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#S4HANA use case series: 4b - increase financial business performance (tech view)

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In the previous use-case blog post #S4HANA use case series: 4a - increase financial business performance (biz view) we explained how the transition in real-time in the production is essential to address the new market needs. In the same way, the new area of big data provides larger and, in terms of content, richer data sets – but the urgency to make decisions faster every in this context, the real-time Finance has also a significant impact on the entire business process. Finance in real-time is not just another modernized finance system, but it’s a paradigm shift in looking at and running the financial processes.

 

Today´s blog will shed a light on what has changed with SAP S/4HANA from a technical point of view to address the need concerning their business processes and their IT landscape.

Data model simplification

Enterprise applications in the past needed to store data in aggregate table in order to meet performance expectations in view of limited database performance. Aggregate tables contain it´s by nature redundant information. This makes the entire process memory intense and predisposed for inconsistency conflicts. However, before the in-memory technology, aggregates and indexes were required to map various requirements of the documents.

 

In parallel, if we analyze the data model of SAP ERP Financials, several instances of data redundancy become apparent. The fundamental separation of different components (such as financial accounting, controlling, profitability …) into separate table structures is a case of duplicate data.

 

fin-perf-1.png

Figure 1

 

The challenges of the architecture (see figure 1) before SAP S/4HANA was the huge reconciliation efforts concerning the combined content of several tables. Data is the most important factor for finance. If the data foundation is wrong, then everything else can easily be wrong and this combined content of several tables represents “the truth”. The merge from separate components and data models into a Universal Journal as the Single source of Truth enable radically new approaches to finance, in addition to the usual benefits of a redundancy-free system.

 

Faced with millions or billions of accounting documents (headers, primarily stored in table BKPF) and their line items (table BSEG) and slow disk-based performance, SAP ERP Financials needed materialized views and materialized aggregates in order to provide sufficiently fast access to line items with specific properties or aggregates values. For this reason, the classical core data model of Financial Accounting (see Figure 2) contained, among others, six materialized views: three for open line items (BSID– Accounts receivable table, BSIK– Accounts payable table, BSIS– G/L accounts table) and three for cleared line items (BSAD, BSAK and BSAS) separated in the same tables. We had also three materialized aggregates for corresponding totals (KNC1, LFC1and GLT0).

 

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Figure 2

Parallel posting

Removing materialized views and materialized aggregates from the financial accounting data model has an immediate positive impact on the transactional throughput of the system.

In the case of SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance, posting an accounting document requires neither inserting redundant duplicates into materialized views nor updating redundant aggregate values. The corresponding effort and database operations to maintain consistency are no longer necessary.

 

Enterprise systems usually handle a lot of transactions in parallel. In the case of materialization, the concurrent aggregate updates in particular can lead to contention, because materialized aggregates have to be locked for updating. In the case, for example, heavily used G/L accounts, the database system has to handle the otherwise parallel postings sequentially if they access the same G/L account in order to consistently update the totals for this account. This unhappy situation con no longer occur in SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance, as all transactions simply insert multiple into the database, which does not require locks.

Single source of Truth: Universal Journal

The Universal Journal is the single source of truth and the holistic basis for next-generation accounting in SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance. Technically, the new Universal Journal is a harmonized and redundancy-free data store of actual data serving the

  • General Ledger (G/L)
  • Management Accounting/Controlling (CO)
  • Asset Accounting (AA)
  • And Material Ledger (ML) components.

 

The Universal Journal is one single physical table, and SAP HANA provide the necessary speed we need to aggregate hundreds of millions of line items of one table within seconds!

 

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Figure 3

 

The new journal entry consists of a header (table BKPF) and the respective items (table ACDOCA). The table ACDOCA contains all fields needed for G/L, CO, AA, ML, PA and we have now 6 digit fields for line item numbering (no longer the 999’ document lines limit).

 

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Figure 4

 

Concerning the usage of Material Ledger for parallel currencies and parallel valuation purpose, the contents of tables MLIT, MLPP, MLPPF, MLCR, MLCRF, MLCD, CKMI1, BSIM is now stored in ACDOCA. MLHD data is stored in BKPF.

MLHD, MLIT, MLPP, MLCR still keep prima nota information, in case of manual price changes or material debit/credit

Immediate Benefits of the new Model

The Universal Journal has all fields (columns) required by the business processes and the individual components. Whereas the technical handling of a table with so many fields would have created significant difficulties in the past, now we can dare to do thanks to SAP HANA’s superior compression technologies and columnar layout. In addition, we have the following innovations:

  • Significant coding changes (aka. Unified Journal)
  • Merge the transactional tables for the General Ledger, Asset Accounting, Management Accounting, CO-PA and Material Ledger into one
  • Merge the account and cost element

 

Between FI and CO, in our new architecture we merge CO and FI so that real-time integration is guaranteed by design. Users can natively drill down to the same line items from the key figures and reports of both components.



Stay tuned for the next use cases and follow me via @SDenecken for latest news.


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Overview of SAP S/4HANA use cases: #S4HANA - the use case series - Intro & Overview

 

  



Upcoming Tools for SAP #S4HANA Migration – the simplification database

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SAP S/4HANA stands for simplification of the worlds leading Business Suite. Since the announcement we have received good feedback and the market is reacting positive and adopting fast, and of course the need for clarification of a key question: “What will change?”

 

To make one thing clear upfront, we want every client to use the opportunity to simplify, to reduce complexity, to give up on things that create complexity – to be able to re-think what really is needed. AND we do simplify also some of our own historical debt as we needed to build the systems for traditional relational databases in the past. Now we can fully leverage the power of a truth in-memory platform. And we are frequently updating the SAP S/4HANA cookbook with details needed here SAP S/4HANA Cookbook: What is SAP S/4HANA

 

Why a simplification database?

 

Very simple, we are changing and developing new functionality, we are re-architecting for SAP HANA and keeping what still makes sense - of course with compatibility in mind - but we are changing the solution. This said, we clearly want to make sure you do not think we are throwing things away that you need to run your business, but we want you to run in a simpler way. So here is the plan:

 

  • For the items with a technical impact, even on custom code additional information is provided
  • These Items are stored in a dedicated so called “Simplification Item Database”.
  • The content of the database is considered within the Custom Code Check Tool
  • We will publish this information with the launch and keep it up to date

 

As a result of using the Custom Code Check Tool or a comparable service the customer does get an overview where his current solution scope and also the custom code of his current SAP Business Suite release does not match to the scope and data structure of SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition.

Slide5.jpg

Simplification-DB overview


A dedicated simplification item database (short: S-DB) is then available in SAP NetWeaver (7.50) . The simplification items in the S-DB are used in the context of the Custom Code Management tools. The content of the S-DB is based on the application specific lists about changed entities which development will constantly maintain and update.

 

The Simplification Database and custom code

 

To support the customer to detect custom code which needs to be adapted when moving to SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition - a customer can verify his current custom code based on the offered custom code analysis tools. With this he can verify if his current custom code complies with the SAP S/4HANA data structures and scope.

 

In the context of custom code management a central component is a data store called "Simplification Item Database" that will contain all information about the changes that have taken place between the classical Business Suite and SAP S/4HANA. The following figure describes basically the supporting custom code management approach related to SAP S/4HANA.

Slide1.jpg

A simplification item contains different detailed information about simplifications, impact and related services:

  • Basic Information
    The Simplification-Items are edition/release dependent. In the first collection round we are focusing on SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511. 
  • Simplification Category
    W
    e havethe following categories of simplifications:
    • Change of existing functionality
      Functionality which is adapted in detail (e.g. data model changes removal of aggregates or the Material Master Field length extension) / required primarily technical migration. From a business process and end user point of view, basically stays the same as before - but might come with custom code adaption effort on customer side
    • Consolidation of existing functionality 

Slide2.jpg

Simplification items


  • Impact
    In the impact section the technical and the business impact will be described with the following categories
    • Technical Impact
      • Custom Code Impact
        Here we mentioned if we have custom code impact. In this case the objects which are adapted are listed and additionally included in the Simplification Database as basis for the custom code check tools (executed on customer’s
        on-premise installation). These changed entities are maintained in appropriate item lists (transaction SE01)
      • System Conversion Pre-Checks
        Here application specific checks are listed which will be provided to check the “readiness” of the appropriate start release.
      • XPRA
        Here automated program logic is listed, which need to be executed within the system conversion steps (Software Update Manager, Maintenance Planer)
    • Business Impact
      Here the business impact on business processes and user interfaces are described.


  • Related Services
    Here the adaption effort (in T-Shirt sizes) are listed and related service offerings will be mentioned.


Note: In the current phase the customer need a NW 7.50 installation to execute the custom code check. In future cloud based code analysis are planned.

Slide3.jpg

Simplification list - example

 

How to use the Simplification Database

 

The development entities adapted in SAP S/4HNA, on-premise edition 1511 offered as file for download on SAP Service Marketplace. The customer can import the file with the relevant SAP entities into the so-called Simplification Database Custom Code Management Tools.

 

The customer can extract his customer code from source system and create a similar file with this information (see SAP note2185390 for further details). This custom code extractor file can be imported in the NW7.50 custom code check tool. 

 

With executing the Custom Code Analysis Tools on customer side the information about the current custom code base are checked against the content of the Simplification Item Database. This custom code information includes modifications and enhancements to SAP code as well as customer-owned main objects, respective where-used list information and possibly available usage information (UPL).

 

As results of this Custom Code analysis an appropriate analysis results is provided in an ALV-like list (including XLS download opportunities). Besides the pure listing of customers code entities which do not comply with the SAP S/4HANA data structure and scope, additional information is provided based on SAP notes.


Recommendations will be included in the resulting list, so customers will be able to navigate from a dedicated custom code analysis results to a corresponding SAP Note. The dedicated SAP Notes then will give the explanation about the technical change and how the related custom code needs to be adapted. Based on the results the individual custom code analysis results and the provided adaption recommendations the customer can plan and adapt his custom code to comply with the SAP S/4HANA data structures and scope.

Slide4.jpg

Simplification list - details/overview

 

Further improvements we are working on in time for the next update with SAP S/4HANA 1511, let us know what you think.

Looking forward to see you @Teched (a sample of my favorites here S/4HANA @ Teched 2015 #S4HANA )and follow me via @SDenecken for frequent updates.



#S4HANA use case series: 5a - Engage talent across the organization (biz view)

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Engage your talents before they leave: easier said as done

In this new use case we want to add a new dimension to SAP S/4HANA: the people dimension.Every business is looking for differentiators which allow them to remain competitive.  Know-how, innovation and intuitive power create the main advantages that companies can have over their competitors. Innovation is fostered by great talents. Companies need to attract talents, the ticket to stay ahead of the competitors and be successful. To support this, innovative and engaging HR software systems are mandatory today.


The reality is often different: the complexity of legacy technology often shackles HR teams with multiple, fragmented HR tools and a lack of a global, actionable view of the entire workforce. Quite often, an HR function is “siloed” and disconnect from the other, like recruiting is not directly linked to learning. Beside this, key employee records are store in different HRIS preventing company to have single point of truth for HR data. ERP data like financial data are separated, and every question on alignment between talent data and financial data starts with an IT integration project.

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Figure 1


The unique value of SuccessFactors

To engage talent across the organization, customers need to combine the next-generation business suite with the next-generation HCM suite, SuccessFactors. SuccessFactors provides a unified, comprehensive solution that simplifies talent management – so you can proactively act, easily measure and clearly communicate talent results and business impact. The talent management solution from SuccessFactors includes Recruiting, Onboarding, Performance & Goals, Compensation, Succession & Development and Learning solutions.


