Highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 Release (August 2020)
These challenging times do not only affect our personal lives, but also the way how we work. Whilst companies and employees have been challenged to perform the largest global work-from-home exercise to date, we at SAP help to ensure businesses run smoothly. Whatever the circumstances are, Cloud business plays a crucial role.
SAP strives to help companies resuming office operations securely, e.g. by introducing the Workspace Booking app for SAP Cloud for Real Estate, and we keep delivering on the promise to offer our greatest fully-fledged Cloud ERP with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Today marks the general availability for our new SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 release and I am happy to share with you some of the highlights it has in store for you across all Lines of Business and industries.
Get a fist glimpse of some features which for me are some of the key innovations this quarter.
Finance
First and foremost, I’d like to draw your attention to the Enhancement of Event-Based Revenue Recognition to support Project-Based Sales.
Already with our last release we have introduced the integration of enterprise projects with sales orders, enabling the direct flow of revenue to projects. Besides the benefit of getting real time insights and analyzing your revenue recognition data and profitability, we also offer new SAP Fiori apps to monitor revenue recognition values and project profitability in real-time.
Figure 1: Event-Based Revenue Recognition for Project-Based Sales allows you to monitor revenue recognition values and project profitability in real-time.
Learn more about this in Ulrich Hauke’s new blog post.
Manufacturing & Supply Chain
With our first highlight here, the Integration of the Quality Info Record into the Production Part Approval Process on SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for Insights, the user is given tools to boost manufacturing with an integrated cloud manufacturing execution system solution. Shared collaboration rooms for manufacturers and suppliers on the other hand allow for better planning and coordination.
Figure 2: Integration of Quality Info Record in the Production Part Approval Process on SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud (DMC) enables manufacturers and suppliers to communicate more efficiently when it comes to the production part approval process and production design.
In this quarter we’re of course also adding additional intelligent features to our Cloud ERP, for example in Inventory Management with Intelligent Situation Automation for the Physical Inventory Process. With the new release, the system automatically runs a check whether recount shall be triggered or inventory differences can be accepted, which allows for real-time reporting and overall increased inventory accuracy and transparency.
Figure 3: Intelligent Situation Automation for the Physical Inventory Process drives next-generation business processes by intelligently increasing efficiency and quality while unleashing users time to focus on expert tasks.
Check out Gerhard Welker’s new blog post to find out more about this innovation.
Sourcing & Procurement
An exciting highlight in this area is the Parts Per Million indicator, which calculates in real time the ratio of return deliveries and quality notifications to goods received, giving buyers immediate insight into quality performance of the suppliers’ delivering goods. This greatly increases both product and quality transparency for the buyer.
Figure 4: With this real-time key performance indicator you can analyze the return deliveries and quality notifications created for goods received. The number of items returned or quality-notified are measured against all items received.
Get a more detailed overview on this in Katharina Doerr’s new blog post.
Enterprise Portfolio & Project Management
By introducing Demand for Service and Consumables we offer a first integration between enterprise projects and procurement to plan, trigger and monitor procurement of materials and services. Project Procurement Controllers can turn demands into purchase requisitions and align procurement with project timelines and thereby ensure on-time delivery for a successful project execution.
Figure 5: This new business object enables Project Procurement Controllers to plan, trigger, and monitor procurement of materials and services that are required for a successful project execution.
Corina Kinzel offers quite some insights into this feature in her latest blog post.
Professional Services
In the field of Professional Services, we introduce the new project billing functionality, which is going to be available in parallel to the existing billing for several releases. It facilitates the monitoring of billing elements and conducting of billing request, simultaneously increasing usability and improving performance.
Figure 6: The new Project Billing offers a variety of new features: a billing specialist can monitor billing elements, prepare project billing requests for ones that are due and generate corresponding billing document requests.
Check out Katharina Stopf’s new blog post to find out more about this.
Sales
As part of Sales Monitoring and Analytics, one of our top Sales highlights is the launch of a new SAP Fiori app named “Customers Overview”, that can display the sales data of one or more selected customers, depending on your requirements. Its design structure allows for intuitive handling and easy navigation through its menus to display e.g. open quotations, latest returns as well as sales volume and margin.
