Introducing SAP Central Business Configuration

Introduction

SAP Central Business Configuration is the tool designed to let you configure a business process spanning different SAP cloud solutions from one central place. SAP Central Business Configuration supports the configuration of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, but aims at seamless implementation of end-to-end business processes across SAP’s cloud portfolio. Every new SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition customer uses SAP Central Business Configuration for their implementation.

Key Solution Characteristics

1. Scoping via business adaptation catalog (BAC) and end-to-end processes
2. Quick access to a pre-configured, ready-to-run system
3. Option to adapt pre-configuration to customer needs
4. Extended configuration for areas not equipped with pre-configuration content
5. Enable delta deployment of scope extensions(for example, additional countries/regions with pre-configuration)

Key Target Components

1. Project Experience
2. Scoping and Organizational Structure
3. Central Configuration
4. Business Configuration Workspace
5. Pre-configuration Content

Key Benefits

1. Central Configuration of Business Processes Across the Intelligent Enterprise (IE)
2. Fast Company Roll-outs
3. Reduced Configuration Efforts

SAP Central Business Configuration Process Overview

SAP Central Business Configuration allows you to manage your configurations for SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementations and ongoing operations centrally via Project Experience. You can initiate change anytime to make additions to your scope, countries/regions, and organizational structure or make changes to your configuration settings.

Summary of Key Features and Advantages:

SAP Central Business Configuration is the central place for customers and partners to look at SAP cloud business processes, learn about their value, and select the suitable processes for their business. Customers and partners can manage SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition implementation projects centrally, with the aim to deploy the configurations to the target systems.

The implementation project experience includes:

1. Scoping
   • Scoping of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition solution
   • Multi-Country scoping
   • Country-dependent scoping of non-standard scenarios
2. Organizational Structure Management
   • Supports customers in modeling their organizational structure
   • Graphical, scope-dependent, and guided creation of organizational units
3. Configuration
   • Configuration activities during the Product-Specific Configuration phase

SAP Central Business Configuration is intended to make project implementations for SAP cloud solutions easier and more efficient, and enable customers and partners to run their projects more autonomously.

Scoping

In scoping, you define the capabilities of your solution by choosing the countries/regions and business scenarios relevant for your business. This enables SAP Central Business Configuration to put together the pre-configured settings for this individual solution.

The Scope phase in SAP Central Business Configuration consists of:

• Scoping-related project activity, which guides you in selecting the capabilities of your solution.
• Assign Deployment Target activity, in which you connect your project to the dedicated SAP S/4HANA Cloud System.
• Confirm Scoping is Completed milestone

Key Features

• The Define Scope project activity guides you through the process of defining the scope of your solution.
• You define the scope of your project by selecting countries/regions and scenarios. A scenario contains predefined content for the implementation of a business process. Scenarios can also be grouped into bundle.
• Because each company has unique business requirements, the system enables you to make a series of business decisions to adjust the content and determine which of the available features and functions you want to incorporate into your solution.
• Built-in rules ensure that your selected content is logical and consistent from a technical and business point of view
• The system calculates the configuration settings that are needed to realize the business scenarios for the countries/regions that you have selected for this project
• You can add any additional countries/regions or scope later via the Initiate Change feature.

Scoping

Mandatory Selections

• Countries/Regions
• Scope Bundles

Optional Selection ( Directly by the Customer)

• IFRS or/and US GAAP non-standard group ledger scenarios
• Additional standard scenarios
• Non-standard scenarios that do not require additional manual steps to be performed by SAP

Optional Selection (Via Ticket)

• Locked non-standard and license dependent scenarios can be added to the scope by the SAP support team

Deployment Target

A deployment target represents a dedicated system tenant of the assigned solution. To exchange content from your projects to a cloud solution, you must specify a deployment target in the Deployment Targets app, where deployment targets are listed and can be assigned or removed.

When opening the app, you see a list with deployment targets that are available and provisioned by SAP cloud operations. You can only assign deployment targets that are not assigned to any other project. The available deployment targets also depend on your project type (evaluation or implementation project). In case no system tenant has been provided, the list will be empty.