So SuccessFactors enables to attract and engage with the right people, for the right role, at the right time. Moreover the solution also helps to develop top people by continuous focus, feedback and relevant learning experiences. This helps companies retain the top talents and also supports them by recognizing, growing and rewarding the talents based on facts from the HR system.


To get more insights about this winning combination between S/4HANA and SuccessFactors have a look at this blog.

 

SAP S/4HANA and SuccessFactors: the power of one

SAP uniquely provides a winning combination of the most modern solutions to attract and engage and retain talents:  SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA.  The solutions are seamlessly integrated (understand the technical details in the IT blog) and bring the “power of one” to SAP customers:

  • Drives operational alignment between HR and Finance to optimize capabilities and align with the business
  • Enables consolidated access to real-time data to provide insights and measure the business impact of HR
  • Integrates end-to-end processes across financials and HR to help manage budget and headcount planning
  • Leverage an engaging, unified user experience along the processes by on role and responsibilities with SAP Fiori

 

The seamless integration of SuccessFactors to SAP S/4HANA - regardless of the deployment option of S/4HANA – will give that “power of one to customers”.


What is the value for customers?

With the SAP solution, customers will drive operational alignment between HR and other core processes like Finance. This cross-function alignment leads to resource optimization across the company department’s boundaries. In addition, leveraging the end-to-end integration for financial and HR processes will give customers a consolidated access to real-time data, giving insights on the real business impact of HR, with tangible and quantifiable results:

  • reduce the employee turnover thanks to more engaged talent
  • increase HR productivity thanks to a linkage with the business
  • better cross company insights with a faster access to HR and financial data



Stay tuned for the next use cases and follow me via @SDenecken for latest news.


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Overview of SAP S/4HANA use cases: #S4HANA - the use case series - Intro & Overview


A journey into “The in-memory revolution by Hasso Plattner and Bernd Leukert" - Part 3

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This is the third part followingA journey into “The in-memory revolution by Hasso Plattner and Bernd Leukert" - Part 2

 

Part 2 – S/4 HANA, the agile ERP



 

Part 3 – Applying HANA to resolve real-world issues

 

CIO -So what’s a customer to do?

 

Me – To help you figure that out, SAP is practicing the Design Thinking Method. It’s a methodology developed at Stanford University and at the HPI School of Design Thinking. It’s an iterative and team-based approach designed to foster creativity by focusing on end users’ needs in order to identify problems, find solutions and drive creative innovation.

 

CIO - How does that work?

 

Me - We start by getting into a room a maximum of stakeholders and users of a business process. We identify issues with users and let them discuss what they need to improve their work. Observe their interactions in order to understand why users behave in a certain way. We then create a “point of view” synthesis of all the ideas hashed out during the workshop. We use it to build a prototype that we submit to constant feedback through testing. Such co-innovation workshops can unlock extremely interesting ideas.

 

CIO -Such as?

 

Me -For example, SAP developed with the German National Center for Tumor Diseases in Heidelberg a tool called Medical Research Insights (MRI).  To be efficient and pertinent when performing clinical trials, doctors needed a tool that could gather, analyze and sort in real time a huge amount of structured and unstructured data pertaining to single patients and cohorts of patients. Previously, such research had to be done by hand browsing through archives spread over many different systems. We could come up with the final design by putting together researchers, physicians, and healthcare professionals in the same room, and confront their respective needs. Now HANA can perform and automate all those tasks and present them to doctors in a concise and understandable way. This is a big step toward personalized medicine.

 

CIO - Indeed we’re far from the ERP. This is impressive.

 

Me - There is no domain where HANA cannot bring benefits. For example, Internet of Things scenarios can be found everywhere: logistics, social network analysis, marketing, omni-channel retail, natural disaster risk analysis, fraud management, smart farming, industry 4.0, predictive maintenance, to name a few.

All those projects have a common point though: introducing agility in complex processes, thanks to the ability to deal in real-time with huge quantities of system and/or sensor data, processing and analyzing them to give to users unprecedented insights into the workings of the real world.

 

Let’s review together some of those solutions developed recently with HANA. Let’s consider how a typical boardroom meeting takes place today and how it could be greatly improved. Generally, the speed, or lack of speed, of software applications determines how organized business processes are. You, as CIO, if you could back up your assumptions with data, see trends hidden within standard reports, dig deeper into the data, do you think you could be managing more effectively?

 

CIO- Undoubtedly. Boardroom discussions require instant insights. This is not something we have now. We’re working on reports, spreadsheets and dashboards prepared for us that reflect the current situation but that are static. Some of them run for hundreds of pages.

 

Me – That mustn’t help when making quick decisions…

 

CIO- We certainly have to rely on experience and gut decision.

 

Me – What if gut decisions could be replaced by informed data-based decisions? The underlying SAP HANA platform is at the core of enabling the new boardroom experience. Every number and graph we can see is directly calculated off transactional data. Therefore, within seconds we are always looking at the latest numbers. The line item based reporting also enables more freedom for exploration and simulations. And all this should actually be available in H1 2016.

 

CIO- That’s definitely worth looking into! Please keep me posted on this release.

 

Me- To get back to your earlier question, let me go over some meaningful examples of how businesses such as yours have used and leveraged the power of HANA to improve their businesses:

 

1- Speed has become essential for end user/customer interactions. Underlying applications have to work at a speed matching human expectations. The new SAP User Interface (UI), known as SAP Fiori, is more attractive but it was also redeveloped to take advantage of the radically different response time pattern of the underlying HANA system. It has applications in omni-channel retailing, where based on the insights generated through predictive analysis of customers’ shopping history and text analysis of their social network activities, a sales associate can offer each customer a personalized shopping experience.

 

2- Celonis Process Mining is based on HANA offering a new approach to process analysis. It enables users to see how their processes are actually executed and where inefficiencies and deviations from the standard are occurring.

 

3- SAP Fraud Management is a cross-industry application to analyze, detect and investigate irregularities and thus prevent, in real time, fraud in big data environments. HANA brings the platform for fast detection of fraud as it occurs.

 

4- Empowering logistics hubs: supply chains must accommodate both the increasing number of participants as well as constantly expending product portfolios. This puts supply chains under pressure, and requires a high degree of flexibility to allow them to cope with the pace of the market.

 

For example, the operators at the Hamburg harbour manage 10000 ships and more than 9 million containers per year as well as 40000 trucks every day, and this in a physically constrained harbor area that cannot be expanded.

 

The number of containers is expected to increase to 25 million in the next 10 years. The volume of port traffic is expected to increase accordingly, but this needs to be achieved without any increase in the space available.  The solution to this challenge is Smart Port Logistics (SPL), a joint project between SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and the Telematic One Traffic Management System. SAP Connected Logistics, based on SAP HANA Cloud, integrates all relevant information from multiple data sources in order to optimize the routes of all actors, and react in real time to traffic disruptions.

 

5- Remote service and predictive maintenance: in 2015 the Internet of Things (IOT) already consists of over 25 billion connected devices with a rising trend of 50 billion by 2020. Fast services are required to handle large amounts of sensor data received, notify technicians, and predict on-site maintenance demands. For example, at one of our customer’s manufacturing fast turning machines,  each machine sends up to 120 sensors values each second.

Engineers are able to define rules for issue detection using the incoming sensor data and execute these rules in real time.

Predictive maintenance algorithm is able to reveal knowledge such as specific machines that require diagnostics.

 

 

CIO- Thanks for this. It is very useful to help me wrap my head around the limitless potential of this new technology.

 

 

Me- So in conclusion, I’d like to leave you with these thoughts:

 

Major challenges and opportunities lie ahead for organizations: cloud, big data, IOT, omni-channel, business networks, processes optimization. To address all the aforementioned challenges, the HANA platform is built as a universal data hub.

With S/4 HANA, SAP offers its customers a non-disruptive way to profit from the disruptive innovations of the HANA technology, be it on premise or in the cloud.

Then HANA can integrate structured ERP data with external data sources such as: sensor data from smart devices in IOT; data from social networks and the internet; data from the SAP Cloud Business Network. On top of this integration, HANA provides built-in algorithms to analyze this data on the highest level of granularity.

With the power of HANA, SAP enables companies to not only react to business developments, but also intelligently analyze market trends in order to drive forward their business.

 

 

CIO- In other words, the agile ERP.

 

Me- I couldn’t have said better.

 

 

The end.

SAP S/4HANA Helps IT Lead Digital Transformation

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When we launched SAP S/4HANA in February 2015, I was most looking forward to seeing how our customers would be re-energized by a simplified system to reimagine IT and be at the forefront of the digital transformation of their companies. SAP S/4HANA creates unique  opportunities for IT to enable new digital business models and processes with a simplified landscape that reduces footprint, increases throughput, and lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO).


More than 1,300 customers have already chosen SAP S/4HANA  (Press Release)since the February launch, making it the fastest growing product in SAP’s history, beating the record set before by Suite on HANA. My colleague Markus Schwarz has written about several of these customers and how they are reimagining their business processes. With SAP S/4HANA, the IT organizations at These customers will spend more time leading digital innovation and less time managing their current complexity.


How is this possible? It begins with a simpler, unified data model on top of an in-memory platform, something we have discussed since the launch of SAP S/4HANA. Then, SAP S/4HANA enables users to leverage the system with an award-winning user experience.

 

For most organizations, today there is no real-time, single source of truth. This means waiting for batch updates and data reconciliation, and at best getting disconnected snapshots of the business, unable to generate any benefit from all the data. This complexity not only costs the business, IT must manage ever-increasing storage, database maintenance, and data movement cost. Various applications and data warehouses sprout up throughout the enterprise in an effort to generate value from the data, but end up adding to the overall complexity.

 

Imagine what IT can enable for the business, then, with a real-time, unified data source. Let’s look at two example use cases examples in finance and supply chain. You can find more use cases on SCN.

 

When finance runs from a unified data source, costly FI-CO (Finance-Controlling) reconciliation is eliminated and batch processes like period-end closing can happen in a moment instead of over many days with an army of spreadsheet warriors. What CIO would not want to bring that new capability to the CFO?

 

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Above: Traditional financial close, with reconciliation batch bottleneck

 

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Above: Financial close anytime, with no bottleneck or waiting. A “soft close” can be run even in the middle of a period to check for errors.

 

These are exactly the first benefits realized by Turk Telecom, who consolidated many ERP systems into one unified environment with their new deployment of SAP S/4HANA Finance (watch video). For IT, the benefits of a simpler landscape are reduced costs and support. No more calls to IT for special reports to be run. No more waiting on the next ETL batch to complete. No more extractions to spreadsheets.


The same concept—running from a real-time, unified data source—applies to supply chain planning as well. When Material Requirements Planning (MRP) can be done in minutes across large data sets, the business can react quickly to changes in supply and demand. Users can even perform what-if analysis when faced with a problem, resulting in fewer operational and fulfillment exceptions. Our performance benchmarking Team estimates this will result in an average 17% reduction in inventory carrying costs.

 

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Above: Traditional MRP with multiple data sources and the resulting latency.

 

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Above: Instantly-refreshed, role-based supply chain KPIs with drill down to a unified data source.


A fully-supported journey with resources available now


How does IT best begin the journey to SAP S/4HANA? The main thing to know is you have complete choice of deployment (on-premise, cloud, and hybrid – the later which will be the norm for very Long time) with a fully supported journey that is backed by a vast array of Tools and services to help. I’d like to mention a few of those key resources.

 

First, customers can get a personalized report showing how SAP S/4HANA will impact their specific lines of business by having their SAP software usage data analyzed through the business scenario recommendation tool.


Customers can sign up for a free trial of SAP S/4HANA. The trials – available for both editions – are a great way to demonstrate the role-based user experience and evaluate first-hand digitized business processes.

 

SAP Activatesimplifies the journey to SAP S/4HANA with ready-to-run methodologies, best practices, and guided configuration tools.

