Introducing SAP S/4HANA

Hybrid Machinery is using SAP S/4HANA. Before implementing the solution, James was also involved in checking the general features and benefits of this solution. In the following lesson, you get an overview about SAP S/4HANA and SAP EPPM Project System (PS) within it.

SAP S/4HANA is the central software product SAP Offers to deliver the concept of the intelligent Enterprise to its customers. The details and advantages are covered in the following sections.

In the area of Business Collaboration, business networks are supported across all business processes, in combination with an industry cloud solution. All aspects of the value network are interconnected in real time to drive business outcomes. The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) forms the foundation of these solutions and brings business processes and analytical capabilities together in real time. This enables a smarter, faster, and simpler enterprise, connecting every aspect of internal operations.

SAP's industry cloud enables customers to discover and deploy vertical solutions from SAP and partners. It provides industry best practices and extends a customer's current business processes.

SAP's solutions for sustainability can help customers understand and manage their impact on people and the environment.

SAP offers an integrated suite of applications that support the various end-to-end business processes a customer has. The suite helps manage every part of an organization: employees, customers, products, spend, Finance, and IT. With Embedded Analytics in SAP S/4HANA, SAP provides a 360-degree view of the business of a customer.

At the center of the SAP S/4HANA Suite is SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is available on-premise and in the cloud, with different licensing and subscription models. SAP Project System (PS) is also part of this solution and it is assigned to the Research & Development (R&D) / Engineering line of business.

SAP S/4HANA uses SAP Fiori to provide a consistent and uniform user experience across all SAP software. By creating visually pleasing designs with a strong focus on ease-of-use, the experience is intuitive and simple across all devices.

Based on SAPUI5 technology, SAP Fiori focuses strongly on users and the way they work. It allows users to concentrate on core tasks while still tracking activities in other areas. Improvements to the existing SAP Fiori launchpad allow the user a higher degree of flexibility and guidance, supported by Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

These improvements include enhanced discovery and navigation features, access to action-oriented personal notifications, improved collaboration, and more.

Machine Learning makes SAP S/4HANA more intelligent. The machine learning applications provide real-time insights and business context while simultaneously freeing resources from repetitive tasks.

Some examples:

• SAP Cash Application software learns matching criteria from a company’s historical financial clearing data to automatically pair invoices with incoming payments. This creates more efficient shared-services centers and allows Finance professionals to be deployed to more strategic activities.

• The SAP Fiori apps for contract consumption predict contract expiration or goods consumption ahead of time. This enables more effective supplier negotiations and relationships. Customers can now forecast contract consumption directly within the application and update the model using their own data, retraining with a single action.

• Predictive Analytics for Stock in Transit:

  The world is moving faster every day; this means that companies must be even more agile when sending and receiving goods, and managing delays, shortages, or other problems. SAP Predictive Analytics for Stock in Transit allows users to take action and manage delays by applying machine learning to get more accurate results.

SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management has been designed by SAP by simplifying the SAP ERP solution, and reintegrating and simplifying specific parts of the SAP Business Suite solutions like SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM). SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is available both on premise and in the cloud (public and private cloud), with different licensing and subscription models.

More solutions can be integrated. These solutions can be cloud-based, like SAP SuccessFactors, or on-premise based, depending on specific needs.

SAP S/4HANA is available in both a cloud environment and on-premise.

There are multiple cloud deployment options, with some differences between them:

On-premise and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition deployments offer a larger scope of business functions, when compared to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. They also offer a broader spectrum of configuration possibilities. On-premise customers can also decide exactly when they would like to update/upgrade their SAP S/4HANA system. However, new functions and innovations are delivered only once per year. Major releases even only once per two years. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition offers innovations semiannually.

