In this blog post I’d like to outline the innovations for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 in the area of Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management. These are the topics that are covered:
- Additional scenarios for billing of fixed-price enterprise projects (scope item 4I9)
- SAP Fiori app ‘Manage Project Budget Transfers’ (scope item 1NT)
- Enhancements to project demands (scope item 4RF)
- Enhancements to ‘Project Planning’ app (scope item 1NT, 1YF)
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- Copy demands and settlement rules
- Change dates in the Gantt chart
In case you are short of time, get a glimpse of the new features by watching my product highlights video:
Additional scenarios for billing of fixed-price enterprise projects
With this integration scenario and the business process “Project Control – Sales”, scope item 4I9 (Fka ‘Sales Order Processing with Project Account Assignment’), that we have already introduced a year back, you can to account assign sales order items to billing elements within enterprise projects. When account assigning sales order items you can derive profitability characteristics directly from the sales order. This automation can save an enormous amount of time as you neither have to maintain profitability characteristics manually, and nor is there a need for manual revenue as well as revenue recognition postings.
Project account assignment is possible with the following sales order item categories:
- CBAO: Milestone billing plan
- CBTA: Make-to-order standard item
- CBTC: Configuration at material level
- CBTD: Configuration milestone billing plan
- CTAD: Milestone billing plan service
- CTAX: Milestone billing plan non-stock
- TAD: Service item
- TAN: Standard item
- TAX: Non-stock item
Following free of charge items are supported in addition:
- CB3: Third party with shipping notification free
- CB4: Third party without shipping notification free
- CBLN: Free of charge express
- CBTN: Free of charge configuration at material level
- CBXB: Bought-in item free of charge
- CBXN: Free of charge enhancement
- TADN: Service item free of charge
- TAXN: Non-stock item free of charge
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 release, we have added additional scenarios for billing of fixed-price enterprise projects. We have introduced new third-party item categories to support “Drop Shipment” and “Bought-In Items” business scenarios. With this, customers can make use of the following new use item categories:
- Item categories CB1 and DB1 support drop shipment scenario “with shipping notification” along with Milestone Billing Plan
- CB1 supports without down payment request
- DB1 supports with down payment request
- Item categories CB2 and DB2 support drop shipment scenario “without shipping notification” along with Milestone Billing Plan
- CB2 supports without down payment request
- DB2 supports with down payment request
- Item categories CBAB and DBAB support “Bought-in items” scenario, with or without down payment request along with Milestone Billing Plan.
Using all the above-mentioned scenarios helps to accelerate the billing process and reduces days sales outstanding.
Fig. 1: New third-party item categories support “Drop Shipment” and “Bought-In Items” business scenarios.
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SAP Fiori app ‘Manage Project Budget Transfers’
During the planning and also during the execution of projects, budget plans can change. Therefore, Project financial controllers need to be on top of any project costs and react in time before budgets are overrun, or before it comes to leftover budgets.
As of this release, project financial controllers can make use of new project budget transfer capabilities. With the new SAP Fiori app ‘Manage Project Budget Transfers’, budget plans can be adjusted easily on WBS element level. You can transfer budget from one or more sender WBS elements to one or more receiver WBS elements.
- When a budget plan is already uploaded for a project: There is no need for a re-upload of the budget plan for the entire project, but the change to the project budget plan can be done directly with the new application
- When uploading an initial budget plan: The overall budget can be allocated to a specific project and later on distributed to the different WBS element levels.
This new app saves project financial controllers time and helps them to easily and flexibly manage budget within a project.
Fig. 2: With the new ‘Manage Project Budget Transfers’ SAP Fiori app you can easily adjust budget plans on WBS element level without uploading the budget plan for the whole project.
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Enhancements to Project Demands
With our business process 4RF: Project Control – Procurement which we have released with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 already, we allow project procurement controllers to plan, trigger and monitor materials or services which they need to procure for their projects. The demands, meaning services or materials, can be turned into purchase requisitions and thereby into purchase orders.
We have worked on several functionalities throughout the last couple of months. Here is a quick recap:
- You can trigger demands on release
- You can request multiple demands at the same time when releasing a work package
- When copying a project, you can also copy the demands and settlement rules which are assigned
- We have released the demand type ‘lean service with limits’
In my previous blog posts, you can find more information on the enhancements we have provided since the initial shipment of this functionality in August 2020.
For SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105, we have worked on two more functionalities which support the management of demands. So far, demand dates and quantities couldn’t be changed once a demand has been released and the respective purchase requisition has been created. But this is a feature that we now allow – based on the need of the project. With the new release, you can e.g. align the demands with work package start and end date or change demand quantities even after the demand has been released and a purchase requisition item is already existing. When saving the new information, a warning message pops up (see screenshot below) to indicate that “The Changed to demand will not be updated in already existing PO”. This will help you to understand if there are any ongoing purchases.
Fig. 3: We provide more flexibility and allow for the change of demand dates & quantities even after demands are released.
Moreover, the demand object page contains key information about the project and work package. An enhanced navigation allows you to jump from the ‘Project Control’ application directly to the project demand to list all the demands for a particular project, and vice versa (see screenshot below).
Fig. 4: Easier navigation between project and associated demands.
Fig. 5: Project procurement controllers can flexibly change demand dates and quantities even after demands have been released. A warning message helps to understand if there are ongoing purchases once a demand gets closed.
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Enhancements to Project Planning App
This quarter again, we’re improving our ‘Project Planning’ app with some nice features. On our journey towards the replacement of the ‘Project Builder’ app, we’ve introduced the capability to include work packages from other projects. So basically, we allowed for the reuse of projects structures from other projects.
With the latest release, we’re adding more functionality on top. Whenever demands or settlement rules are assigned to a work package, you can now also decide whether these shall be included along with the work package. This can drastically reduce your manual efforts.
Fig. 6: When including work packages via the Project Planning app, you can decide whether or not the assigned demands and settlement rules shall be copied along with the work package. Notifications provide immediate insights into the process.
So far, you could only use the project table if you wanted to change the dates of a project and its work packages. The Gantt chart itself only used to serve as a display of timelines. With the new release, you can now leverage the Gantt chart directly if you’d like to do any changes to planned start or finish dates. There are two options how project or work package timelines can be adjusted:
- You can change planned dates individually and thereby extend or shorten the timeline: Click and drag the left or right side of a bar to change the planned start or finish date
- You can change planned dates simultaneously by sticking to the same timeline: Click and drag an entire bar to change the planned dates
When adjusting the bars, the project table will get updated automatically with the new information.
Fig. 7: The Project Planning app supports the change of planned dates of a project and its work packages directly via the Gantt chart.
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For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 Release Blog
- The Link Collection for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management here
- Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management Community
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Implementation Portal here
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @CorinaReise and LinkedIn