 

Finally, our SAP S/4HANA Cookbook, with specific, technical guidance on the SAP S/4HANA journey, plus connection to the vital and energetic SCN community.

 

With these resources, our outstanding partner network, and 1,300 customers already on-board, you can be confident that now is the time to begin your own SAP S/4HANA journey.

How to Unlock the Power of Simplification with SAP S/4HANA

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Most of us recognize that data and technology are changing the world. And no one knows this better than business leaders. Facing 3 billion more consumers within the next five years, companies are finding that personalization, free and intuitive products, and curated experiences are no longer an option – consumers of all ages expect them and will go elsewhere to get them.

 

As businesses continue to evolve with technology such as Big Data, analytics, social, cloud, and integration, processes are quickly becoming disconnected. The more data flows in and out of these systems, the more inefficiencies impact the performance of business operations. Information is separated in silos, and organizations are so complex that they are nearly impossible to navigate.

 

According to McKinsey, “Large global organizations have created so much complexity that businesses often struggle to bring good ideas to the marketplace profitably.” Whether you see it or not, complexity is silently syphoning 10.2% of your profits on any given year. Even top 200 global companies lost a combined $200 billion in revenue in 2013.

 

Is your business experiencing increasingly complex business processes and decision making that are hindering growth strategy for a digital economy? It’s time for a change. It’s time to simplify.


SAP S/4HANA: Your journey to simplification

 

Since its introduction last year, the SAP S/4HANA suite has caught the attention of executives worldwide. Again and again, they tell me how much they like how the software simplifies business models, decision making, and processes. Yet, they are unsure how to implement SAP S/4HANA across their entire business network.

 

From my perspective, the answer lies in our ability to break the implementation process down into two simple elements – advise and implement.

 

tEblog.PNG

 

Step 1: Advise

This phase presents an opportunity to discover beneficial business scenarios enabled by SAP S/4HANA and explore areas of innovation and business transformation. Once you have identified the business potential, a specific strategy, road map, and high-level architecture for SAP S/4HANA needs to be created and established – covering everything from long-term and short-term, measurable value to technical aspects.


Step 2: Implement

Once a plan is set, you’re ready to migrate your existing architecture to the SAP HANA platform. But, don’t rush to a new installation of SAP S/HANA. Give your fellow executives and workforce time to realize the advantages of running on the new platform. Once you understand how the business interacts with SAP HANA, you can install SAP S/4HANA and leverage accelerators and best practices to build solutions that deliver sustainable simplicity.


Find out how you can reimagine business processes with this “solutioneering” effort, which ties road maps with a defined, explicit ROI. Attend our session “Your Journey to SAP S/4HANA” on Tuesday, October 20, at 5:30 p.m. PDT and Thursday, October 22, at 12:00 p.m. PDT.

Simple is Dead, long live Simplification - Back to the Future with S/4HANA

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At TechEd in Las Vegas I have been digging into what we can expect to be in the next release of S/4HANA (called the 1511 release) which is due in November.

 

image1 (2).PNG

 

This is the first release of S/4HANA that will start to impact functional areas other than Finance and I think it is a significant release that will put some clear blue functional water between SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA (SoH) and SAP Business Suite for HANA (S/4HANA).

 

No Simple Logistics

 

The first thing I was very pleased to hear is that the word Simple is being dropped from the product names so we will not see Simple Logistics. I think this is good as the businesses processes that run on these systems are far from Simple. However this does not mean that Simplification is not still at the heart of what is driving the S/4HANA development teams. This simplification impacts at a number of levels. The obvious one that is talked about a lot is the removal of duplicated and aggregated data in the system – to a certain degree this is the easy part of the job with most of these aggregates being replaced with views that are calculated on the fly. The harder part of simplification is deciding what features should be added to the system, which features should be removed from the system (as they are over complicated or just aren’t used), how those features should be configure / extended (see ACTIVATE) and finally how they should be exposed to the user (see Fiori UI).

 

See the Wood for the Trees - The Simplification Database

 

To help customers / partners understand what is changing and where it will impact, a Simplification Database will be released with the 1511 release that will show what has changed and how it has changed. This tool will also be integrated into the Code Check tool that will allow modifications to be scanned to see if they will work in the S/4HANA architecture. This blog by Sven Denecken gives more details on this. This tool should allow technical and functional teams the ability to get down and dirty on the real impacts of the Simplification changes and build the business case required to make the move.

 

RFRK – FICO – Finance

 

So if we aren’t getting Simple Logistics, what are we getting ? From what I know, it looks like we are going to go back to the idea of modules within the product. The ones I have seen are :-

 

  • Finance
  • Human Resource
  • Sourcing and Procurement
  • Supply Chain
  • Manufacturing
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Service
  • Asset Management
  • Research and Development

 

So once S/4HANA 1511 gets released each functional area can be reviewed to see what has been simplified and how it links to other Line of Business Apps (e.g SuccessFactors, Hybris, Ariba). From this analysis decisions can be made about how they evolve their platforms towards and into S/4HANA.

 

I am sure we will hear more in Barcelona !.

 

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#S4HANA use case series: 5b - Engage talent across the organization (tech view)

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As we described in the Business blog it is critical for companies to attract, develop and reward the top talents across the organization because these people drive innovation and create with their know-how and skills competitive advantages. SAP’s “power of one” solution is the foundation for this, and we’d like to give you a more technical view on this solution and their implementation options.

 

By combining SuccessFactors with SAP S/4HANA companies can drive an optimal alignment between HR and Finance to optimize capabilities, enable consolidated access to real-time data, measure the business impact of HR and integrate end-to-end process across financials and HR to help manage budget and headcount planning better. This blog will now dig deeper and show you what has changed with SAP S/4HANA and SuccessFactors in the processes from a technical point of view and how you can deploy to SAP /S4HANA and integrate HCM solutions.


What is the current HCM landscape for many customers?

talent-tech1.png


In the graphic above you can see a classic HR landscape: many systems, many interfaces, high technical maintenance to support end-to-end process. For different functionalities of talent management system (like recruiting, learning or performance management) there are different systems on different databases.  This complexity often developed historically as within several years to the core HR functions were added more and more talent management functions. As a result companies have to deal with multiple legacy and disparate HR systems which are costly and difficult to manage. The employees are not engaged with their HR systems and find them difficult to use. Especially the top talents get less support from the system as possible and they even don’t like to work with such old and complex systems. The separation of functionalities in different system makes it also hard to connect the data and get a holistic view of the talents. To gain such a holistic view data preparation is necessary because the information have to be select out of different systems.


Run your landscape with the “power of one”

SAP’s offering to run your talent and more broadly your HCM processes is a combination of best in class products: SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA. On the one hand, customer can benefits from SuccessFactors in the cloud, where are all the people-centric processes like Recruiting, Onboarding, Learning are living.


Those are critical to engage people across the organization. On the other hand customer will run their core processes like Financials or Procurement on SAP S/4HANA. Both solutions can be seamlessly integrated via middleware to run end-to-end processes or for data consolidation purpose.

talent-tech2.png


How can customer get to that “power of one” landscape?

Let’s start with the classical situation. For new and existing customers considering SAP S/4HANA, SuccessFactors is the recommended HCM solution for S/4HANA. With this combination you can use the full advantages from the next generation HCM solution and next generation Business Suite which we described above and in the related business blog.

talent-tech3.png


What is the value for customer choosing this classical approach?

  • Current integrations between SuccessFactors and SAP Business Suite HCM can continue to be leveraged (Core Hybrid, Side by Side and Full Cloud for HR solutions)
  • Integrated user interaction, processes and data (for e.g SAP HCM payroll, Source of Employee data …)
  • ONE source of HR data from SuccessFactors, seamlessly integrated into S/4HANA
  • Productized integration helps connect easily to S/4 HANA (HANA Cloud Integration)
  • Early adopter program for EC + HCI available also to S/4HANA customers (for customers not in Early Adopter program, it is also possible to integrate with DELL Boomi)

 

For those customers who want to phase out the transition to SuccessFactors, SAP offers different scenarios to customers:  they can deploy S/4HANA on premise and continue to keep SAP ERP HCM separate, or deploy SAP S/4HANA and SAP HR on premise on the same instance. SAP HR is indeed enabled in SAP S/4HANA and can technically run on the same instance. Customers can also choose a hybrid approach and use S/4HANA in the cloud and SAP ERP HCM On-Premise. Most importantly, So SAP ERP HCM customers may also continue to leverage their SAP ERP HCM implementations.


SAP uniquely gives a complete flexibility to the customers, with a complete solution on premise, a complete solution in the cloud, or a progressive hybrid approach. The chart below will give more details on the transition options for HCM:

talent-tech4.png

 

SAP is proposing Rapid Deployment Solution for the implementation of SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA. With those dedicated RDS, customers get the latest innovations in the SAP solutions – S/4HANA and Employee Central.  This solution is highly configurable and delivered with SAP Best Practices to accelerate implementation of the S/4HANA foundation in connection to the HR operations.


Find more details for LoB HR here:  http://service.sap.com/rds


Stay tuned for the next use cases and follow me via @SDenecken for latest news.


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Overview of SAP S/4HANA use cases: #S4HANA - the use case series - Intro & Overview



SAP Runs SAP S/4HANA: Interview with Helen Arnold, CIO

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Hi everyone,


Helen Arnold, CIO and CPO, Member of the Global Managing Board of SAP SE, spent some time with us and provided some insights on the SAP S/4HANA project from SAP. We'd like to share them with you and shed some light on  "SAP runs SAP".

 

Helen, can you mention a few milestones and benefits of the SAP S/4HANA project?

 

Helen Arnold: SAP IT plays a strategic role as an early adopter of SAP innovation. We have a clear innovation roadmap, with SAP HANA as the firm foundation. Our HANA journey began in 2013 and we are now live, as of May 2015, on SAP S/4HANA with 74,000 business users.

Let me explain more about how we got there. Our first milestone was the implementation of SAP Suite on HANA in 2013. With this, our finance department was able to achieve 420 fewer hours processing time at quarter end close, a 70% reduction in time to process reconciliation issues and a 99% reduction in processing time to perform charge-back. IngridHelenArnold-SCN.jpg

Next, we went live on SAP Simple Finance. With the simplified data model that Simple Finance offers, we eliminated all aggregates and indices to make our finance system much more agile. Organizational changes are reflected within one day instead of one week and Fiori apps in the areas of Account Receivables, Account Payable and General Ledger make our finance applications more efficient and more enjoyable for our end-users.

Our latest milestone is of course that the whole of SAP went live with its mission-critical ERP system on SAP S/4HANA with 74,000 business users in early May 2015. With this version, we put all financial information in the unified journal entry, which means we can overcome all barriers, break down siloes and increase collaboration across the finance function. Finance becomes more efficient, because the reconciliation efforts between finance applications are gone and many processes and procedures have been streamlined. We now report without barriers across all FI dimensions.

The benefits that we have achieved include more simplicity in our processes, the ability to consume innovation faster and more agility. Customers will be able to enjoy these too as they transition to SAP S/4HANA.


What has been your initial business case, your expected benefits and savings?

 

From a business point of view, SAP S/4HANA means we now have built-in efficiency and speed, as well as better collaboration on real-time data. SAP S/4HANA offers us one view of the truth, with increased business agility and reporting flexibility. It means that we are always future-ready – we have established a platform that ensures we are poised to consume all new innovation as it becomes available.

Technically, we simplified the data model so that there are aggregates, no indices, no redundancies or discrepancies between systems. CIOs using SAP S/4HANA will be able to reduce their companies’ data footprints further and drive performance through broader data model simplification, allowing best collaboration and an innovation path that is fast and efficient. By separating current and historical data, having a single system for data entry, focusing on parallelism and removing locking, we improve throughput. These are so much more than technical highlights – they reduce TCO, which means that companies get much more for less.

