SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs Dynamics 365 ERP

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Our analysts compared SAP S/4HANA Cloud vs Dynamics 365 ERP based on data from our 400+ point analysis of ERP Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

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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Dynamics 365 ERP is a suite of cloud-based applications designed to optimize key functions such as finance, supply chain management, project operations, human resources, sales and customer service.

According to our data, it stands out in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Finance and Accounting in our product directory. It also delivers 81% of essential features out of the box, ensuring robust functionality. Its modular structure allows growing businesses to select and customize components to match specific needs.

Users praise Dynamics 365 ERP for its seamless CRM and ERP integration that simplifies workflows, enhances collaboration, and provides actionable insights through advanced analytics and AI-powered tools.

Dynamics 365 ERP offers a 30-day free trial for a few of the apps within the ERP suite. Pricing depends on the selected modules, user licenses and deployment options. For example, Dynamics 365 Business Central’s standard license costs about $70 per user per month, while Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations starts at $210 per user per month for a full license.

Implementation costs vary widely, from $16,000 for smaller projects to over $1,000,000 for large-scale deployments. Ongoing support and maintenance fees depend on service agreements with Microsoft or its certified partners. To ensure the best fit, you should evaluate your needs and consult a Microsoft partner for tailored recommendations.

Our Research Process for Dynamics 365 ERP

A 30-day free trial is available for only a handful of the 10 apps that make up the ERP suite, and only one trial can be active at a time. Due to these limitations, I felt that a trial wouldn’t provide a comprehensive end-user experience to fully evaluate the suite.

Instead, I relied on their user reviews, product demo videos, detailed documentation, and success stories to explore the software’s strengths and unique features.

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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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  • Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Streamline core business processes across finance, supply chain, manufacturing, operations, and customer service. Automate workflows, reduce manual tasks and increase productivity.
  • Improved Financial Control: With a best-in-class award and a 99 score for its financial management capabilities in our assessment, it provides real-time visibility into financial data, tracks expenses, and manages budgets to support informed financial decisions. It also strengthens financial reporting and ensures compliance with industry standards.
  • Optimized Inventory Management: This functionality scores a perfect 100, equaling top solutions like Visibility ERP and Cetec ERP. You can track inventory levels, manage stock locations, optimize purchasing and reduce stockouts. There are also tools to improve supply chain visibility and responsiveness to customer demand.
  • Enhanced Customer Experience: With a score of 99 for CRM features in our assessment, Dynamics 365 ERP has a lot to offer to improve customer experiences. It also streamlines service delivery and simplifies order fulfillment, while providing a 360-degree view of customer interactions for personalized, impactful experiences.
  • Strengthened Data-Driven Decision Making: Access real-time data insights, generate reports, identify trends and make informed business decisions. Leverage predictive analytics to forecast demand and optimize resource allocation.
  • Improved Collaboration and Communication: Break down silos, foster collaboration across departments, and streamline communication. Improve teamwork, knowledge sharing and decision-making.
  • Enhanced Mobility and Accessibility: Access information and manage tasks from anywhere, on any device. Empower employees to work remotely and stay productive.
  • Better Scalability and Flexibility: Adapt to business growth and changing needs with a scalable cloud-based platform. Add or remove modules, users and features as needed.
  • Robust Integration With Microsoft Ecosystem: Seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft products like Office 365, Power BI and Azure. Extend functionality and create a unified business environment.
  • Complete Security and Compliance: This capability earns a perfect 100 from our analyst team for its ability to provide secure accounting views and restrict manual adjustments. Safeguard sensitive data with advanced security features designed to meet strict compliance and regulatory standards.
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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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  • Financial Management: Comprehensive financial management suite for general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, budgeting, and financial reporting.
  • Supply Chain Management: Integrated supply chain management for procurement, inventory management, production planning, warehousing, logistics, and quality control.
  • Sales and Customer Service: Tools for sales force automation, customer relationship management, lead management, opportunity tracking, order management, and customer service.
  • Project Management and Accounting: Project planning, resource scheduling, time and expense tracking, billing, and project accounting.
  • Business Intelligence and Analytics: Built-in reporting and analytics tools, including Power BI integration for advanced data visualization and analysis.
  • Workflow Automation: Visual designer for automating business processes across departments, eliminating manual tasks, and streamlining operations.
  • Mobile Accessibility: Native mobile apps for iOS and Android devices for accessing data and managing tasks on the go.
  • Cloud-Based Deployment: Scalable cloud-based platform with automatic updates and continuous innovation.
  • Customization and Integration: Low-code tools for customization and integration with other business systems and applications.
  • Industry-Specific Modules: Specialized modules for manufacturing, retail, professional services, and other industries.
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Product Ranking

