Hello Everyone, My name is Harish Mangtani and I work for the SAP S/4HANA Product Success team at SAP SE Germany. I would like to share with you, the key innovations in Sourcing & Procurement, which helps customers drive intelligence with SAP S/4HANA Cloud release 2105.
The most significant advantage in Software as a Service (SaaS) is that we always bring the latest innovations to the customer product every quarter as we strive to bring more innovation and intelligence to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the Intelligent ERP.
In my video, I walk you through the 3 major innovations of this release.
Key Highlights:
Intelligence in Sourcing & Procurement
Integration of Product Compliance into Purchasing
Integration with Ariba Network
Operational Procurement
- Proactive delivery insights for ordered items enabled by IoT and Situation Handling
- Integration of safety-data sheet and dangerous goods checks into the value chain
- Editing of rejected Purchase Requisitions
- Limit items in self-service Purchase Requisition
Central Procurement
- Output of central purchase orders through output channels print, mail, EDI
- Print preview of central contracts
- Automation status in the automation framework for purchase requisitions
- Display of contract consumption in central purchase contract header
Procurement Analytics
- Account assignment details in the app to monitor central purchase requisition items
- Data-extraction enablement for purchasing documents
- Dashboards in SAP Analytics Cloud for supplier evaluation
- Additional purchasing spend analytics in SAP Analytics Cloud
Integration
- Central sourcing for quote automation with Ariba Network
- Service Procurement with Ariba Network and SAP Fieldglass
Operational Procurement
Proactive delivery insights for ordered items enabled by IoT and Situation Handling
I am excited to present this innovation to you, which I have been waiting for a while now.
Imagine, as a Purchaser, you ordered the goods in your organization and received them in bad condition or maybe they had damaged when you received them. Well, it is not a pleasant situation, right? Not anymore!
Now, as a purchaser, you will get a notification if the goods are damaged during delivery in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system using Delivery Insights for Ordered Items.
Fig: Notification of a critical situation
This is done by leveraging “Situations in SAP S/4HANA” and real-time IoT sensor data provided by handling units with SAP Internet of Things (IoT) services. The handling units of ordered items are equipped with sensors in order to monitor the product’s condition. You can monitor all kinds of sensor data such as temperature, humidity, acceleration, location, or radiation.
As soon as an unusual sensor reading is detected by SAP IoT, the system triggers a notification to the relevant parties in SAP S/4HANA, it could be Purchaser, Supplier, and more, providing them with direct insight to action. They can then proactively react to critical supply situations, anticipate potential quality issues, increase on-time delivery performance, and improve customer satisfaction. We can always create new situations in SAP S/4H System using a predefined Situation template. This way, we offer a holistic and transparent view of the entire delivery process.
Users can get more information on this situation either by checking notifications in SAP Fiori Launchpad and then opening the “Purchase Order Item” and displaying the situation message OR they can open the “Purchase Order Item” from the Manage Purchase Orders app, click on the situation tag, and choose Show Details.
Note: This scenario requires an additional subscription to SAP IoT services.
Demo:Proactive delivery insights for ordered items enabled by IoT and Situation Handling (no audio).
Integration of safety-data sheet and dangerous goods checks into the value chain
SAP S/4HANA Cloud for product compliance helps enforce compliance at each step of the product lifecycle.
We have integrated product compliance checks into Purchasing, with this feature, dangerous goods checks, and safety data sheet checks are now integrated into purchasing documents. When we create the stock transfer order, the system checks whether a safety data sheet is required and whether the relevant safety data sheet is available in the specified languages for all compliance relevant products.
Similarly, the system also checks if all necessary dangerous goods data is available and whether transportation of the product is allowed if a product has been classified as a dangerous good.
As a result, the status for the item is set on the purchase order header level and on the purchase order item level of the stock transport order. As an outcome, the system will automatically block stock transport orders with items with missing safety data sheets, on all modes of transport and then remove blocks once safety data sheets are available and transports are allowed.
Fig: Product Compliance Checks on the creation of intracompany stock transport orders.
By integrating compliance information into purchasing processes such as stock transfers, companies can ensure that safety information is available and compliant transports leave the company premises.