Can you please describe the system landscape before the move to S/4HANA?

 

Well, it used to be a complex hybrid landscape with multiple satellite systems. Now, with SAP S/4HANA, we have integrated SRM back to ERP and picked the best-fitting solutions in our hybrid landscape, for example, with integrated Master Data Management. Over 40% of SAP’s IT load came from exchange between the ERP and BW systems – and now we eliminate a major part of this by moving operational reporting back to ERP. We have also retired our isolated analytics systems and created one unified Enterprise Analytics platform across the whole organization.


Can you give us a few project fact and figures on the deployment on S/4HANA: team, effort, timing, and the landscape now with ISP to S/4HANA?

 

Helen: We started the project in January this year, and went live at the beginning of May. We are the first to implement at such a scale and our goal was always to ensure as little disruption as possible to our business users. We used the same team to implement SAP S/4HANA as we did during the previous SAP HANA implementations, so they already had comprehensive experience in the HANA technology and how business processes interact with it. Our internal focus was on the early validation of S/4HANA and the related cut-over procedure. By using the near zero downtime approach, customers will be able to implement a complete system switch in a timeframe of one working shift (~ 12h).

Since we are the early adopters, we ran more than 3,000 test cases, half of which were fully automated. This is part of our quality assurance effort.

Now that we are live, we are following with a very clear milestone plan towards the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition. SAP is performing the same clean-up activities that customers also have to do. We will de-modify and reengineer our business processes, and move the remaining custom code to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform or the extensibility framework so that we are agile and ready to consume new innovation immediately.


What is the next milestone on your SAP HANA roadmap?

 

SAP HANA is the great simplifier and unifier across all our business systems. Now with CRM effectively on ERP, we have one database that feeds everything and we achieve an end-to-end process view across multiple systems. We have achieved part of our roadmap by bringing Enterprise Analytics onto a single platform, and by putting the SAP Store live on hybris as a core part of our digital transformation.

Our next major milestone is to implement the Boardroom Redefined at SAP. This received a huge amount of interest at SAPPHIRE NOW. Based on S/4HANA, this scenario shows how analytical insights go far beyond the ordinary; real-time analytical explorations enable us to identify trends and correlations down to the lowest level of granularity, turning data into practical value. There is no longer any gap between business transactions, data preparation, analysis and insight to action as all is connected and harmonized. High value prediction is available at any time.

 

What are the new IT opportunities for SAP that SAP S/4HANA brings?

 

This increasing digitalization and connectivity is completely changing the IT function. In the past, IT was a technical partner to the business, ensuring that systems were maintained and that users had access to the tools they needed to do their jobs. We now talk about a bi-modal – or two-step – IT, where the IT function, led by the CIO, is responsible both for rock-solid operations but also for leading innovation.

To this end, we drive a radical digitalization agenda at SAP. As the innovation partner for all business units, we are not only delivering business innovation but also enabling it. SAP S/4HANA enables entirely new business models that are simple, real-time and networked. The SAP HANA platform provides incredible flexibility and agility for SAP and its customers, partners and start-up ecosystem so that we are all agile and future-ready.


What are the new business opportunities for SAP as a software and services vendor?

 

We will be seeing new channels, new digital offerings, new innovation and, with SAP S/4HANA as the foundation, we will be able to take advantage of these quickly and efficiently. Agility is crucial in the new digital age.


How did you design the “ideal application on HANA” for SAP?

 

An ideal application on HANA must fully leverage the platform’s business capabilities of speed, big data, productivity and real-time analysis.  An example of the ideal application on HANA is in fact the Boardroom Redefined. It will revolutionize the way we steer, make decisions and operate in board meetings, with insights beyond the ordinary and simulation like never before.


Finally, what would you recommend to SAP customers?

 

To be ready for the innovation path, customers need to be aware of the digital trends and make sure they stay ahead of them. CIOs need to ensure that they remain relevant by embracing the challenges and opportunities that digital transformation brings.

With SAP S/4HANA, CIOs will reduce their system landscapes and build an agile foundation for transformation. This is a huge opportunity for them to get their houses in order – get rid of unused custom code and unnecessary modifications. They make the decision whether they want to operate their systems themselves or hand them to SAP to run on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. With complexity eliminated and innovation easily adoptable, companies can become faster and better at what they do. They will be able to create differentiated capabilities for their businesses and engage with their customers in new and more meaningful ways.

 

Helen, thanks a lot for your time and for the insights your have shared with us on the SAP S/4HANA project!


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Have you already tested SAP S/4HANA by yourself? Check the trial versions now:SAP S/4HANA Trial Landing Page


SAP S/4 HANA Simple logistics expected to combine features of multiple SCM applications

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SAP ERP is well known in the market for its capability of integration of different business functions (like posting of a logistic transaction also triggers financial posting immediately and automatically). It has different modules (SD, PS, MM, LE, FI, CO etc) integrated with the same system . SAP is a product making company and their main revenue comes for selling of licenses for these products. Over the years , when most of the customers have implemented ERP , they launched new products (rather individual systems / applications) for almost every module of ERP (SD with CRM , PP with APO , MM with SRM , PS with cProjects & xRPM , WM with EWM , Distribution to TM etc) with advanced features in those applications and also obviously with strong integration capability with ERP. Today, SAP has several products offering similar functionalities like SRM, SNC, CLM, Ariba in procurement space. It is very difficult for the customer (and also for consultants ) which product to recommend to implement or continue. SAP also does not clarify / confirm in many such cases. However, we (as consultants) need to keep a close watch in which direction SAP is moving and that too with the latest launch of S/4 HANA.

 

SAP's naming also creates confusion in many cases . HANA was initially launched as 'High-Performance Analytic Appliance' with tag on Analytics. Today, it is not an acronym and it is a name . SAP also confused whether S in S/4 should stand for smart or simple , later it settled with 'Simple'.

 

Early adopters of HANA was mainly in the BW space , but there debates whether BW is really needed as HANA can provide real-time analytics in an OLTP tool / application. HANA is now being applied in all future SAP products due to its sheer capability of processing high volume of data in real time and that is the USP for S/4 HANA.


MRP , ATP , BOP (Backorder processing) , Closing cockpit (for financial period end closing activities) are some of the business processes which are very resource heavy and used to be run in batches in night (or off-peak hours) . MRP on HANA now runs much faster , can be run more frequently in a day (rather once in 24 hours) and hence the results are more dynamic (with respect to previously static data) . BOP used to take around 7-8 hours for a high volume plant for a customer, today with APO running on HANA it takes less than an hour.

 

Simple logistic is a part of S/4 HANA and is expected to be released in Q4'2015. As it appears (from documents / demos in Open SAP and other SAP documents in URL http://www.sapafricaforum.co.za/sap/downloads/S4HANA_Roadmap_Customer.pdf) SAP is now trying to combine features of many SAP applications in one single system like

 

1. PPDS & GATPof APO : HANA has the capability of crunching complex algorithms as APO does using live cache and probably that is the rationale for providing APO features like PPDS (Production planning & detailed scheduling) and GATP (Global ATP) as a part of simple logistics running on HANA. Multi-level explosion (MATP) , Location & material substitution, advanced BOP are some of the key features of GATP. Document on Simple logistics released by SAP says that it will have substitution functionality, advanced BOP but not clear (as yet) whether it will have all the salient features of GATP. There are also plans of APO's DP (Demand planning) and SNP (Supply network planning) to be available in SAP's new IBP (Integrated business planning) also running on HANA . Then the question comes , what will be the future of APO?

 

2. EWM : SAP launched EWM (Extended warehouse management) as a decentralised application for high volume warehouses with operational complexity and value added service. EWM can also be run on HANA and as it appears (from SAP's roadmap for S/4 HANA) , EWM will be ' integral part of SAP S/4HANA

offering advanced warehouse process enablement'.As of now (and SAP also recommends that) , a customer can run some of their warehouse in ECC WM & some other warehouse in EWM and the choice of ECC WM or EWM sheerly depends on volume of transaction and complexity of operations for the specific warehouse. It needs to be seen what is the future for ECC WM ?

 

3. TM: Transportation management (TM) is a separate application designed for LSPs' (Logistic service providers) as well as Shippers for advanced transportation planning, tendering capabilities etc. Functionalities of TM also appear to be in the roadmap of S4 HANA.

 

S4 HANA will not only have Simple finance and simple logistics, it is also expected to combine PLM and other applications (to be watched) in one single system S4 HANA. ERP ECC is the backbone when it interacts with other systems like APO , EWM & TM . It is always a challenge to keep the systems consistent with respect to master data and transaction data while interfacing with each other . Also APO does not have integration with TM and sometimes scheduling becomes a problem if the client uses both APO GATP and TM . Hope S4 HANA will reduce these challenges with integration by combining different applications in a single system . We also need to watch SAP's plan with other application like EM , GTS etc with S4 HANA . Like TM has good interfaces with EM , GTS , GIS etc .So, if TM is integral part of S4 HANA , then those applications like EM , GTS also need to be combined in S4 HANA for their vision of merging different applications in one single system. Picture will be clearer as we go along, but it is quite clear that SAP is trying to merge different applications in a single system S4 HANA.

Architecture Of S/4 HANA vs ERP

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Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to write one more blog on S/4 HANA.

 

In this blog I would like to describe the components of S/4 HANA and differences with SAP ERP.

 

See History of SAP S/4 HANA evolution as below.

 

 

S4HANA.png

Architecture of S/4 HANA Vs SAP ERP.

 

  • What is S/4 HANA, is it completely new product of SAP?  The answer is NO. S/4 HANA is SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA like R/2 and R/3 with new code line.

 

  • So many of us have in mind that what is future of ABAP programming language. Good news for all ABAPers is that “S/4 HANA is also on ABAP platform only.” 


  • Another good news for which most of our customers waiting since long time is all SAP non ECC Business applications(EWM,TM,APO..etc) moving back to SAP ERP core(Described in my blog Future Options for SAP Landscape). This means reducing number of servers requirement, middleware requirement.

     Arch.png

  • S/4 HANA is simplified data model.  Reduced data foot print with highly compressed data and less tables.See below Data foot print reduction with S/4 HANA .

 

FootPrint.png

  • Reduced ¾ of objects from application layer in S/4 HANA compared to ERP .

S4HANA_1.png

  • Semantic data structure with Core data services and New SAP Fiori UX for any device (mobile, desktop, tablet) is out of box with S/4 HANA.

Architecture.png

 

Reference:SAP TechEd2015

S/4HANA at TechEd 2015 Barcelona

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Are you on your way to TechEd Barcelona? One of the topics I hope you have on your list is S/4HANA. There will be plenty of S/4HANA content, so much it might be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my recommendations.

 

Sessions

 

  • TEC 103: SAP S/4HANA overview, strategy, and roadmap
  • TEC 114: SAP S/4HANA migration and upgrade paths
  • TEC 800: SAP S/4HANA roadmap and Q&A
  • TEC 116: Key SAP S/4HANA use cases and how to enable them
  • TEC 206: Architecture and components of SAP S/4HANA

 

The sessions listed above are offered twice--the link is for the first instance.

 

For a complete list of all the S/4HANA sessions, check the session catalog.

 

Showcase

 

If you would like to talk directly with us about S/4HANA, be sure to stop by the Showcase in Hall 7. There you can ask the questions you want to ask and get a level of personal attention that is not possible in the lecture sessions. We have 4 "pods" in the showcase:

 

  1. Explore: general questions about S/4HANA and business use cases
  2. Deploy: information on the journey to S/4HANA, including the latest User Assistance technologies
  3. Extend: how to do in-application extensibility, including custom user fields and code
  4. Analyze: the embedded analytic capability within S/4HANA itself

 

Stop by the showcase to ask questions, see a quick demo, or just hear more about S/4HANA.

