Executing a Standard Sales from Stock Process

This is what Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and SAP S/4HANA look like, using the tool called the SAP Signavio Process Navigator:

SAP S/4HANA also leverages machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics to deliver a solution that is capable of learning from exceptions and adapting to business rules. SAP Best Practices tries to incorporate these ML capabilities as much as possible as well. These capabilities allow for the discovery of insights, better predictions and planning for outcomes. And they also aim to provide recommended next steps and automation of processes to enable higher effectiveness across the entire organization.

Analytical content such as operational reporting is included as well in the SAP Best Practices.

SAP Best Practices for Migration aim to offer customers a non-disruptive, simplified transition to SAP S/4HANA.

SAP Best Practices also offers integration to cloud solutions from SAP such as SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP Ariba.

For line of business Sales, there are many solution processes available in the SAP Best Practices package for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition (and for the on-premise version simply called SAP S/4HANA). This lesson focuses on one of the standard processes that are offered via these solution processes (also called "scope items"). Solution process Sell from Stock (‏BD9‏) describes the entire process sequence for a standard sales from stock process. The business process encompasses all steps: from creating an order to the clearing of a customer account after the receipt of payment.

The following figure summarizes the process:

Although not part of this scope item, working with sales contracts is of course also supported in SAP S/4HANA. Release 2022 introduced the SAP Fiori app called Manage Sales Contracts - Version 2, which you can use to create, display, and edit sales contracts. You can also track sales contracts by monitoring various statuses and blocks.

In this lesson, the main goal is to go through this standard process using the SAP Fiori user interface, which is the preferred user interface for SAP S/4HANA.

SAP ERP (e.g. release 6.0) is an online transaction-processing system (OLTP system), where issues and exceptions are typically identified by using work lists. Often, multiple table and aggregated data structures are behind these lists. Using various work lists is a time-consuming and error-prone process.

SAP S/4HANA identifies issues and exceptions through embedded analytics, in real-time and on primary data tables (i.e. no aggregated data structures). And often via one single point of entry instead of using multiple work lists.

SAP S/4HANA runs on top of and is optimized for the SAP HANA platform. This makes it much faster than previous SAP ERP systems. In a measured example, the system was able to identify 850000 issues, based on 15 million records, in a run-time of about 20 seconds.

When taking into account that in highly-automated customer scenarios, a user would probably never work with this large of a data set, about 10000 issues could be analyzed in under 2 seconds. And around 1000 issues would only take milliseconds.

A Fiori app that can be used to show and analyze these issues is the so-called Sales Order Fulfillment - All Issues app. SAP Best Practices makes use of this particular SAP Fiori app.

Solution processes often contain (download-able) test scripts and also a process flow chart. The previous slide shows (part of) this process flow chart for scope item BD9. It describes the entire process sequence for a standard sales from stock process.

The process featured in solution process BD9 starts with the creation of a customer and a standard sales order. Depending on the customer and the material, various events take place during order entry, such as sales order pricing. An available-to-promise (ATP) check is executed to see if enough materials are available to confirm the order. Once this is done, the picking slips are generated to stage the product for shipment to the customer. After the completion of picking, the shipping specialist posts the goods issue of the materials out of the inventory. This goods issue represents the recording of the physical quantity that is being shipped to the customer. Cost of goods sold are recorded in SAP S/4HANA Finance. As a next step, the delivery can be invoiced and the revenue (together with the cost of goods sold) is recorded in SAP S/4HANA Finance.

In the following list, more examples of SAP Fiori apps, grouped by business role, can be found:

• Business role Internal Sales Representative: Manage Sales Quotations, Manage Sales Contracts, Sales Order Fulfillment Issues (Version 2), Manage Sales Orders - Version 2

• Business role Billing Clerk: Manage Billing Documents, Create Billing Documents

• Business role Sales Manager: Incoming Sales Orders - Flexible Analysis, Sales Volume - Flexible Analysis, Sales Performance - Plan/Actual

SAP also provides many object pages, also referred to as fact sheets. Object pages display contextual information about a certain object such as sales order or a customer. From the object page, the user can navigate to its related business objects and to related transactional apps.

Object pages do not have tiles in the SAP Fiori launchpad. Instead, they can be accessed via other apps. An example is the Customer - 360° View object page which can be accessed from the Manage Sales Orders app.

The following are examples of object pages which are available in SAP S/4HANA:

• Business Partner

• Sales Quotation

• Sales Order

• Sales Contract

• Customer Returns

• Credit Memo Request

• Debit Memo Request

• Billing Document

• Customer - 360° View

If a customer frequently orders the same combination of materials, or if a particular selection of products is recommended for a new sales order, this frequently used data can be stored as an item proposal. The aim of an item proposal is to reduce the time needed during sales order processing.

The graphic summarizes the scope and features that the item proposal functionality in SAP S/4HANA offers. It also provides an overview of its benefits and business value.

Using the Manage Sales Item Proposals SAP Fiori app, it is possible to search for, create, edit, and delete sales item proposals using various filter criteria. Similar to the Manage Sales Orders app, a variant for the current filter selection can also be created and saved for later use. From a performance point of view, it makes sense using these filters when working with the app.

If required, the item proposal can also include other information like proposed order quantities. Additionally, it is possible to display a list of assigned customers for each sales item proposal.

During sales order entry, the sales item proposal can be used as a template out of which lines can be copied directly into a sales order. Items copied out of an item proposal can still be changed in the sales order.

Functionality of the process flow in a sales order includes:

• Overview of the sales order process steps
• Related documents (existing) are displayed as a document flow
• Planned documents are visualized
• Navigation to related applications is possible
• Indicators related to issues are displayed
• Size (level of detail) can be changed

The process flow displays a chain of connected processes and documents. Depending on the specific process in question, the following are examples of objects/documents that can be part of the process flow of a certain sales order:

• Quotation
• Contract
• Purchase order
• Production order
• Delivery
• Billing document
• Customer return
• Credit memo request
• Journal entry

The process flow also shows planned nodes/documents. An example is a planned outbound delivery or a planned billing document.

The process flow also allows cross-application navigation. The details of a node in the process flow contain the type of the object, various statuses (like process status or business object status), and date-related information (next relevant process step).