An on-premise deployment means that the entire application and infrastructure is owned by the customer. Such a system can also be moved into a cloud-based environment if necessary. Management and execution of the implementation of such a system can be arranged through SAP, a partner, or by the customer themselves.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition: a private cloud deployment means that a customer does not share the applications and platform with other customers, but has their own private SAP S/4HANA application and platform. This is technically similar to an on-premise edition of SAP S/4HANA, but it is running in the cloud and completely managed by SAP or one of its hosting partners. Deeper customizations are possible and the customer can decide exactly when updates are applied. Upgrades are available semiannually.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: when using this deployment option, a customer shares their applications and platform with other customers. Each customer's data is strictly isolated, and each customer has their own technical container. Customers do not affect each other, in terms of the performance of the system.

Some other related terminology and offerings:

GROW with SAP: this is a complete offering of solutions, adoption acceleration services, community, and learning so that any size company can successfully adopt cloud ERP. This is suitable for new SAP customers, or existing customers that want to move specific parts of their business into SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

RISE with SAP: a complete offering of cloud solutions, infrastructure, and services that helps migrate an existing SAP ERP into the cloud and that empowers a customer to thrive in the cloud.

Business value proposition:

From a business value perspective, SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to reinvent business models and drive new revenues in the following ways:

• Enterprises can easily connect to people, devices, and business networks to deliver new value to their customers. As a result, technologies and solution like Internet of Things, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence become accessible to any business.

• Enterprises can dramatically simplify their processes and change them as required to gain more efficiency. They can use the power of business AI (Artificial Intelligence).

  Business users can get access to any needed data, from anywhere, in real time. This includes planning, execution, prediction, and simulation data. All decisions can be made instantly with the highest level of granularity for faster business impact.

IT value proposition:

From an IT value perspective, SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to simplify the landscape and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) in the following ways:

• Enterprises can significantly reduce their data footprint and work with larger data sets in one system.

• The user experience of SAP S/4HANA is based on SAP Fiori, offering integrated and modern usability on any device.

• The architecture of SAP S/4HANA is nondisruptive. This means that SAP Business Suite on-premise customers can easily upgrade, or fully migrate to the cloud. A hybrid deployment can also be set up.

With SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management, core ERP processes remain stable:

• Reporting and analysis:

  Data is stored in its finest granularity. Data is semantically integrated and easy to consume (no redundancies or aggregates). There is no latency when analyzing the data.

• Scalable infrastructure:

  Trends include cloud, system consolidation for an on-premise landscape, SAP S/4HANA-specific services (for example, localization), support for multiple devices. These trends are supported by scale-out possibilities and the reduction of the memory footprint of the system.

• User experience:

  The SAP Fiori-based user experience supports user productivity. Multiple devices are supported as well as analytical capabilities of all of these devices.

• Increased throughput:

  Elimination of data redundancies and a reduced data footprint. This eliminates a long waiting time for users and postprocessing of, for example, failed inventory postings.

SAP S/4HANA uses a simplified data model when compared to SAP ERP, reducing the need for indices and aggregation tables, which enables aggregation and analysis on the fly.

SAP S/4HANA has a great performance, especially in mass processing. This performance is basically the result of processing fewer tables (aggregates) than in an SAP ERP system, and also no updating of cumulative values anymore.

Financial reporting in SAP S/4HANA is based on the universal journal entry table (ACDOCA), which combines material and financial data in one table.

The accounting architecture in SAP S/4HANA provides a single source of truth for all accounting components: the Universal Journal. Reconciliation is not required, bringing significant cost and time savings.

The Universal Journal is a simple but holistic data model, bringing unprecedented insight (in both speed and content). It combines and harmonizes the best qualities of all accounting components.

The described data model of SAP S/4HANA Finance provides the following benefits:

• One line item table with full details for all components. Data is stored only once, so no reconciliation is needed (by design).
• Fast multidimensional reporting on the Universal Journal is possible without the need to replicate data to another reporting solution. If another SAP BI solution is in place, a single extractor is needed.
• Reduced memory footprint through the elimination of data stored redundantly.
• Technical structure enhances the capabilities of the SAP Financials solution: for example multi-GAAP, or the use of additional currencies.