Figure 7: The new SAP Fiori app “Customers Overview” provides you with an overview of sales data, e.g. all open and rejected sales orders of one or more selected customers.
Want more information? Read Christian Vogler’s blog post on our latest innovations in Sales.
Service
In the area of Service, we introduce Solution Order Management – an innovation targeted for hybrid solutions by offering sales and service products in a single order. It brings all the functionalities to support an end-to-end process from creating of a solution order to the delivery of the different products, such as physical goods, one-time or long running services as well as invoicing, controlling, and accounting.
Figure 8: Sales and service products in a single order supports an end-to-end process from the creation of a solution order to the delivery of the different products, such as physical goods, one-time or long running services as well as invoicing, controlling, and accounting.
Dive into Young Hoe Koo’s blog post to find out more about this.
Product Compliance
By delivering new content-based compliance requirements for the IATA, TDG, NOM, ANTT and NCh382 that contain information provided by these dangerous goods regulations, we’re reducing compliance costs and simplify classification of products at the same time. The enhancements in dangerous goods classification include a new SAP Fiori app for detailed basic dangerous goods classification and the ability to dynamically show or hide additional information.
Figure 9: Enhanced Dangerous Goods Classification for IATA, TDG in Canada, NOM, ANTT, and NCh382 reduces compliance costs through increased data quality and efficiency.
Learn more about this feature in Christian Vogler’s new blog post.
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
With previous releases we have introduced automated provisioning of users and business roles from SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance to SAP S/4HANA Cloud based on employee events in SAP SuccessFactors. With our new release, we’re building on top of this existing functionality as we now also support employee job changes, such as concurrent and global assignments, as well as international transfers, and management of contingent workers. This enhanced integration saves time, efforts and costs at the same time.
Figure 10: The integration of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance supports employee job changes, such as concurrent assignments and global assignments, as well as international transfers, and management of contingent workers.
Find out more in Katrin Deissner’s blog post.
Asset Management
Keeping a close eye on company assets is key to successful planning, that is why in the area of Asset Management we introduce new ODATA API’s for Equipment, Functional Location, Measuring Point, and Measurement Document. These new synchronous inbound services support the create, update and read mode.
Figure 11: New ODATA API’s for Equipment, Functional Location, Measuring Point, and Measurement Document can be found in the SAP API Business Hub.
Gerhard Welker shares his insights into this feature in his new blog post.
Integration
The integration between SAP Concur and Predictive Accounting allows for more transparency on travel budget and costs as well as prediction of costs. It covers the deployment of data to predictive accounting by importing a travel request from SAP Concur to SAP S/4HANA. Forecasting which impact business trips will have on your allocated budget, leads to a better overview of expected costs and can thereby result in less budget overruns.
Figure 12: Predictive accounting in SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides even more cost transparency by integrating with Travel and Expense Management in SAP Concur.
If you want to find out more about this and many more innovations, read Katrin Deissner’s new blog post.
Identity & Access Management
For Identity and Access Management, we’re releasing a new app which heavily supports you with your post-upgrade activities. The ‘Manage Business Role Changes After Upgrade’ app allows you to display all relevant changes which are done to business catalogs and restriction types after an upgrade. You can easily cross-navigate to the affected business roles within the app to view further details, or even mass-maintain restrictions of the same access categories.
Figure 13: The ‘Manage Business Role Changes After Upgrade’ app helps you to gain transparency regarding all changes to business catalogs and restriction types after an upgrade
Learn more about this and many more topics in Katrin Deissner’s new blog post.
SAP Activate
As we’re currently facing highly disruptive times, it has never been more important than today to sustain project delivery. Based on many customer projects and experiences, we have put together some great assets to ensure our best support for your success. One of these assets are the purpose-built playbooks for remote fit-to-standard and remote cutover. If you want to learn how they can help your business during partial or full lockdowns, read more information here.
Figure 14: The SAP Activate Methodology provides purpose-built playbooks for remote fit-to-standard and remote cutover.
Find this and more topics in Nidhi Choudhary and Daniel Ciecko’s blog posts.
Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast
As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our new podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA”. This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address your needs by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we help you get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA projects a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.
Your voice matters!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud User Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community: register 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 @SDenecken
