictive analysis and merged company forecasting.
- Users can maintain a single journal to manage financial and accounting data, and have clarity on customer data by managing their credit scores.
- Recurring billing and revenue management capabilities permit subscriber models so users can identify the best commodity and service combination for their customers.
- Mitigate financial risk by automating commodity-based contractual pricing, leveraging market quotes to create contracts, and streamlining invoice processes.
- Supply Chain Management: With the SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain module, users can:
- Take into consideration business rules, material availability, and allocation guidelines to provide more accurate delivery dates to customers. In addition, the solution supports domestic and international freights.
- Manage warehouse activities and processes by optimizing asset use and overall throughput with best practices for picking, packing and shipping.
- Optimize inventory levels and processes by coordinating goods movements across inbound, outbound and physical inventory processes. This helps prevent production interruption, loss, waste and damage.
- Manufacturing Management: The manufacturing module is supported by methods such as lean control, continuous improvement and just-in-time replenishment. SAP S/4 HANA provides the following manufacturing capabilities:
- Production planning, which enables users to create workflows for assembly processes, such as material requirements, production, capacity planning, bills of material, routing, factory layout and machine models. The solution supports complex assembly processes.
- Closed-loop quality management processes, which analyze operations from planning to production, and helps to prevent and manage any issues.
- Engineering documents, bills of materials and design changes documents can be passed between the manufacturing and research and development teams for a seamless manufacturing engineering process.
- Health and Safety Management module, which boosts the visibility of environment, health and safety (EHS) risks through automated global reporting and real-time analytics with the incident management tool. Users may also implement this attribute to research, monitor and follow up on issues.
- SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence’ facility management tool helps users effectively gauge and evaluate current and historical facility performance with conventional data sources that extend equipment availability, performance and quality barometers.
- SAP Manufacturing Execution’s data collection apparatus allows users to record trackability, quality and other appropriate information and monitor commitment to production specifications. It also permits users to establish preset non-conformance triggers for any deviations from production specifications.
- Procurement Management: SAP S/4HANA Procurement module is designed to facilitate a value-driven, scalable and compliant procurement process.
- The system provides insights on purchases by diving into purchase orders and requisitions, invoices, and contracts in addition to studying supplier performance with real-time information.
- SAP S/4 HANA permits users to obtain, distribute and evaluate all sourcing data points within a single platform while simultaneously supporting instant and manual operations for constructing and governing every type of procurement document.
- It also condenses requests throughout the business near and far with a single workflow approval tool.
- Additionally, SAP S/4HANA Procurement facilitates creating commodity agreements in accordance with market quotes by promptly ciphering price calculations and extending ERP functionality across the business.
- Inventory Management: Capture end-to-end supply chain traceability by tracking up and downstream inventory. Collect data from the point of purchase and ensure visibility for the entire product lifecycle. Ensure compliance and manage perishables with first-expired, first-out picking.
- Replenishment: Refill stock levels with advanced algorithms and user-defined configurations. Define order quantities, seasonality, reorder points, safety stock and lead times while the system calculates accurate cycle volumes.
- Warehouse Management: Automate picking, packing and shipping with customized workflows to minimize errors. Notify customers about shipment progress through every stage of order fulfillment.
- Barcode Scanning: Automatically enter data with integrated barcode scanning to reduce manual errors. Increase items per scan and track lot and serial numbers. Boost digital scale and printer integration by automatically printing packing slips and print labels.
- Financial Management: Create audit trails of transactions with records that can be deleted or modified. Correct errors by revising entries and letting the system track user IDs for transaction modifications.
- Fixed Asset Management: Effectively manage multiple books and numerous asset types. Create reports and track depreciation rates. Add methods like an accelerated cost recovery system, flat rates, remaining value, straight line and declining balance. Invest in fixed assets without re-entering values.
- eCommerce: Connect digital storefronts with the back-office using native connectors for popular eCommerce platforms. Process customer orders and integration from a centralized hub.
- Point of Sales: Provide an omnichannel experience with insights across inventory for various locations and sales channels. Ensure proper management of point-of-sale transactions with mobile-friendly applications connected to barcode scanners and cash registers.
