SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, sourcing and procurement

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SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, sourcing and procurement

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 Release Highlights

It's the year 2024, SAP is delivering the 31st major SaaS ERP release. Public cloud ERP customers have gained an impressive amount of upgrade experience in just a few years. With SaaS, all aspects of a Clean Core approach and full life-cycle compliance are built into the solution's foundation to give customers a head start in adopting the latest and greatest at availability - and SAP is delivering many innovations.

Bert Schulze, Vice President Cloud ERP Product Success at SAP, shares his selected topics launched with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Watch this video to discover key innovations and updates:

  • Joule for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
  • Parallel Project Lines
  • SAP User Experience
  • Greenhouse Gas Emission Planning Based on Integrated Financial Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
  • Integrated Risk Management in SAP Financial Compliance Management
  • Integration with SAP IBP for Demand Planning with Enhanced OData API for PIRs
  • New SAP Fiori App for Displaying Serial Number History

Joule for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

One of SAP's top priorities is offering you the best possible user experience. Our natural-language, generative AI copilot Joule will come to life through an Early Adopter Care program in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 after already having been launched Joule in SAP SuccessFactors .

Joule is directly built into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and will boost business process efficiency and user experience. You can express your business need in natural language and Joule will grant you quick and seamless access to user enablement content by providing insights on business objects or guiding you to applications. This massively transforms how you interact with the system.

Joule is a comprehensive solution designed to understand the complexities of your business processes and will completely revolutionize how you interact with the system. It provides transparent, role-based access to relevant processes, making interactions intuitive and seamless. By enabling natural conversations between users and systems, Joule enhances productivity and delivers valuable insights. The three supported conversational patterns are:

  • Navigational: Joule helps users find required functionalities within SAP systems,
  • Transactional: Joule assists users in completing tasks,
  • Informational: Joule provides insights based on SAP Help documentation data.

You can watch a demo here: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_kc0ahwm4

The benefits of Joule are manifold:

  • Faster Work: Streamline tasks with an AI assistant that understands your unique role and serves as your copilot across SAP applications.
  • Smarter Insights: Gain quick answers and intelligent insights on-demand, facilitating faster decision-making.
  • Better Outcomes: Access excellent content for job descriptions, coding assistance, and more with just a simple query.
  • Full Control: Retain full control over decision-making and data privacy while leveraging generative AI in a secure environment.

Register via the Influence Page (https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#campaign/3612) to become an Early Adopter and test this feature before anyone else.

New Data Migration Approach

In addition to the migration approach "Migrate Data Using Staging Tables", the SAP S/4HANA Cloud migration cockpit now facilitates the direct transfer of business data from an SAP ECC source system to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Using a communication arrangement to connect to the source system, it selects data automatically, i.e., it uses the selection criteria company code and the migration objects to identify and transfer relevant data. A migration object describes how to migrate data for a specific business object to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. To adjust the selection of data, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud migration object modeler can be used.  

You can visit the SAP Help portal (http://help.sap.com/S4_CE_DM) for all related information. 

Intelligent ERP Update for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402

Yannick Peterschmitt from Cloud ERP Product Success Enablement at SAP gives an overview of the intelligent ERP in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Watch this video to learn about key innovations paving the way to the intelligent enterprise:

  • Joule for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
  • Collaboration
  • Process Automation
  • Machine Learning
  • Cloud to Cloud Integration

SAP User Experience in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402

Maria Silipo from Cloud ERP Product Success Enablement at SAP gives an overview on SAP user experience in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Watch this video to learn about the main user experience innovations the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release has in store for you:

  • Groups setup outdated - switching to spaces and pages mandatory
  • Merging of spaces and pages
  • Collaborative ERP
  • SAPUI5 Adaptation Projects
  • Joule

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2208, SAP introduced the Horizon visual theme to offer you a fresh and modern SAP Fiori experience and to help you get your job done faster, more intuitively, and with better outcomes.