 

I hope you have a safe and productive trip to Barcelona--vamanos!

SAP S/4HANA - Frequently Asked Questions - Part 8 - 1511 update

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Check out the updates and news for SAP S/4HANA 1511 edition. Especially the comprehensive FAQ document here: www.sap.com/s4hana. We thought it would be good for the community to highlight some of them on SCN in the good tradition of the FAQ series.

 

And lets start with a good repeat: What is SAP S/4HANA?

SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is SAP’s next-generation Digital Core and is a new product. With SAP S/4HANA, we are building on the success of the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA with a completely new and re-imagined suite

 

  • SAP S/4HANA is running on SAP HANA for massive simplifications (simplified data model: no indexes, no aggregates, no redundancies) and innovations (for example, open in-memory platform for advanced applications predicting, recommending, and simulating)
  • SAP S/4HANA is natively designed with SAP Fiori UX, offering an integrated user experience with modern usability and instant insight on any device (role-based, three steps max to get the job done, mobile-first, consistent experience across lines of business)
  • SAP S/4HANA is natively connected to the Internet of Things and business networks for real-time collaboration (planned: machine-to-machine, Ariba Network, Concur) in the networked economy
  • SAP S/4HANA is natively engineered for providing choice of deployment (on premise, cloud and hybrid)
  • SAP S/4HANA is natively born for easy adoption (guided, configuration, and easy on-boarding, from the discovery of the solution through cloud trials to deployment with pre-configured best practices)
  • In addition, SAP HANA Cloud Platform serves as open extension, agility layer for SAP S/4HANA. The extensions built on the cloud platform can run against either deployment of SAP S/4HANA: in the cloud and on premise.


What are the key benefits for a customer to move now to SAP S/4HANA?

SAP’s vision and strategy is to help customers run simple in the digital economy. To deliver on this mission, we are redefining how enterprise software creates value.


SAP S/4HANA is designed to drive instant value across lines of business and industries with the ultimate sophistication: simplicity.

From a business value perspective, this means that SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to reinvent business models and drive new revenues and profits. First, enterprises can now easily connect to people, devices, and business networks to deliver new value to their customers on any channel – the Internet of Things and Big Data become accessible to any business. Second, enterprises can dramatically simplify their processes, drive them in real time and change them as needed to gain new efficiencies – no more batch processing is required. And finally, business users can now get any insight on any data from anywhere in real-time: planning, execution, prediction, and simulation – decisions may be made on the fly with a high level of granularity for faster business impact.


From an IT value perspective, this means that SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to simplify the landscape and help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) with SAP HANA as the great simplifier. First, enterprises can now reduce their data footprint and work with larger data sets in one system (for example with industry or application function re-integrated that was stand alone before, to save hardware costs, operational costs, time and reduce complexity. Second, innovation is also made simple with leveraging an open platform (SAP HANA Cloud Platform) to drive advanced applications – for example, predicting, recommending, and simulating – while protecting existing investments. Third, business users can leverage a simple and role-based user experience based on modern design principles which minimizes training efforts while increases productivity as it combines information from various sources at the point where decisions are made. We also support customers with simple configuration: setting up the system and during its use. And finally, enterprises get choice of deployment: cloud, on premise, and even support of hybrid scenarios to drive quick time-to-value and reflect current reality of customer solution landscapes.

 

SAP S/4HANA is only built on SAP HANA because, as of today, only the SAP HANA platform can deliver such level of massive simplifications and innovations.


How is SAP S/4HANA available to the market?

SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, and SAP S/4HANA cloud edition are available for customers in all industries and regions.

SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition follows a yearly innovation cycle and SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition follows a quarterly innovation cycle.

In November 2015 (1511) updates have been released for both, SAP S/4HANA, on-premise and cloud edition.


What is new in SAP S/4HANA?

In November 2015, SAP delivered a massive wave of simplification and innovation in the core of SAP S/4HANA. With this delivery, enterprises can drive unprecedented business value with innovative use-cases - in core financial and operational areas such as in logistics – taking full advantage of a simplified data model and a responsive user experience.

Key simplifications and innovations include:

  • Optimized working capital with new accounts payables and receivables cockpits
  • Decreased stock buffers with simplified data model in inventory management for real-time, high-volume processing
  • Increased visibility with real-time stock and material flow insight
  • Reduced manufacturing cycle time with streamlined material flow for internal requirements (MRP)
  • Augmented reactivity with real-time monitoring of production orders regarding flow and critical issues
  • Improved operational decisions with easy simulation of supply alternatives
  • Lower procurement costs with standard integration to the Ariba Business Network
  • Better customer service with new sales order fulfillment cockpit for instantly identifying bottlenecks and issues



What is the current business scope of the SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition?

We worked closely with our customers to identify where digitized operations could provide the most value. The result is a massive wave of simplification and innovation in the core that covers critical business processes in finance, sales, service, sourcing and procurement, manufacturing, supply chain, asset management, and research and development, and human resources.


The visual below highlights the business scope of the next update for the SAP S/4HANA on-premise edition: in blue, the simplifications and innovations that are part of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management; in grey, the simplifications and innovations that are outside, and natively integrated, the scope of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. 

Slide1.jpg

Customers will be able to drive end-to-end digitized operations across their key business functions via a fully digitized enterprise management core solution named: SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. SAP S/4HAN

A Enterprise Management solution represents the core solution covering all mission-critical processes of an enterprise. It represents our foundational core solution natively built on the SAP HANA platform and designed with SAP Fiori UX.


SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management covers all core business processes (e.g. order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, plan-to-product, request-to-service) and core capabilities such as core finance as well as a variety of more specialized line of business and industry capabilities. It will also deliver native integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central for world-class HR functionality as well as into the Ariba Network to help our customers fully leverage the power of the buyers’ network.

Slide2.jpg

What is the business scope of the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition?

The next update to the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition will be released in November 2015 following the quarterly innovation cycle.

SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition currently covers specific business scenarios for the marketing line of business and the professional services industry as well as the most essential scenarios to run an entire enterprise in the cloud with a digital core such as finance, procurement, sales, inventory management, project system, and product lifecycle management, plus integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP hybris Marketing, Field Glass (planned) and SAP Jam. Three offerings are currently available as part of the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition:

  • SAP S/4HANA, cloud marketing edition – for the marketing line of business
  • SAP S/4HANA, cloud project services edition – for the professional services industry
  • SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition – for a full ERP business scope – cloud enterprise edition is the equivalent to the Enterprise Management on premise offering


What does the term “Materials Management & Operations” mean?

The term SAP Simple Logistics (sLOG) was an internal Project Name. The represented functionality can best described with the term “Material Management & Operations (MMO)”. This term is an umbrella term, as we combine multiple Line of businesses:

  • Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain
  • Sourcing & Procurement
  • Sales

It does not represent a formal product name.

What is the scope of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management, key area Materials Management & Operations?

Innovations in Materials Management & Operations fall into 3 different categories.

 

The first category is role-based user experience, with a new Responsive design. The UIs run on any devices, desktops, tablets, smart phones, and even smart watches and have been redesigned for exception-bases issue handling.

The second category is a set of innovations are in the SAP S/4HANA Core, which has been modernized by simplifying & optimizing the technology footprint, and by collapsing Online Transaction Processing & Online Analytical Processing to make the functionality more relevant and designed for data-driven businesses.

 

The third category is the elimination of functional redundancies which have been built into the Business Suite over the years resulting in a simplified suite.

 

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What are SAP S/4HANA <LoB> solutions?

The SAP S/4HANA <LoB> solutions are solutions that combine the core capabilities included in the SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management solution (on-premise) and SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition with each LoB solution in our portfolio (on-premise and cloud). Examples include SAP Cash Management for finance; SAP SuccessFactors solutions in human resources; the Ariba Network in procurement, and SAP hybris Cloud4Customers solutions in marketing and commerce and sales/services.

 

The new branding reinforces the completeness and diversity of SAP solutions. For example, SAP S/4HANA Finance (formerly SAP Simple Finance) scope is unchanged and covers the entire portfolio of finance solutions across SAP ERP Financials, SAP solutions for enterprise performance management (SAP EPM), SAP BPC, SAP solutions for governance, risk, and compliance (SAP GRC), SAP solutions for business intelligence, Ariba, and Concur. Some of this solutions are licensed separately.


What SAP S/4HANA industry solutions are available?

Both, SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition and SAP S/4HANA cloud edition are open to customers of all industries. As expected, the functional depth and support of specific industry scenarios is larger for the on-premise edition than for the cloud edition, as the latter one focusses on more standardized and streamlined processes. Both in the cloud and on-premise edition support for industry-specific solutions is planned according to market prioritization. Current status of planned innovations is outlined in the external SAP S/4HANA roadmap on Service Marketplace (here).


What is the product map and roadmap for SAP S/4HANA?

SAP customers and partners can access the detailed product map in the respective repositories and the roadmap on the SAP Service Marketplace: here

Which SAP S/4HANA edition do you recommend for my enterprise?

 

The SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition is designed for enterprises across industries that need a deep and broad level of functionality combined with a high degree of flexibility in configuration and customization.

Existing SAP customers can use the SAP S/4HANA Business Scenario Recommendation tool, a self-service tool designed to help you identify the most valuable digitized business scenarios for your enterprise The Business Scenario Recommendations report will use your current SAP software usage information and generate from a personalized report that will be e-mailed to you within five days to learn how SAP S/4HANA can help enhance your company’s current performance and competitiveness.

 

Access the SAP S/4HANA Business Scenario Recommendation tool here.

 

The SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is designed for enterprises across all industries that need a standardized cloud offering primarily covering the core business scenarios of an enterprise or specific business scenarios of lines of business - combined with a fast innovation cycle (quarterly).

 

In addition, the SAP S/4HANA editions offer the opportunity for customers to deploy real hybrid scenarios - combining on-premise and cloud solutions - for unprecedented IT flexibility and accelerated business innovation.


Where can I find customer SAP S/4HANA enablement material?

The customer journey to SAP S/4HANA has been enriched to provide end-to-end support to business and IT audiences. SAP offers both educational and training materials to enable our customers on their digital transformation journey with SAP S/4HANA. We recommend our customers make use of the following enablement materials:

 

SAP S/4HANA Customer Adoption Journey Map: This interactive, 5 step journey map outlines how customers can establish a digital core and drive time-to-value with our top SAP S/4HANA digital offers to existing SAP Business Suite customers and new customers. It includes our top business and IT audience assets.

 

SAP S/4HANA openSAP Courses: There are SAP S/4HANA specific courses available via openSAP, these include: SAP S/4HANA in a Nutshell, SAP S/4HANA – Deep Dive and SAP S/4HANA – Use Cases.

 

SAP Community Network and especially there the SAP S/4HANA Cookbook: This living online ‘cookbook’ includes functional capabilities, transition options, extensibility, adaptation, integration information as well as education & service offerings by SAP.


Where can I find Partner SAP S/4HANA enablement materials?

Partner specific enablement materials about SAP S/4HANA are available on the SAP Partner Portal SAP S/4HANA Training & Education page.


How can I try SAP S/4HANA?

SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition trial: A free 14-day cloud edition trial system is available to help you experience the value of simplicity across key business scenarios: project manager scenario, cash manager scenario, general ledger accountant scenario, accounts receivable accountant scenario, accounts payable accountant scenario.cYou can access the cloud trial on: www.sap.com/s4hana-trial

 

SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition trial: Explore SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition with a 30-day trial and evaluate digitized business processes—such as order-to-cash or procure-to-pay—across your key enterprise functions.You can access the on-premise trial on: www.sap.com/s4hana-trial


Does SAP provide prepackaged integration for SAP S/4HANA to the existing cloud solutions from SAP?