A list with all deployment targets that are available and provisioned by the SAP operations team will be displayed on the Deployment Targets tab

• One deployment target can be assigned to only one project
• You can assign or remove a deployment target only during the Scope phase
• The data from SAP Central Business Configuration will be deployed to the assigned target SAP S/4HANA Cloud system
• After initial deployment to the target system, you can check the deployment and activation details using the navigation button on the Deployment Targets tab.

Confirming Scope

Based on the scope selection, relevant customizing and configuration activities are identified.

By Confirming Scoping Is Completed, relevant configuration activities are being calculated. The subsequent activities are dependent on the chosen scope.

You can use the Set Up Organizational Structure app to set up your organizational structure.

The Set Up Organizational Structure app supports in modeling your organizational structure with predefined organizational units and templates before activating any content. The tool supports you to:

• Define your organization structure and then activate the content data
• Enhance your organization structure as per the business requirement, when you have been using an activated solution already and would like to enhance your organizational structure using the tool, for example to add a new plant to your existing organizational structure.

You adapt the organizational structure in the Product-Specific Configuration phase. The Set Up Organizational Structure app is closely connected with the scoping. The selected scope specifies which organizational units are required to run the underlying processes.

The Set Up Organizational Structure app is a key user application based on Business Application Factory meta data information. You need to specify all relevant parameters for every organizational unit.

The Set Up Organizational Structure app is a very flexible tool with which you can create your organizational structure while following some rules:

• All countries/regions you have chosen in scoping should have at least one company code defined, and one of the company codes is defined as the default company code
• Every sales organization should have a plant assigned as the recommended delivery plan
• Please note that there are restrictions and limitations when you create relationships between organizational units

After the organizational structure is confirmed, two follow up actions are triggered:

• Organizational structure templates with all dependent configuration settings are instantiated to the workspace
• Organization dependent configuration activities can be identified (for example, specify the company code currency).

Key Features

• Graphic view – graphical, scope-dependent, and guided creation of organizational units
• Table view – all org units are listed in a table
• Org structure can be set up as draft and reviewed before activation. Deleting and changing units and assignments is possible anytime before confirming them.
• Checks in place to make sure all mandatory organizational units and relations based on the selected scope have been created

Configuration Activities

To adjust system settings to your business requirements, you carry out configuration activities.

To perform configuration activities, the Scope and Organizational Structure phase and all related project activities must be completed and you are in the following phases:

• Product-Specific Configuration and Production System Settings phases (2-system landscape)
• Product-Specific Configuration phase (3-system landscape)

In the Configuration Activities tab, you can see the configuration activities in tree view. The configuration activities are organized hierarchically according to their business areas. Each configuration activity has a unique identifier (ID), which is the configuration activity ID also used in other reference materials.

You can find the status of each configuration activity in the Status column, and change the status if you are in the Product-Specific Configuration phase. You can also see the number of configuration activities in each hierarchical level. Position the cursor on the numbers to see detailed information of the configuration activities status.

Configuration activities are labeled as mandatory, recommended, or optional configuration activities:

• Mandatory configuration activities are implementation and project management activities that you need to complete before you can go live with your solution
• Recommended configuration activities are the ones which are very commonly used to adapt or change something.
• Optional configuration activities can be reviewed and adjusted where necessary.

In the Product-Specific Configuration phase, configuration activities cover detail settings of the solution process, for example, Define Sales Organization. Launching a configuration activity opens the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system where you can perform the activity. Furthermore, some configuration activities provide easy access to setup instructions (CIAS) or setup guides.

Key Features

By performing configuration activities, you can centrally tailor business processes via SAP Central Business Configuration to meet your company’s requirements.

• Configuration activities take your scope and country selections into account
• Flexible ledger setup and assignment of accounting principles
• Flexible chart of accounts and renumbering of G/L accounts

Standard Roles and Authorizations

Roles and authorizations allow the users to access the system and relevant features in a secure way.

SAP Central Business Configuration provides a set of standard roles providing authorizations to perform different implementation tasks in Project Experience. The system can be accessed only by users with authorizations.

Users can access only those projects to which they are assigned. The only exceptions are users with program manager and auditor roles who will always have access to all projects.