Positioning SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA contains the following elements:

• SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management:

  SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is designed for enterprises across industries that need a deep and broad level of functionality combined with a high degree of flexibility in customization of the system. It has been built by simplifying the (data model of the) SAP ERP solution and re-integrating (and simplifying) parts of some SAP Business Suite products such as SAP SRM, SAP CRM, and SAP SCM into this core. An example of this is embedded SAP Extended Warehouse Management (embedded SAP EWM). SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is available as an on-premise solution, but also as a cloud solution. Licensing and subscription models are different for the different solutions. An example of this is the SAP S/4HANA 1909 on-premise version versus the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 version of the system.

• SAP S/4HANA Line-of-Business (LoB) Products:

  SAP S/4HANA Line-of-Business (LoB) Products enhance core functions of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management to provide additional business benefit for a specific line of business (LoB).

• SAP S/4HANA Line-of-Business (LoB) Products for specific industries:

  SAP S/4HANA Line-of-Business (LoB) Products for specific industries enhance core functions of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management to provide industry-specific business benefit for a line of business (LoB).

• SAP S/4HANA Compatibility Packs:

  Through so-called Compatibility Packages (CPs), SAP provides customers a limited use right to run certain classic SAP ERP solutions on SAP S/4HANA installations. These customers need to have licensed the applicable solutions as set forth in their License Agreements. Take note that the specific usage rights for SAP S/4HANA Compatibility Packs are set forth in the Software Use Rights Document.

SAP S/4HANA enables companies to integrate and visualize all supply chain processes from supplier to customer. Intelligence can also be embedded in these processes. Digital supply chain and mission-critical business processes are supported across the enterprise with one single source of live information. Some examples:

• Reduced Days of Inventory:

  Live inventory management (using a redesigned data model in SAP S/4HANA) enables unlimited simultaneous material movements and allows for true transparency concerning inventory and material flows. It also provides improved materials planning with faster, more frequent material requirements planning (MRP) runs, multiple times a day if needed, with planning and rapid re-planning in minutes instead of hours to minimize inventory.

• Reduction in Revenue Loss Due to Fulfillment Issues:

  SAP S/4HANA enables intelligent, real-time product availability checks for sales, planned, and production orders. It includes scalable ATP checks for managing large production and transaction volumes and flexible allocation management capabilities. It provides back-order processing with intuitive priority classification and interactive exception handling.

• Reduced Overall Supply Chain Planning Costs:

  SAP S/4HANA is suited for collaborative sales and operations planning (S&OP) in conjunction with SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP), including "what if" and scenario planning to maximize the potential of market demand. It does this by providing the best service at the lowest costs. Manufacturing costs are reduced with detailed constrained planning and scheduling, enabling agility and efficient use of capacity.

• Improved Supply Chain Planning, increasing Productivity:

  Supply chain planning productivity is enhanced through easy-to-use Microsoft Excel and analytics-based planning interfaces in conjunction with SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP). This helps production and material planners to execute critical daily tasks with embedded decision support analytics and SAP Fiori (role-based) user interface applications.

• Reduced TCO Through Landscape Simplification:

  SAP S/4HANA aims to simplify a customer's system landscape. Better business outcomes are achieved with reduced operational cost when simplifying the system landscape. Redesigned data structures and embedded solutions in SAP S/4HANA result in fewer systems and interfaces. Examples: embedded SAP Extended Warehouse Management (embedded SAP EWM), embedded Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS).

Digital Supply Chain Execution

The core functionality provided by SAP S/4HANA can be extended with other (sometimes Cloud based) SAP products, to support the complete logistics network of a company.

Examples of additional SAP products that support the complete supply chain are:

• SAP Global Batch Traceability:

  SAP Global Batch Traceability (SAP GBT) supports a company to trace the complete production network and the product distribution of a batch. From the origin of the raw materials throughout various stages of the production process and the internal and external distribution. Tracked objects (that is, a batch of a product) can be traced completely across both SAP systems and non-SAP systems.

• SAP Global Track and Trace:

  The aim of SAP Global Track and Trace is to capture, process and store tracking information about tracked business processes. This allows business users to get real-time transparency of the execution of those processes. The users can query any tracked process and display its retrieved data from end to end.

• SAP AI Core:

  This is a service running on the Business Technology Platform (BTP) that is designed to handle the execution and operations of the AI assets of a company in a standardized, scalable, and hyperscaler-agnostic way. It integrates seamlessly with SAP products.

• SAP Yard Logistics:

  The SAP Yard Logistics solution provides check-in to check-out support for transportation units, focusing on planning, execution, yard operations, yard monitoring, and billing processes within a yard.

The use of mobile devices (smart-phones and tablets) to perform certain work tasks, is no longer reserved to a special group of experts. Ease of use is a very important characteristic for the end user of such a device. The focus of the user interface (UI) of the device is no longer maximum functionality, but rather a comfortable user experience and thus a focus on the consumer of the device.

With this in mind, the business software running behind the device must be adapted and transformed so that it supports the user interface (used within the business roles of an enterprise) to a maximum. In practice this means that SAP S/4HANA and SAP Fiori as its user interface go hand-in-hand, and should be developed hand-in-hand.

Different User Types — Different Requirements

Depending on the industry in which a company operates and also depending on the company itself, various types of users can be identified. The types of users that can be found in a company are also influenced by other characteristics. Examples: the structure of the company (how many and what areas of specialization are defined in the company), how is the IT department set-up and what choices do they make, the degree of digitization of the company, and so on.

Different requirements according to user type, deployment type, and access type.

However, in almost every company, three basic types of users can be identified:

• The Occasional User

  The Occasional User makes use of the system occasionally and therefore needs simple and easy-to-use applications. In many cases, single-step transactions are executed.

• The Expert (or Key User)

  The Expert (or Key User) is a fully trained SAP user who knows the processes and the available applications in detail. This user often uses multiple systems and different user interfaces (UIs).

• The Developer or Programmer

  The Developer or Programmer has detailed know-how in the area of system adaptations. They deal with the adaptation and extension of the existing applications. They look after several applications with often different UIs and develops extensions for these applications.

SAP Fiori is a collection of apps, which is created based on a specific set of guidelines and rules and that can be started using the SAP Fiori launchpad.

SAP Fiori is role-based. This means that an end user gets all the information and functions that they need for their daily work. No unnecessary information is presented to the user. The classic SAP User Interface (UI) works the other way around: often a single complex transaction is available, that is useful for many users in different business roles.