Yes, this service is provided as SAP Rapid Deployment solutions with SAP S/4HANA and is delivered with prepackaged integration (for example integration between SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA).

SAP S/4HANA delivers high-volume transaction processing (OLTP) and high volume real-time analytical processes (OLAP) based on a unified data model without the redundant data layers typically required by traditional RDBMS based systems. This reduces TCO while providing new opportunities to increase business value from existing investments.

Examples for redundant data layers are custom-built layers based on database tuning efforts such as secondary indexes, or application built-in performance accelerators such as aggregate tables or multiple general ledger versions for different managerial reporting needs.

The massive simplifications of the data model and the data processing layers enable business and technological innovations on a broad scale across all lines-of-business and industry solutions.

The new application architecture simplifies system landscape architectures and accelerates cloud deployments on an economical scale.

We have also introduced a dedicated implementation methodology with SAP Activate, details below and here: http://www.sap.com/activate.


What is SAP Activate?

SAP Activate is the innovation adoption framework that expedites SAP S/4HANA implementations throughout the customer lifecycle. It offers ready-to-run digitized business and technology processes, guided configuration, and next-generation methodology. SAP Activate supports customers at multiple starting points, including new implementation, system conversion, and landscape transformation.

 

  • SAP Best Practices packages provide ready-to-run digitized business and technology processes optimized for SAP S/4HANA. Leveraging SAP’s expertise and experience for standard processes helps deliver predictable results and saves time, so you can focus your efforts on innovation. Our best practices include business processes such as finance and logistics. They are designed to guide you through the optimal integration and migration scenario, whether you are moving from a legacy SAP software system or from a third-party database. SAP S/4HANA includes a reference solution for running in the cloud or on premise in addition to details for enhancing processes to fit your needs and integrate with line-of-business cloud solutions.
  • Guided configuration is the content lifecycle management tool that helps you configure and test chosen SAP Best Practices. Now you can configure, test, and receive support in data migration processes that are needed for your selected best practices. You have the option to add or update your preferred best practices at a later time. Automated updates and intuitive configuration changes support initial implementation and help you adopt ongoing innovation more quickly, with minimal disruption, while tracking your configuration history. The result? Your business users can customize preconfigured business processes – from charts of accounts to approval thresholds – without IT involvement.
  • SAP Activate methodology is SAP’s new software implementation methodology that builds on proven approaches and SAP’s experience to offer a consistent, agile method for any deployment type – cloud, on premise, hybrid, or mobile. It offers support for initial implementation and continuous innovation with SAP S/4HANA. The implementation best practices walk project teams through planning, build, and deployment of their SAP solution. SAP Activate methodology caters to customer-specific configuration and extension requirements to reflect each customer’s own business practices while remaining extremely scalable – nimble enough for smaller engagements and robust enough for larger projects.

SAP Activate gives you the comfort to advance quickly and to achieve fast outcomes with SAP S/4HANA, whatever your current configuration. For more information, visit the SAP Activate landing page.

What is the typical journey for an existing SAP Business Suite customer?

Moving to SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition for a typical ERP 6.x customer will require a database migration to SAP HANA followed by the installation of the new code. Both database migration and new code installation can be completed in one step.

Moving to SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition for a SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customer is even faster as only the installation of the new code is required since the SAP HANA database migration has already been performed.

Both journeys are well proven in the market with several hundred live SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customers as well as SAP Simple Finance live customers.


What is the typical journey for a net-new customer?

The journey is defined by a net-new implementation of an SAP S/4HANA system with simpler adoption – example: guided configuration, easy onboarding from the discovery of the solution through cloud trials to the deployment with preconfigured best practices. We defined three major scenarios supported by tools and pre-configuration delivered through our SAP Rapid Deployment solutions:

You can explore the full journey map for a comprehensive overview here


How can SAP partners support the move of a customer to SAP S/4HANA?

SAP has an established partner ecosystem (value-added retailers and systems integrators) that is ready to resell and service SAP S/4HANA for our joint existing and new customers to implement future innovations. More than 50% of the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA projects were managed by partners and more than 80% of SAP S/4HANA projects are currently managed by partners.

Partners and SAP will support customers in their journey with predefined migration, system conversion in the cloud, and deployment packages for quicker time to value. Companies of all sizes will benefit from the high-quality service and reseller capabilities our partners provide.


What happens to existing modifications when a customer moves to SAP S4/HANA?

In any scenario, the move to SAP S/4HANA is a great opportunity to validate the existing extensions and modifications and simplify your solution. It is not unusual for customers to realize that 50% of the extensions and modifications that hamper fast release cycles and require long test cycles were no longer necessary to run the business.

In general, when moving to SAP S/4HANA, customers can leverage the SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) to build and operate extensions to the SAP core as well as own applications. HCP is a common extension platform for all SAP products,  offering a SAP Fiori stack, a SAP HANA database, a full-fledged development environment and even additional choices, such as the integration of open source solutions.  It is the ideal platform for all custom apps which operate in a self-contained way, are only loosely coupled with SAP S/4HANA or reach to the outside world. This kind of extensibility is called "side-by-side extensibility" and has the advantage that extensions run in a safe environment so that innovation packages can be easily applied to the SAP S/4HANA core.  The SAP S/4HANA core system remains “clean” and can be quickly and easily updated when new innovations are added, in just the same way that consumer mobile apps are updated on a regular basis.


Further, the SAP S/4HANA stack can also be directly extended by partners and customers – in a process that we call "in-app extensibility".

For on-premise deployment existing customer and partner extensions, and even modifications can be used. It is only necessary to adapt them according to the simplification SAP has applied to SAP S/4HANA compared to the SAP Business Suite (e.g. transition of index tables into SAP HANA compatibility views). All these changes are described in a simplification database which can be downloaded from the SAP Market Place. Even more, a custom code migration tool exists which analyses custom code and its usage, resulting in a precise list of extensions and modifications which have to be reworked.

In the cloud deployment, key user extensibility is the recommended approach for in-app extensibility.  Within the SAP Fiori UX key users can adapt UIs, create field extensions or even define simple custom business logic at selected places. The underlying SAP S/4HANA extension framework isolates extensions from the core and thus drives safeguard agility for cloud deployments. To drive agility, key user extensibility is also available for on-premise deployments. Existing extensions and modifications cannot be transformed into key user extensions, but a data migration into key user extensions will be offered.


What happens to existing legacy interfaces if a customer moves to SAP S/4HANA?

SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, currently supports the existing published legacy interfaces.


How does SAP S/4HANA relate to and coexist with the existing SAP landscapes?

A single installation can run either SAP S/4HANA or the traditional SAP Business Suite (on SAP HANA or any DB) but not both at the same time. However, customers can decide to move separate installations within their landscape individually to SAP S/4HANA and do not need a “big bang” migration for their whole system landscape. Thus, customers can run in a mixed environment with some installations running SAP S/4HANA and others the traditional SAP Business Suite (on SAP HANA or any DB). As SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite are using semantically consistent data structures, a move to SAP S/4HANA is non-disruptive.


Can a customer choose to run the traditional SAP user interface and custom screens or is SAP Fiori mandatory?

All SAP S/4HANA innovations are intended to be delivered with SAP Fiori UX providing the same experience on all devices. However, a customer using SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition can still use the traditional user interfaces.


How does SAP S/4HANA relate to SAP Business ByDesign and SAP Business One?

SAP S/4HANA, SAP ByDesign and SAP Business One Cloud complement each other regarding  SAP’s ERP Cloud solution portfolio. None of these solutions are intended to be replaced by the other. While SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Edition is predominantly leveraged as a large enterprise solution, SAP ByDesign has been optimized predominantly for mid-market companies and subsidiaries of large enterprises.

SAP Business One addresses the market segment of smaller customers.

 

How does SAP S/4HANA relate to SAP BW?

SAP BW will continue to represent the preferred solution for strategic enterprise data warehousing to help customers consolidate data from different sources (including SAP and non-SAP data sources) and get a consistent view across the enterprise. SAP BW has also been optimized to run on the SAP HANA platform: SAP BW powered by SAP HANA. SAP S/4HANA delivers built-in real-time operational reporting capabilities covering all typical analytics use-cases in the context of the suite. Therefore, SAP BW will continue to act as our central enterprise data warehouse solution.


Where can I learn more?

Visit us on sap.com/s4hana and scn.sap.com/community/s4hana for more information and details on the next generation business suite including use case information, learning resources, technical cookbook documentation and more.

 
 

Keep the feedback and your questions coming, we will prioritize accordingly and update our FAQ for you. Keep the feedback coming.
Also check frequently sap.com/s4hana.

 

Lets stay connected @SDenecken

SAP S/4 HANA - The next Generation Business Suite: Master data changes in the world of new SAP S/4 HANA

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To make the business run simple in the digital economy, SAP is coming up with some changes in master data fields in material master, customer and vendors master to keep it simple, to avoid data redundancy and to take out non-value addition fields in product master.

Some of my observations which really help clients is to manage the data from a single screen with multiple table using one T code.  For example, vendor and customer master transactions will be replaced in new release (example T codes such as XK, VK, MK,  XD series) with business partner functionality. The clients who implemented Financial supply chain management ( FSCM), the business partner functionality is not something new that  used to take care of credit management, collections etc. With this change, both customers and vendors (aka business partner) can be maintained using a single transaction. It is a major shift for the existing clients who are planning to migrate to S/4 HANA and my thinking is that it is going to reduce the data maintenance work in future. Also MASS functionality that used to take care of mass changes of business partner data and item master will be no more and hopefully SAP come up with a new functionality that will make mass change much easier.

 

From product master point of view, the biggest advantage is that material number field length got increased to 40 from 18. This was a big pain in most of our implementations, where the legacy system material master field length used to be always more than 18. This will be a big relief for the future implementations. SAP could have given thought to keep material description field more than 40 characters. With the new change, both product master and description fields’ lengths are same.


To manage the business needs of business trade functionality, a new set of fields got added in product and this will help to handle GTS functionality in an effective way. Also, some of the MRP fields which are rarely used in business have been taken out. For example, MRP views fields of item master i.e Storage location based MRP run fields have been taken out so that MRP area functionality can be used to take care of storage location MRP run. Since HANA in-memory platform is going to add a clear cut distinction in reporting in a multi-dimensional way and the reports can be pulled dynamically, the LIS functionality will become  obsolete one in future which in turn help to take out lot of redundant data, pre-aggregate data and in turn help the performance of the system.  These are some of my observations and do share your thoughts to get ready for SAP S/4 HANA. The next generation business suite implementations…




SAP S/4HANA 1511 - It's MORE about the ROADMAP to NEAR FUTURE

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The wait is finally over.....  SAP S/4HANA 1511 is released

 

At high-level the functional benefits from SAP S/4HANA 1511 release look promising and as anticipated... .

http://scn.sap.com/people/monika.patel/blog/2015/11/13/sap-s4hana-1511

 

And while the "Simplification List" is officially awaited -(as this blog is being written)--

https://uacp.hana.ondemand.com/http.svc/rc/PRODUCTION/pdfa4322f56824ae221e10000000a4450e5/1511%20000/en-US/SIMPL_OP1511.pdf

 

However based on available content on help.sap.com and SAP NOTES (Release Note, Restrictions Notes and other NOTES), I have tried to create a document that captures in same line - key "Changes - the good and the not-so-good" in each Functional Area

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-68846

 

It looks like while the "End-Product" SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Edition may be quite promising ... however 1511 version this is just the beginning of the journey...

