Exploring Future Innovations

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to utilize the Release Navigator, SAP Road Map Explorer, and Customer Influence programs to stay informed, anticipate, and influence future SAP innovations for your solutions.

Innovation & Upgrades

The SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system is updated through continuous feature delivery and upgrades happening every six months, currently in February and August.

Continuous Feature Delivery

SAP delivers software on a continuous basis, with new functionalities made available each month for customers to activate. This process is illustrated in the diagram and referred to as the "day-1 impact," where functionalities become accessible, requiring customer activation. If customers choose to maintain their current system setup, the innovations are included in the next major release, known as an upgrade, which occurs twice a year.

Overview of upgrade activities and future outlook for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Essential Knowledge Needed:

Upgrade Calendar: Find here.
Early Release Series: A series of live webcasts hosted by our Product Management team that highlights key innovations for each line of business.
What’s New Documentation: This documentation helps you understand the new functionalities delivered in the system, available from SAP Help.
Post-Upgrade Testing: Covered in the previous section on testing.
Release Assessment and Scope Dependency Tool: This tool analyzes data from your system and flags actions for objects maintained in the system. Access it here.
Process Adoption Continuous Quality Check (CQC) and Benchmarking Assessment: Services from SAP that analyze data from your system and help foster adoption in key areas. More information: Process Adoption CQC and Benchmarking Assessment.

Additionally, it's important to be familiar with:

SAP Roadmaps: These provide insights into upcoming developments and plans for future quarters.
Customer Influence and Adoption: A platform for implementation teams to submit needs to SAP and contribute to early development stages of customer-facing functionalities.

Release Navigator

The Release Navigator serves as a consolidated repository for topics related to release planning and innovation. This tool includes release dates and schedules, blogs, webcasts, and curated information in collaboration with Product Management and SAP Enterprise Support. It saves customers and partners time and effort by providing easy access to the latest updates and changes to their subscribed cloud products.

Road Map Explorer

The SAP Road Map Explorer provides a regular overview of upcoming innovations and improvements for the next quarters. It enables customers to understand the future direction of their SAP solution, plan ahead and optimize their business processes.

Customers are able to explore Road Map priorities by Product or Industry.

Note

Tracking specific innovation items is available through "My Road Maps".

Hint

During project implementation, if you need a configuration not currently available in the standard solution, check the road map first. If the functionality is planned for an upcoming release, it may be better to wait for the standard feature rather than customizing it now. This approach can save costs and time during implementation while also ensuring a scalable solution.

Customer Influence

Customer Influence programs offer various opportunities to influence SAP's software development, adopt new innovations, and request specific enhancements or features. These programs enable customers to share ideas and collaborate with SAP experts, providing an opportunity for customers to influence the roadmap.

Note

You can submit new requirements and vote on submissions from other customers.

Release Assessment and Scope Dependency Tool

The Release Assessment and Scope Dependency (RASD) tool is a simple, self-learning resource for customers of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. This tool facilitates the easy consumption and adoption of impacts, improvements, and innovations that accompany each release and upgrade.

It presents customers with a tailored list of deleted, deprecated, new, and changed objects, such as apps, APIs, CDS views, and scope items, for each SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition release and continuous delivery. This list is filtered based on the customer's used and activated scope, ensuring that they only see changes relevant to them.

Learn how to access the tool and its functionalities here.

The image depicts the user interface of the Release Assessment and Scope Dependency tool. It highlights the degree of change for scope items, arranged by magnitude, with a graph illustrating these changes for each line of business. Additionally, new features are categorized by feature type.

Benchmarking Assessment

The SAP S/4HANA Benchmarking Assessment provides key business performance metrics and best practices across all process areas covered by SAP S/4HANA, including Procurement, Sales, Service, R&D Engineering, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Asset Management, Finance, Human Resources, and Information Technology.

Upon participation, you will receive a real-time personalized scorecard that showcases Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analysis and highlights process maturity gaps in comparison to industry peers.

See here for information on how to request the service and learn more about the content of the report.

Sample report for the Sales Line of Business (LoB) in the SAP S/4HANA Benchmarking Assessment.

Conclusion

Understanding how to effectively use the Release Navigator, SAP Road Map Explorer, and Customer Influence programs allows customers to stay informed about, and anticipate, future SAP innovations for their solutions. Utilizing these resources ensures that organizations are well-prepared and aligned with the latest advancements in the SAP ecosystem. Additionally, for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition you have access to tools like the Release Assessment and Scope Dependency Tool, as well as the Benchmarking Assessment, which assist you in adopting the innovations that SAP releases for the solution.

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