Taking your feedback to heart, we've already made continuous improvements to the design in past releases. With this new release, we now implemented even more changes such as:

  • White input fields instead of gray,
  • Clearly identifiable buttons,
  • Improved contrast,
  • Reduced header size,
  • And more.

The groups setup on the SAP Fiori launchpad is now officially outdated; spaces and pages are the only available layout option as of this release.

Switching to spaces and pages has now become crucial to avoid a blank screen on the SAP Fiori launchpad-and note, the "switch" does not happen automatically, but has to be done manually. SAP is granting a grace period until June 2024 to all customers who haven't switched to spaces and pages yet. During this grace period, there's no guarantee that the group-based content is up to date. At the end of this grace period, SAP will change the settings in development and test systems first, and eventually also in production systems to display spaces and pages as default without the option for administrators and business users to switch back to groups. The administrators of affected customers will be informed about these changes in due time.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402, we ship a new functionality to merge spaces and pages which can be used to e.g., reduce the number of duplicate apps, pages, or spaces for users. This can also be helpful if you want to enrich SAP-delivered spaces or pages with customer-defined content.

Switching to spaces and pages will not only give you a new layout option to structure the access to apps following work processes in an intuitive and efficient way; it also enables you to use the My Home entry page in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Users benefit from a personalized interface tailored to their needs, with important to-dos and insights readily accessible. Designed for efficiency across devices, the My Home ensures quick task execution through intuitive app organization.

With the 2402 release, we offer an increased level of personalization to make the user experience even more straightforward. This includes:

  • The harmonization of blank state,
  • Consistent group creation via drag and drop,
  • A total re-design of the app section,
  • And an increased language support for system news.

For new customers, spaces and pages and My Home are the default and they will benefit from them immediately.

You can find more details in the following video: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_m68tsf9c

SAP Collaboration Manager is our innovative, cloud-based collaboration app that replaced the chat function of the former SAP CoPilot.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2302, we introduced the SAP Collaboration Manager. This cloud-based, innovative collaboration feature replaced the human-to-human chat function of the former SAP CoPilot in the three-system landscape and offers a seamlessly integrated collaboration experience directly inside the SAP Fiori launchpad, increasing overall user efficiency. Since then, we've been continuously enhancing the SAP Collaboration Manager to offer more capabilities such as creating chats and inviting your co-workers to collaborate without any system switch over, taking screenshots and annotating or highlighting them, and linking your chat to any screen for reference. In this release, we offer even more enhancements:

  • Add My Home "Insights" cards,
  • Mark notes and chats as "Read" or "Unread",
  • Add notes and chats to "Favorites".

The My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition offers a new collaboration feature with Microsoft Teams. Based on contact information in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, you can now directly trigger a Microsoft Teams chat or voice/video call and start collaborating.

Watch the video to learn more: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_vcjk4tf9

Another feature of the collaborative ERP is now generally available: We enable you to share your most relevant business data using cards in Microsoft Teams chats. Through the cards, recipients of the message can directly edit the data in the collaborative stage view in Microsoft Teams embedded in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Here you can watch the related video: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_8cu7skg5

As of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402, developers can use on-stack developer extensibility to work with SAPUI5 Adaptation Projects in SAP Business Application Studio (SAP BAS) to create variants of standard SAP Fiori applications using an easy-to-use project wizard.

In a UI adaptation project, you can extend the original code to define changes that fulfill the specific business requirements of different business roles, user groups, organizational units, and countries. For example, you might want to simplify and streamline a specific process by hiding fields not required by casual users, visualizing data as a chart, or changing a responsive table to a grid table to make information easier to process. After deployment, both the original application and your adapted application exist in parallel and can be made available to the relevant users through uniquely named application tiles in SAP Fiori launchpad/My Home. However, note that standard applications need to be enabled for the adaptation. As a partner, you can enable your custom apps for adaptation projects and allow your customers to take advantage of adaptation projects in this context.