 

One thing is very clear -- MANY Business benefits may not come STRATIGHT from "MAJOR NEW INNOVATIONS" as a "NEW FEATURE and FUNCTIONALITY on the PLATE", however, from the long-listing of (may be) smaller but significant simplifications

http://scn.sap.com/community/s4hana/blog/2015/11/11/sap-s4-hana--the-next-generation-business-suite-master-data-changes-in-the-world-of-new-sap-s4-hana

that the product has to offer in 1511 edition and the subsequent releases, many business benefits and use case can be "CARVED out" and will need "Visualization", "identification"  and "mapping" to address various and specific business pain-areas.

 

Of interest is also the "Integration with Existing landscape as well as "consolidation and strengthening of existing functionalities in S/4HANA Solution"

 

Supported by the "Technical" simplification, SAP S/4HANA 1511 is all and more about "New" ways of "Thinking" and "Doing Business" with a mindset towards "Exploring & Exploiting" technological capabilities.

 

 

I look forward to explore 1511 edition features and functionalities.


SAP S/4 HANA Logistics – Production planning processes changes to run business in a simple and faster way in a digital world

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Within just few months after the release of SAP S/4 HANA, SAP’s next generation business suite with Logistics solution lined up for  release to the customer this month. A quick analysis of the features in the planning component has been analyzed and some of my observations are shared here. Although my initial guess was that the primary focus of SAP was on the simplification of tables. Code optimization and release of Fiori apps, but there are quite a good number of changes in transactional part side in planning area.


mrp_blog_1.png

 

Sales and Operations Planning:  The current ECC functionality of SOP is going to be replaced with integrated business planning (IBP) in a long run. Since IBP (S&OP on HANA)  supports all SOP features along with advanced statistical forecasting techniques, multi-level demand and supply planning, collaboration tools and the most user-friendly excel based UI and web-based UI, what-if scenarios which will definitely going to bring much value than ECC-SOP for new customers and for the existing customer who are planning to implement IBP-SOP. Also since SAP has been investing more effort in enhancing IBP functionality than APO, it is a right thing to invest in IBP rather than go with conventional SOP approach. Of course, there is an additional cost associated to install and implement IBP functionality but it is worth enough to invest.

 

Storage location based MRP run is no longer supported - With S/4 HANA Logistics, there is no provision to exclude MRP run for a single storage location from the pre-defined MRP parameter set for plant-material combination. In ECC 6.0, the MRP run of the excluded storage location can be handled using reorder point planning with a maximum lot sizing procedure. Since storage location MRP area concept will be used to take care of the planning of each storage location, it reduces number of fields from material master related to storage location MRP planning. It also helps to plan storage location MRP with any planning type such as PD, P1 etc…

 

MRP run on HANA: MRP run has been optimized to the maximum extent using MRP live (MD01N transaction) functionality and Customers are having an option to go in the path of either classical MRP on HANA platform   or to go with MRP live. Since MRP Live reads the data, calculates shortage and writes planned orders at database level instead of performing at Application server level, there will be a considerable improvement in performance.


mrp_blog_2.jpg

 

 

MRP live differs from classic MRP in the following ways.

 

  1. 1. MRP live does not generate MRP list: By using S/4 HANA, there is much improvement in the performance of the system, hence MD04 ( stock requirement list ) output will be much faster which eliminated the need to view the old results i.e  MRP list.
  2. 2. Multi-level, make to order planning ( MD50) is not optimized for HANA: Since this transaction is to take care of performance issue, there is no further refinement required. With HANA platform, it will be optimized further.
  3. 3. Individual project planning (MD50) not optimized for HANA.
  4. 4. MRP live always creates purchases requisitions: It is an unnecessary process step of converting planned order to purchase requisition that has been eliminated by SAP. This help the amount of work to be performed by purchaser ( in some cases MRP controller  used to handle)  who used to take care of converting planned orders to purchase requisition.

 

  1. S/4 HANA no more support net change plan in the planning horizon (NETPL).  With the improvement in MRP run with HANA (both classic and MRP live), NETPL is a redundant one and the system can generate planned orders outside planning horizon. Thanks to HANA platformJ.   A new planning file (PPH_DBMV) replaced the old planning file entry tables MDVM/MDVL and DBVM/DBVL to improve the performance in reading planning file entries.

 

Forecast based planning:  Going forward with S/4 HANA Logistics, Forecast based planning will be moved out and the suggested approach is to go with a normal MRP type PD, P1,P2,P3 or P4.  As per SAP team thought process, Forecast based planning approach is symmetrical to planned independent requirement maintenance table derived from statistical forecasting. This may be true for finished product where PIR functionality used. But in some scenarios where PIR maintenance functionality not used, Forecast based planning is a required functionality.

 

Graphical planning table for capacity evaluation: The classical graphical planning table has lot of disadvantages such as complicated customizing, non-user friendly, not suitable for web-based environment, Capacity locking issues etc.  With the revised approach,  a drag and drop approach has been used to change the start dates of the operations and resources. But there is no major investment made to make it user friendly and also to make it a web based tool.

 

LIS replacement with a powerful HANA based platform: with a powerful UI s which will provide reports dynamically with a multi-dimensional reporting. Once the production planning analytics reports are available, the LIS can be switched off which will take out lot of redundant data, pre-aggregated data, locking conflict which in turn will improve the performance. Also LIS supports with material number of 30 characters and SAP is not going to invest time in LIS anymore.

 

Heard in the beginning that APO component - PPDS (Production Planning and detailed scheduling) will be a part of S/4 HANA logistics first version, but it looks like that SAP has postposed this task to the next release.  With a major shift in SAP strategy to match with digital transformation, there is a lot of learning required for the SAP professionals to enable the technology changes to fit into the business needs. Please share your thoughts…

Principles , features , Directions , methodology and market trend with SAP S/4 HANA 1511 Update

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S/4 HANA was launched in February’2015 with its initial business innovation as ‘Simple Finance’ with expectation of next innovation for ‘ Simple logistics’ in Q4’2015.  SAP released S/4 HANA on-premise edition for 1511 in Nov’15 and it appears that SAP is re-designing the most of its applications and business functions on the following


Principles

  • HANA capability (In memory database with ‘On the fly’ calculation, Combination of Row and column based data structure , simplified data model with no aggregates & indexes, real time & high volume processing , Elimination of locking , increased throughput) in
    • Finance (No need for reconciliation of FI & CO with One line item table as single source of data)
    • Production planning (Reduced cycle time for MRP with no need for long running batch jobs )
    • Inventory management (Real time alerts , reduced safety stock)
    • Procurement (Real time calculation of procurement KPI)
    • Material valuation (Multi currency usage , multiple valuation methods)
    • Period end financial closure (Much faster declaration of financial results for interim analysis and to stock exchange & share holders)
    • Reporting  in all business functions (Real time with simulation & predictive analysis  due to OLTP & OLAP capability in same system)
  • Fiori (Intuitive user experience) in
    • Order management for Sales representative (Sales order fulfillment cockpit for identification of issues and its resolution)
    • Procurement for Procurement clerk (Single cockpit for purchasing approvals with all information)
    • Planning for Material planner (Simulate supply alternatives)
  • Unifying other applications to core ECC
    • Features of existing applications (like SCM, CRM, PLM, GTS etc) and newly acquired cloud solutions (like Ariba, Success factor etc) are being made available in ECC (being terms as ‘Digital core’).


Features

Below slide is presented in session with partners on 13th Nov.

 

Capture.PNG

 

Following links & notes may be accessed for further details on released features.

http://help.sap.com/s4hana_op_1511

2189824 - SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511: Release Information Note

2214213 - SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511: Restriction Note

2214409 - SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511: Compatible Add-ons

PDF attached to note 2214409 states that the applications (GTS11.0 , MDG 8.0 etc) have been added on to digital core , it also says that certain products (like EWM9.3 , Rail car mgmt 6.17) ‘will not be released’ as Add ons , we need to see what it means actually or SAP’s plan on these products with S/4 HANA. However, it is quite clear that SAP will release many ‘Add on’ in future releases for native integration with ECC on S/4 HANA .

 

Directions

ECC Core is now being named as ‘Digital core’ and most of the ECC modules (FI , CO , SD , PP , MM , LE , QM , PS , PM) are being adapted to cloud . As it appears CRM , SRM , SCM applications have been moved to Core for ‘On premise’ and C4C , Ariba and IBP have also been added as cloud solutions as extensions to core. List of functionalities for these extensions are not yet clear.  However, it is quite clear that SAP is working towards

 

 

Also find that ECC WM has not been adapted to cloud, does it mean SAP will not do any further development in ECC WM (as declared earlier) and EWM (also available in cloud) will be natively integrated with digital core ?

 

Change of name of product

SAP changes the name of the product as the product evolves and the same has happened with Simple Logistics too. SAP has now renamed Simple logistics as S/4 HANA Logistics which will comprise

  • S/4 HANA Sales
  • S/4 HANA Manufacturing
  • S/4 HANA Supply chain
  • S/4 HANA Sourcing and procurement


New methodology

SAP also launched new methodology ‘SAP Activate’ for new implementations, system conversions, landscape transformations for best practices & guided configurations with agile project delivery. It is the successor of the ASAP 8 methodology for on-premise and SAP Launch methodologies for cloud solutions.

 

Market  trend

S/4 HANA can only be deployed in HANA database and that is a real threat to other database manufacturer’s. Refer URL http://news.sap.com/sap-hana-must-be-hurting-oracle. There are 22000 customers using SAP. There are active discussions in Pre-sales / project discussions on migration to HANA database at least a first step. SAP says that 80% migrations are being done by SI (System integrator) and hence that is a huge opportunity for SI in next few years.


SAP has retrofitted only a part of whole functionalities to S/4 HANA and it will take some time in years to complete it. But it is quite apparent that implementation of S/4 HANA will take much less time (through guided configurations , less interfaces etc) for a SI and the role of SI in supporting S/4 HANA applications also will get reduced. Same logic goes for Functional consultants also as there will be less scope for configurations and support. But it will take at least 10 years (my guess) from now to reach that stage and it also depends on many other market factors. Journey with S/4 HANA has just started and we need to see how market catches up or reacts to these innovations with HANA’s USP in near / mid and long term!!

SAP S/4HANA - Frequently Asked Questions - Part 9 - Q42015 update

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Time for another quick update on our FAQ series, in time for our 1511 release update for SAP S/4HANA.

 


What is SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management?

S4H-Suite.png

 

At the center of SAP S/4HANA Suite we have a SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management, which has been built by simplifying the SAP ERP solution and starting to re-integrate and simplifying portions of the SAP Business Suite products like SAP SRM, CRM and SCM into this core. The SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is available on-premise and in the cloud, with different licensing / subscription models.


The S/4HANA Digital Core is the description for the „ECC component“ we deliver as part of SAP S/4HANA. This can be more than the SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management, as some elements that are technically delivered as part of the core will be positioned and licensed separately.

 

What is the content of SAP S/4HANA on-premise 1511 delivery?


As of Q4/2015 we are introducing SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management solution. This will be updated with a full ERP scope and subsequently following an industry enablement roadmap.

S4H-Suite-scope.png

 

The solutions, Streamlines Procure to Pay, Accelerated Plan to Product, Optimized Order to Cash, Enhanced Request to Service, Core Human Resources and Core Finance within the blue box represents the business priorities. The white boxes represents the End to end Solutions.

 

What is the content of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1511 delivery?


The scope of SAP S/4HANA Cloud enterprise edition solution is close to a full ERP scope (Business All in One scope) however focusing on supporting standard scenarios. SAP S/4HANA Cloud marketing edition Cloud project services edition providing simplified key scenarios with a clear focus and priority on the cloud qualities, which are guaranteed across all UIs and all processes to ensure that a true SaaS solution is offered.