Demo:Safely Transfer Stock and Comply with Dangerous Goods Regulations.
Editing of rejected Purchase Requisitions
With this release, we enhance more process flexibility in Purchase Requisitions (PR) by allowing the edit of purchase requisitions or items that have been rejected by Approvers.
Fig: Editing of rejected purchase requisitions
As a Purchaser, you can edit rejected purchase requisitions and purchase requisition items. While editing, the PR or “PR item” moves out of rejected status and allows you to resubmit after the required changes you have made and then based on the changes, the relevant workflow is triggered.
Fig: Editing of rejected purchase requisitions
Limit items in self-service Purchase Requisition
We increase process efficiency and improve usability in the procurement of unplanned services and materials by requesters in self-service requisitioning by creating Limit items in self-service purchase requisitioning.
Purchaser can create, copy, edit and delete limit items in self-service purchase requisitions using the Create Purchase Requisition app.
Fig: Create Limit Item
Limit items are unplanned materials and services that cannot be specified in detail at the time of order, however, we can define an expected value and an overall limit for these items. Materials and services may be specified later in the “goods receipt” and/or service entry sheet creation when their prices and quantities are recorded.
Display and edit of limit items can later be done by the My Purchase Requisitions app.
Fig: Display or Edit Limit Item
Central Procurement
We have important innovations in the Central Procurement Area which will help our customers to improve efficiency and transparency in Purchase Order and Purchase Contracts.
Output of central purchase orders through output channels print, mail, EDI
Now Customers are able to send out central purchase orders (extracted purchase orders from connected systems) to corresponding suppliers through the output channels print, mail, and EDI(XML) centrally from one centralized procurement hub. They are provided with a standard output form for central purchase orders, which they can adjust to their business requirements.
Fig: Output Control in Central Purchase Order
Furthermore, they can either send out the purchase order output immediately or via a corresponding job scheduler app.
Fig: Schedule Output
Print preview of central contracts
We increase accuracy during central contract output and higher transparency for the purchaser while preparing the contract document with this feature.
Customers are offered additional action within the central contract object page, which offers them the capability of previewing the contract’s output message, while the central contract is either still a draft under preparation or in approval and not yet fully released by the responsible approver.
Fig: Print Preview
The purchaser can validate the output message of his central contract in the same form, as the supplier will later receive the document via the output channel Print.
Fig: Print Preview
Automation status in the automation framework for purchase requisitions
We increase control of automation behavior and higher process efficiency by tailoring the automation process to the individual customer business rules.
Customers can benefit from an extension of the automation framework for purchase requisitions by a new automation status, which lets the framework control when a purchase requisition has been successfully automated, failed a given automation rule, or was deemed as being non-automatable. Central purchasers can then display the automation status for the already processed requisitions within the Process Purchase Requisitions Centrally app, through which they get informed about the individual automation stage of each requisition line item.
Fig: Automation Status
Display of contract consumption in central purchase contract header
With this feature, again we increase transparency into the actual contract consumption directly within the central contract header.
Now the overall consumption of the central contract is then displayed as a percentage-based consumption bar in the header of the central contract’s object page. The central contract consumption is no longer just displayed at the distribution level, but aggregated and compared to the consolidated target value (or target quantity) of all central contract line items, based on the collected release documentation of all distributed contracts.
Fig: Contract Consumption in Central Purchase Contract
Procurement Analytics
Account assignment details in the app to monitor central purchase requisition items
Monitor Purchase Requisition Items Centrally is enhanced with Account Assignment Details, which helps in the effective processing of purchase requisition items by filtering according to account assignment responsibility.
Customers can use the account assignment category and accounting object as the input parameter to filter out respective purchase requisition items and can see single or multiple accounting object details like distribution, object details, and quantity requested in the app.
Monitor Purchase Requisition Items Centrally
Fig: Monitor Purchase Requisition Items Centrally
Data-extraction enablement for purchasing documents
With this feature, we have the ability to extract detailed data on purchasing documents and to feed business intelligence systems in support of detailed analysis and identify trends over time. This feature provision us with new extraction-enabled core data services (CDS) views to extract data like purchase contract and purchase-contract item, purchase order schedule line, and Supplier invoice from SAP S/4HANA Cloud System to the external system.