#61

among all
ERP Software

#1

among all
ERP Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

85
82
99
97
84
76
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99
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Inventory Management
Procurement
Supply Chain Management
Analytics and Reporting
Finance and Accounting
Inventory Management
Customer Relationship Management
Finance and Accounting
Project Management
Analytics and Reporting

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Dynamics 365 ERP
+ Add Product + Add Product
Analytics And Reporting Asset Management Customer Relationship Management Finance And Accounting Human Resource Management Inventory Management Manufacturing Order Management Procurement Project Management Service Management Supply Chain Management Warehouse Management 99 84 70 99 87 100 92 92 100 91 65 100 83 97 76 99 99 83 100 79 96 90 99 78 64 73 0 25 50 75 100
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0%
94%
0%
6%
86%
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14%
71%
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29%
73%
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27%
100%
0%
0%
100%
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96%
0%
4%
75%
17%
8%
75%
0%
25%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
94%
0%
6%
78%
0%
22%
92%
0%
8%
92%
0%
8%
100%
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0%
80%
10%
10%
82%
0%
18%
100%
0%
0%
67%
0%
33%
78%
0%
22%
100%
0%
0%
67%
0%
33%
82%
0%
18%
64%
0%
36%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

86%
0%
14%
71%
0%
29%

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 2815 reviews
Great User Sentiment 8415 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

Dynamics 365 ERP has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 8415 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.5 (730)
3.8 (1594)
4.3 (338)
4.4 (5760)
4.2 (388)
4.4 (120)
4.3 (1359)
3.9 (941)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated SAP S/4HANA Cloud and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Finance and Accounting, Procurement and Supply Chain Management.

Finance and Accounting Award
Procurement Award
Supply Chain Management Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Dynamics 365 ERP and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Customer Relationship Management and Finance and Accounting.

Customer Relationship Management Award
Finance and Accounting Award

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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Streamlined Operations: Users praise Dynamics 365 ERP for simplifying complex processes, boosting efficiency, and reducing manual tasks.
Enhanced Visibility: Real-time data insights and improved reporting are lauded for providing better decision-making capabilities.
Scalability and Flexibility: The ability to adapt to changing business needs and integrate with other systems is a major plus for users.
Improved Collaboration: Seamless integration with Microsoft tools and mobile accessibility are seen as key strengths for teamwork.
Reduced Costs: Users report cost savings through optimized inventory management, streamlined processes, and improved efficiency.
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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: Some users report challenges with initial setup and configuration, requiring technical expertise.
Cost Concerns: While cost-effective compared to some competitors, upfront licensing, implementation, extensive modifications and ongoing maintenance fees can be significant.
Learning Curve: The interface can be complex for new users, requiring training and adaptation.
Performance Issues: Handling large datasets or complex configurations can hinder overall efficiency and productivity.
Integration Challenges: While offering integration with Microsoft tools, seamless integration with non-Microsoft systems can be complex.
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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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Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP is a suite of applications designed to help growing businesses manage Enterprise Resource Planning alongside CRM. After exploring user reviews, product demos, documentation and success stories, here’s what stood out:Its seamless integration with Microsoft tools like Power BI, Power Automate, and Teams improves productivity through better data visualization, automated workflows, and collaboration.For instance, Belgotex1, a global carpet manufacturer, faced challenges with outdated, disconnected systems. Critical data was scattered, and collaboration between departments was hindered. By implementing Dynamics 365 alongside Power Apps, Power Pages, Power BI and Microsoft Fabric, they unified operations and empowered employees to address these inefficiencies.Its modular structure is another major strength. It consolidates various processes into a single system, reducing data silos and improving collaboration across departments.Pricing is flexible and varies by application and licensing type. You should carefully assess your specific needs to determine the best solution.Another strong feature that stood out to me is its ability to automate repetitive tasks. It reduces manual errors and frees up time for more strategic activities. Customization options further improve its value, allowing you to tailor the system to your unique requirements. However, some users have reported challenges, including a learning curve for beginners, implementation hurdles and occasional performance issues.Overall, Dynamics 365 ERP is a versatile solution for businesses aiming to integrate operations across departments. With its robust features, AI-powered tools, and seamless integration with other Microsoft products, it stands out as a compelling choice for businesses looking to boost efficiency and drive growth.

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Screenshots

Top Alternatives in ERP Software


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Infor M3

NetSuite

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SYSPRO

SyteLine

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