To learn more, refer to the following video: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_m7qkgjef

Artificial Intelligence in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402

Syed Talal Hussain from Cloud ERP Product Success Enablement at SAP gives an overview on artificial intelligence and technologies in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Watch this video to learn about the main innovations:

  • Joule
  • Multi model management
  • Provision of Input recommendations for sales order completion

Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) is a framework that allows you to perform lifecycle management operations on machine learning scenarios. You can consider ISLM as a self-service tool that allows you to handle various operation requirements of machine learning scenarios. You can train an intelligent scenario and use the trained model to get an accurate inference result.

There are two capabilities available

  • Sales order auto completion use case which represents a positive shift in sales order management. By harnessing the power of machine learning and intelligent recommendations, businesses can streamline processes, reduce manual efforts, and drive greater efficiency and accuracy.
  • Multi model management enabling the activation of various model versions simultaneously, each tailored to different business contexts. This capability opens up a world of possibilities, allowing organizations to align their AI models with specific segments and fields, thereby maximizing their relevance and effectiveness.

Sourcing and Procurement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402

Sang Dao from Cloud ERP Product Success Enablement at SAP gives an overview of sourcing and procurement in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Watch this video to learn about the main innovations:

  • Copying of model product specifications into professional purchase requisitions
  • Showing the carbon footprint of purchase order items
  • Queue management for automated workload balancing in SAP Ariba Central Procurement

In our continuous commitment to enhancing your procurement experience, we're thrilled to introduce an innovative feature designed to transform the way requestors manage their self-service requisitions. With this release, requestors gain the ability to edit and extend their previous requisitions, irrespective of existing follow-on document processes. Picture this - additional funds or budgets get approved for your purchase requests; now, there's no need to start from scratch. Instead, effortlessly extend your existing requests by adding quantities, new line items, and more. This feature allows requisitions to maintain their original context and business reasons while simultaneously opening up order quantities for new, follow-on purchase orders.

Value Proposition:

Improve flexibility in the editing of self-service requisitions, regardless of existing follow-on documents

Key Capabilities:

Support for editing a limited set of purchase requisition fields in the "My Purchase Requisitions - New" app, even when follow-on purchase documents have been created.

With this enhancement, requestors now have the capability to not only leverage plant or storage location addresses but also seamlessly search for any reference delivery address ever created within the S/4HANA system. Introducing a game-changing address type - "reference," accompanied by an intuitive search help functionality. This feature eliminates the need for manual entry, offering users an efficient and user-friendly way to locate the desired delivery address, thereby expanding the scope of address maintenance in self-service purchase requisitions.

Value Proposition:

Increase flexibility in maintaining delivery addresses in self-service purchase requisitions by extending the current scope of address maintenance with direct search help functionality for delivery addresses

Key Capabilities:

Inclusion of search help functionality for delivery addresses in the SAP Fiori app "My Purchase Requisitions - New."

By incorporating this feature, we aim to elevate the user experience by providing a more flexible and dynamic approach to maintaining delivery addresses in self-service purchase requisitions.

For more details, you can watch the demo video: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_2n8l956y

We introduce a new feature, which will empower professional purchasers to seamlessly reuse previously crafted model product specifications and effortlessly integrate them into their purchase requisitions. Whether it's single items, entire sets, or specific parts of the complete item hierarchy, this feature provides a streamlined approach to building professional requisitions. The process is simple: users start by searching for their desired model product specification, then proceed to efficiently filter within the item hierarchy to select the items or sets to be copied over.

Value Proposition:

  • Boost efficiency in requisitioning by bundling service and material line items together into logical hierarchies within a professional purchase requisition
  • Save time and avoid errors made by enabling the reuse of existing model product specifications through direct copy into transactional documents

Key Capabilities:

Inclusion of the model product specifications search help in the SAP Fiori "Manage Purchase Requisitions - Professional" app.