In the case of an existing SAP Analytics Cloud subscription, customers can benefit from new predefined content in the area of supplier evaluation and purchasing spend.
Dashboards in SAP Analytics Cloud for supplier evaluation
With this innovation, we increase transparency and give customers immediate insights to initiate action based on analyzed supplier performance figures. This is achieved with the view of peeks and drops in supplier performance.
The supplier performance can be determined based on the weighted average of the single scores for quantity variance, price variance, and time variance, as well as quality scores based on inspection lots and quality notifications.
Fig: SAC Dashboard
We can use predefined content in SAP Analytics Cloud connected to SAP S/4HANA Cloud in real-time and analyze supplier performance scores over time with respect to the purchase order spend.
Fig: SAC Dashboard
Additional purchasing spend analytics in SAP Analytics Cloud
This feature provides real-time insights into purchasing spend across various dimensions, such as spend by quarter, supplier, material group, purchasing organization, group, plant, and supplier country. We help customers increase transparency into spend in regions and monitor compliance issues related to payment terms.
Fig: SAC
How is this done?
As you can see in the picture below, the Geospatial map shows spend by region, bubble size indicating spend volume, and Tracking of non-compliant purchase orders, where payment terms in the purchase order do not match with payment terms in supplier master.
Fig:SAC
Interested in reading more on Embedded Analytics: SAC in SAP S/4HANA Cloud?
Read the blog on SAC in SAP S/4HANA Cloud by Katharina Klug
Integration
Central sourcing for quote automation with Ariba Network
This is one of our key innovations in this release in the area of Central Sourcing in Central Procurement with the Integration of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with Ariba Network.
Automation of Central Procurement Quotes with Ariba Network
Now as a Central Purchaser you can pool all your Purchase requisitions in SAP S/4H Cloud central procurement system from multiple connected backend systems be it SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, or SAP ERP systems, and create a single Request for Quotation(RFQ).
You can publish a Request for Quotation in the Central System which is then automatically sent to SAP Ariba Discovery which is a part of Ariba Network.
SAP Ariba Discovery will match you with quality suppliers that meet your needs so that you can make sure you get the most competitive pricing from your supplier base.
As a next step, suppliers can see central RFQ in SAP Ariba Discovery and submit bids. The supplier quotations are then sent automatically from SAP Ariba Discovery to SAP S/4HANA Cloud central procurement system after the quotation deadline has been reached.
As a central purchaser, you can see bids in the central procurement system, choose the best one and award the bid.
Based on the awarded supplier, the purchaser can create a purchase order as a follow-on document in the connected backend SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, or SAP ERP systems.
This will help you to source the best supplier by simultaneously reducing manual processing steps.
Demo: Central Sourcing for quote automation with Ariba Network
Service Procurement with Ariba Network and SAP Fieldglass
This innovation enables customers to seamlessly process the procurement of services across SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Network as well as SAP Fieldglass.
This procurement process especially focuses on close cooperation between buyers, purchasers, and suppliers of lean services. The exchange of documents such as orders, service sheets, and invoices is routed through SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway.
Fig: Service Procurement with Ariba Network and SAP Fieldglass
This is a great example of seamless integration of our three procurement services in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Network, and SAP Fieldglass.
Check out the end to end demo here: Services Procurement with Ariba Network and SAP Fieldglass
Fig: Service Procurement with Ariba Network and SAP Fieldglass
We are further enhancing this innovation with more functionalities and I will share more insights on this in my blog on the next release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, do not forget to come back.
Well, that is all I wanted to share with you in this release, if you have any questions or thoughts feel free to post in the comments section.
Do follow my profile if you would like to know the latest and greatest features in Sourcing & Procurement with every release.
Here is the Collection of Blogs in Sourcing & Procurement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
- Jan Gilg SAP News Center article here
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here and previous release highlights here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Early Release Webinar Series here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA 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 on @LinkedinHarish & @twitterHarryMangtani