Where did the term Simple Logistics aka sLOG go?

 

Simple Logistics or sLOG was an internal working name for the S/4HANA simplifications in that specific area. For the official launch and going forward, we will use the umbrella term ‘Materials Management & Operations’ instead of ‘sLogistics’ or ‘sLOG’. The scope of Materials Management & Operations includes all modules except Finance and HR. You will find the information in the SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management roadmap under the respective end-to-end processes.

 

What means the new term “Materials Management & Operations?

SAP Simple Logistics was an internal Project Name and now we rename this term to “Material Management & Operations”. This term is an Umbrella term, as we combine multiple LOB:

  • Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain
  • Sourcing & Procurement
  • Sales

 

What is the scope of Materials Management & Operations in S/4HANA (Enterprise Management)?


Innovations in Materials Management & Operations fall into 3 different categories.

The one is role-based user experience, with a new Responsive design. The UIs run on any devices, desktops, tablets, smart phones, and even smart watches and have been redesigned for exception-bases issue handling.

Second set of innovations are in the S/4HANA Core, which has been modernized by simplifying & optimizing the technology footprint, and by collapsing Online Transaction Processing & Online Analytical Processing to make the functionality more relevant and designed for data-driven businesses.

Thirdly, by eliminating functional redundancieswhich have been built into the Business Suite over the years.  The user benefits from a superior solution.


Innovation Highlights achieved in SAP S/4HANA for this area

  • Reduce cycle time by optimizing material flow for Internal requirements (MRP)
  • Gather Real-time stock & material flow insight with pre-built analytical views
  • Material Planner can easily simulate supply alternatives
  • Available to promise: New ATP algorithm based on HANA embedded in mass component check in production
  • Leverage simplified data model of inventory management for real-time, high-volume processing
  • Easy to consume data model supporting flexible analytics
  • Real-time alerts based on current stock requirements situation
  • Decrease stock buffers due to better transparency & insights
  • Improve percentage on-time delivery
  • Elimination of locking, increased throughput for standard price utilizing material ledger valuation, streamlining multi currency usage, and multiple valuation methods

 

What is the “Simplification Item Database” which is called in connection with SAP S/4HANA?


To support the customer to detect custom code which need to be adapted moving to SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition a customer can verify his current custom code based on the offered custom code analysis tools (as part of the NW 7.50). The customer can verify if his current custom code complies with the SAP S/4HANA data structures and scope.

In the context of custom code management a central component is a data store called "Simplification Item Database" that will contain all information about the changes that have taken place between the classical Business Suite and SAP S/4HANA. The following figure describes basically the supporting custom code management approach related to SAP S/4HANA.

 

S4H-SimpDB.png

 

The Custom Code Management Tools offer the opportunity to analyses the impact on custom code of a future move to SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition in current customers SAP Business Suite.

 


Do you have SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management Simplification examples?

 

Simplification example 1 (Procurement): Operational Procurement – Self Service Requisitioning

Business Context:

  • Give employees self-service requisition capabilities to create, manage, and track their own orders efficiently 
  • Simplify the purchasing process for casual users and employees and enable employees to purchase goods and services directly, while ensuring they are following purchasing policies and pricing agreements and using preferred suppliers. Automate, tightly control, and streamline the purchasing process using cross-catalog search, catalog-driven pricing, contract logic, and an approval workflow.
  • Use Ariba Procurement Content for catalog buying and efficient catalog content management

Simplification:

  • The ERP Shopping Cart functionality is no longer necessary within SAP S/4HANA, on premise edition 1511 thanks to the new SAP S/4HANA Self Service Requisitioning functionality.
  • Impact: the SRM-MDM Catalog is not part of SAP S/4HANA delivery. However, SRM-MDM catalogs can be connected like all other OCI capable third party catalogs.

 

 

Simplification example 2 (Finance): Accounting and Financial Close - Financial Reporting

Business Context:

  • Streamline financial reporting and multidimensional analysis 
  • Reduce risk and cost of real-time financial reporting and multidimensional data analysis for accounting standards with SAP solutions. Use predefined reports and configurable reporting tools to leverage general ledgers, sub-ledgers, and consolidation applications. Drill down into financial statements and source applications such as materials management or sales and distribution. Support all auditors in regulatory or tax audits with audit information and tax retention functionality.

Simplification:

  • Provide better and more actionable business insights by utilizing the comprehensive portfolio of business intelligence solutions
  • Improve compliance and auditability by enabling the production and publication of reliable, complete, and auditable financial and regulatory statements
  • Reduce audit cost by leveraging comprehensive audit trails, audit information system, and tax data retention and reporting

 

Simplification example 3 (Logistic): Manufacturing Execution – Basic Subcontracting

Business Context:

  • Manage the subcontracting process from planning to execution and monitoring
  • Overcome capacity bottlenecks and reduce inventory with proactive, sound decision making throughout the subcontracting process. Meanwhile, you can integrate financials and other business areas to gain the visibility needed to detect and resolve potential problem areas. The result? Perfect planning, execution, and monitoring of the entire subcontracting process.

Simplification:

  • Separate planning of every subcontractor is possible without having to create an MRP-area-specific material master record.
  • The planning logic is simplified. There are two rather than three different ways to plan parts to be provided to a subcontractor

 
 

 

Are there examples of best practicesin SAP S/4HANA ?


The processes delivered with SAP Best Practices core support main industry requirements and cross enterprise priorities and are optimized for SAP S/4HANA. SAP Best Practices support requirements of 11 core industries, not including industry extensions.

Following tree examples of best practices:


Order and Contract Management – Sales Order Processing with Collective Billing


This SAP Best Practices describes how to use the standard sales processing (sell-from-stock) for mass processing. The process starts with the creation of several standard sales orders. In periodical intervals, all sales orders due to deliver and with availability of the material are selected and deliveries are created.


For optimization of shipping costs, all sales orders which are delivered to the same customer are packed into one delivery document.

For Lean Warehouse Management storage locations, Warehouse Management transport orders and picking documents for picking are automatically created. The materials are picked and the actual amount of picking is noticed in the delivery.


In the next step, goods issues are posted and the materials can leave the warehouse. In periodical intervals, all deliveries are selected for billing. For cost optimization, all deliveries due to invoice to the same customer are packed into one invoice document. The revenue is posted to accounting.     


S4H-example.png


Key Process Steps Covered

  • Create sales orders
  • Create deliveries via collective run
  • Execute picking
  • Post goods issue
  • Create billing documents via collective run

Benefits

  • Cost optimization in collecting customer orders due to deliver to the same customer in one delivery via a collective run
  • Cost optimization in collecting deliveries to the same customer for one invoice via a collective run

 

 

More to come, lets stay connected via @SDenecken

S/4HANA Extensibility – 1511 On-Premise Extensibility Features for Key Users

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SAP S/4HANA 1511, on-premise edition 1511 is out now (see the announcement http://news.sap.com/sap-delivers-massive-wave-of-innovation-for-sap-s4hana/). It contains a first set of extensibility features for key users. In other words, key users can extend existing SAP Fiori apps within the SAP Fiori UI itself.

 

You can find a general overview on the extensibility features for key users in the following document The Key User Extensibility Tools of S/4 HANA, and a general introduction to S/4HANA extensibility in S/4HANA Extensibility – The new White Paper.

 

The first key user extensibility features that are available with SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511 are UI flexibility, custom fields and custom logic.In the following user assistance document you can find the feature description of the SAP Fiori application Custom Fields and Logic:

http://help.sap.com/s4hana_op_1511 -> section: SAP NetWeaver for SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition -> General Functions for Key Users.

or follow this link.

 

As a first starting point, you might want to check out the short video that you can find in section Extensibility ( link ).

 

For SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511, the extensibility tools for key users have to be set up and connected to the adaptation transport organizer (ATO). The necessary steps are described in section Setting Up Adaptation Transport Organizer in chapter App-Specific Implementation Information under the heading Implementation Information ( link ).

 

Note: Please see also the following SAP Note that contains the corrected list of components that are required for using the key user apps, and a corrected list of ABAP statements that are available with ABAP for key users in SAP Note 2212658.

#S4HANA 1511 - a product scope guide

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Today we thought it is good timing to talk about the S/4HANA product scope guide we have developed in light of the latest release of SAP S/4HANA, the 1511 update. Our target is to demystify and shed some light on key innovations of S/4, to make this transparent to our customers and partners.

 

This is a major milestone as part of our roadmap to help customers across industries and regions drive their digital transformation with the next generation business suite, SAP S/4HANA delivers a massive wave of simplification and innovation in the core, covering the mission-critical business processes across lines of business: such as in finance, sales, service, marketing, commerce, procurement and sourcing, manufacturing, supply chain, asset management, research&development, and human resources.

 

See our recent video with the details:

S/4 on Air


Enterprises can now drive end-to-end digitized operations across their key business functions via a fully digitized enterprise management solution - named SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management.  And we just updated the roadmap, check out the official road map content  available on the SAP Service Marketplace (Product Road Maps > Cross Product > S4HANA)

 

With this blog let us dive a little bit deeper.

 

So first - if you compare, what is S/4 Enterprise Management about - scope wise?

 

It is simple: The feature and function parity is similar to SAP ECC 6.0x

 

PLUS

  • major innovations in core modules like Finance and Logistics areas -> let us call them Materials Management and Operations (replaces the name of the afka sLOG, was an internal project name anyhow)

 

PLUS

  • Inclusion of additional industries in the Core

 

PLUS

  • Full leverage of the in-memory technology of SAP HANA, including the HANA Cloud Platform and the unique UX capabilities of SAP Fiori of course

Here is the SAP S/4 Enterprise Management Product Map from the 1511 release. The known standard structure to explain our solution.


Slide05.jpg

 

With the Business Priorities: the blue boxes…  Procure to pay, or order to cash, etc… and End to end Solutions: the white boxes here, like, Production planning, Accounting and Financial close, just to mention a few.

 

And cross topics that enrich S/4HANA - like Integration and Analytics for example. But now let us map some of the key innovations to this map.


 

Slide06.jpg

 

Via extensive co-innovation and strategic customer and partner feedback we have come up with key innovations across the Suite to enable the digital transformation for our clients. You will find all details in the S/4 community and on sap.com/s4hana, in the video above I just selfishly picked my 3 favorites from the areas listed.


 

Now the clear question is: Where can I get the roadmap or like some say: Give me the roadmap! We have updated as announced in the planned quarterly cycle, you find more on the SAP Service Marketplace – but let me explain some details. Randomly picking one area – ah, inventory management.

 

Slide07.jpg

 

You see it has impact in several end2end processes, actually 3 in this case.

 

  • Via the roadmaps you can see what is available today – on the left side

 

  • What we are working on as we speak, for the next 3 quarters – in the middle

 

  • And what you can expect in some further updates – most till 1611 release

 

 

We also highlight the integration into other products per LOB, here the example for Supply chain LOB – especially interesting if you consider APO, IBP or eWM scenarios. And we give details on cross topics like here for example for Analytics – where we are leveraging the in-memory engine and platform very nicely. And of course we demystify what industry functionality is available with S/4, a key information for most if the client discovery workshops SAP is offering and providing to clients as we speak.

 

Let me summarize

 

S/4HANA delivers a massive wave of simplification and innovation with its digital core, covering the mission-critical business processes across all lines of business. Key highlights see video from Teched live here:


 

Check out the details of the S/4HANA 1511 update, contact SAP for your individual discovery workshop and create your own roadmap.

 

You want more Information?

 

First check out our S/4HANA community on SCN, leverage the SAP Training hub for dedicated S/4HANA education, join the open.sap.com courses for S/4HANA …and also check out discover.sap.com/s4hana for more

 

Follow me to stay connected @SDenecken

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