- Sales and Customer Management: Implement sales automation with integrated customer management. Modify opportunities into sales orders without re-entering pricing and discount information. Get a consolidated view of all consumers in a single database.
- Order Management: Manage and monitor sales activity from a central ERP hub. Automate order processing and consolidate multiple tedious tasks into one. Record prices, inventory, discounts, quotes and shipments in real time from any device with the mobile app. Automatically build sales and purchase orders or add manual links.
- Service Management: Set up, manage, track and modify appointments in real time. Ensure continuous communication with technicians and field professionals. Notify customers and users of any appointment, route or schedule changes.
- Project Management and Accounting: Automate payroll transactions by creating billing rules and defining costs according to employees, project tasks, labor items and more. Ensure compliance with existing wage and union requirements.
Product Ranking
#24
among all
Distribution Software
#132
among all
Distribution Software
Analyst Rating Summary
99
88
96
76
60
60
Purchase Order Management and Procurement
Accounting and Financial Management
Inventory Management
Customer Relationship Management
Reports, Dashboards and Business Intelligence
Purchase Order Management and Procurement
Reports, Dashboards and Business Intelligence
Inventory Management
Sales Order Management
Accounting and Financial Management
Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Acumatica Distribution
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User Sentiment Summary
462 reviews
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SAP S/4HANA Cloud has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 462 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.
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4.5 (159)
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3.8 (61)
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4.2 (74)
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4.3 (168)
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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews
User reviews for SAP S/4HANA Cloud paint a contrasting picture, highlighting its potential for streamlining operations while acknowledging its complexities. Many praises its real-time insights and automation, citing improved efficiency and decision-making. "S/4HANA gave us a real-time view of our inventory, allowing us to optimize production planning and avoid stockouts," shared a manufacturing manager. "We cut manual tasks by 50% with automated workflows, freeing up employees for more strategic work," echoed a finance director. However, the steep learning curve presents a challenge. "The new interface took some getting used to, especially for older employees," admitted an HR representative. "Compared to [competitor product], S/4HANA's customization options felt limited," mentioned a supply chain manager. This can be a drawback for companies with unique needs or heavily customized legacy systems. Integration can also be tricky. "Connecting S/4HANA with our older ERP system required additional tools and expertise," noted an IT specialist. This might not be an issue for companies starting fresh, but it can add complexity and cost for established businesses. Despite these challenges, many users find S/4HANA's cloud-based deployment and scalability valuable. "The cloud-based approach eliminated our on-premise maintenance headaches," commented a CIO. "We can easily scale S/4HANA as our business grows, unlike our previous on-premise system," added a CEO. This flexibility and reduced IT burden are key differentiators for S/4HANA Cloud, especially for growing companies. Overall, user reviews suggest S/4HANA Cloud is a powerful tool with the potential to transform business operations. However, its complexity and cost make it a better fit for larger organizations with the resources to invest in implementation and training. For smaller businesses or those with heavily customized needs, alternative solutions might be more suitable.
Acumatica Distribution has garnered positive feedback from users for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, making it a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate the software's ability to streamline distribution operations, enhancing efficiency and productivity. The exceptional customer support provided by Acumatica further contributes to the positive user experience. Compared to similar products, Acumatica Distribution stands out due to its cloud-based nature, offering flexibility and accessibility from any location. The software's scalability allows it to adapt to the evolving needs of businesses as they grow. Additionally, Acumatica Distribution's seamless integration with other business systems, such as accounting and CRM platforms, eliminates data silos and enhances overall operational efficiency. While some users have mentioned a slight learning curve associated with the software's extensive features, the available resources and customer support effectively address this challenge. Acumatica Distribution is an ideal solution for businesses seeking a cloud-based distribution management software that prioritizes ease of use, comprehensive functionality, and exceptional customer support. Its scalability and integration capabilities make it suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Whether you need to manage inventory, streamline order processing, or gain real-time visibility into your distribution operations, Acumatica Distribution provides the tools and support necessary to optimize your supply chain and achieve your business goals.
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