This feature brings significant value to the procurement process by boosting efficiency. It allows the bundling of service and material line items into logical hierarchies within a professional purchase requisition. Additionally, it saves valuable time and mitigates errors by facilitating the direct copy of existing model product specifications into transactional documents.

The video shows how it works: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_5sj7of3z

This enhancement empowers purchasers to effortlessly view the carbon footprint of a purchase order item directly within the purchase order apps, provided the SAP Sustainability Footprint Management business function is active. The value proposition of this feature lies in expediting the processing of purchase orders by providing a quick and concise overview of the carbon footprint. Additionally, it contributes to enhanced transparency throughout the purchase order processing and approval process, aligning with sustainable procurement practices.

Value Proposition:

  • Speed up processing of purchase orders by seeing the carbon footprint of a purchase order item at a glance
  • Increase transparency by seeing the total CO2e footprint of an purchase order item during the purchase order processing and approval process

Key Capabilities:

  • Display the aggregated total CO2e footprint of a purchase order item in the header of the purchase order item detail page in the SAP Fiori app "Manage Purchase Orders" in display mode.
  • Show the purchase order item carbon footprint in the Display Purchase Order app and subsequently in the My Inbox app during approval processing.

This feature is designed to bring practical sustainability insights into the daily operations of purchasers, facilitating informed decision-making and fostering a culture of responsible procurement.

With this feature, purchasers can see the aggregated net value of all purchase order items in the Manage Purchase Orders app at a glance.

Value Proposition:

  • Speed up processing of purchase orders by seeing the total net value of all purchase order items at a glance
  • Increase transparency by displaying the net value of a purchase order during the purchase order creation and maintenance

Capabilities:

  • Shows the net value of the purchase order during purchase order creation or maintenance in the header of the purchase order object page
  • Displays the calculated total net value of all purchase order items in the purchase order object page in display mode
  • The aggregation includes items in status blocked status and subtracts items with the status marked for deletion

With this feature, key users can extend the business object Supplier Confirmation via Key User Extensibility tools like Adapt UI, Custom Fields, and API extension fields and adapt the user interface and API according to their business process needs.

Value Proposition:

  • Increase extensibility by allowing custom fields in the Supplier Confirmation context
  • Improves usability by using custom fields needed in the business object

Key Capabilities:

  • Allows Key User Extensibility in the Business Context of Supplier Confirmation for the header and item level
  • Enables the usage of custom fields in Supplier Confirmation user interface for header and item
  • Enables the usage of extension fields in the Supplier Confirmation Data API

This feature is designed to put control back in the hands of key users, fostering a more user-centric and adaptable Supplier Confirmation process.

This enhancement empowers users to seamlessly map custom fields in purchase orders to custom email outputs, significantly increasing extensibility and accuracy in purchase order communication. It allows the mapping of custom fields in purchase order emails, we not only enhance extensibility but also ensure precise and transparent communication in purchase order outputs.

Value Proposition:

  • Increase extensibility by allowing mapping of custom fields in the Purchase order email
  • Increase accuracy during purchase order output

Key Capabilities:

  • Provides transparency to suppliers via email, incorporating information from purchase order custom fields.
  • Enables extensibility of the email parameter CDS view, allowing for seamless mapping of custom fields in purchase orders.

This feature enhanced communication by supporting the attachment of a purchase order as a PDF in the electronic data exchange (EDI) output channel. By facilitating the inclusion of the complete purchase order information as an attachment, we significantly increase transparency in communication with suppliers.

Value Proposition:

Increase the transparency of communication with supplier by sharing the complete information of purchase order

Key Capabilities:

  • Enables the attachment of a purchase order as a PDF in the electronic data exchange (EDI) output channel.
  • Supports purchase order inclusion as an attachment in a payload when generating purchase orders using the EDI channel.

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