Outlining SAP S/4HANA Hire to Retire Solutions

With the launch in 2011 of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP was the only software vendor in the market at the time to allow SAP Business Suite customers to bring together transactions and analysis into a single in-memory platform. In less than two years, over 1,850 customers acquired SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA to run their businesses in real time, making it one of the fastest-growing products in the history of SAP.

With SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP's product approach has been to port applications on the SAP HANA platform and optimize the code, which improves the performance of business processes and reporting activities and, as a result, improves performance of relational databases. SAP HANA represented a new database alternative for existing customers who required only a simple database migration.

On February 4, 2020, SAP announced an innovation commitment for SAP S/4HANA until the end of 2040. This means that until 2040, there will always be at least one release of SAP S/4HANA in maintenance.

SAP S/4HANA, launched in 2015, is the next generation business suite that helps lines of business and industries to run simple. SAP S/4HANA delivers simplifications (customer adoption, data model, user experience, decision making, business processes and models) and innovations (Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks and mobile-first) to help businesses run simple in the digital economy. SAP S/4HANA combines the most recent innovations (including SAP HANA and SAP Fiori UX) into a new suite that caters to a digital, networked economy.

SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to run your day-to-day business in real-time using industry best practices and enables you to redefine the following business practices:

• Business models – Connect to people, devices, and business networks in real-time. Internet and big data become accessible to any business.
• Business decision – Acquire insight on any data from anywhere in real-time: planning, execution, prediction, and simulation are done on the fly for faster business impact.
• Business processes – Focus on essential tasks in real-time and change business processes as needed.
• User experience – SAP Fiori UX is available for any device: desktop, mobile, and tablet.

The following SAP S/4HANA editions are available:

• SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition – This edition offers a business scope that is similar in terms of coverage, functionality, industries, and languages to the current SAP Business Suite. Within this scope, SAP S/4HANA also includes the transformational simplifications delivered with SAP Simple Finance (SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA) as well as an integration with SuccessFactors cloud solution and the SAP Ariba cloud solution.
• SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition – This edition covers specific business scenarios for the marketing line of business and for the professional services industry as well as the most essential scenarios to run an entire enterprise in the cloud. The digital core includes finance, accounting, controlling, procurement, sales, manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system and product life cycle management, including integration with SuccessFactors cloud solution, SAP Ariba cloud solution, and so on.
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud essentials edition (ES) is commonly used by new customers who want the full cloud approach with regular quarterly upgrades that include new configuration and new software. It is also used for subsidiaries alongside SAP on-premise implementations.
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud extended edition (EX) has the advantages of the cloud with more flexibility and control. It has standardized infrastructure processes, services, and service level agreements (SLAs).

SAP can offer customers a deployment choice for their Core HR solution needs: on-premise (or private cloud managed service) or public cloud. While most new HR system implementations tend to be cloud based for many regions, on-premise is still a preferred method in some regions and industries.

SAP offers continuity and investment protection for HCM on-premise customers in the following way:

• The solution will be based on SAP ERP HCM with selected SAP HANA database related enhancements.
• This option is intended to serve those customers who are not yet ready to partially or fully transform their HR processes into a cloud-based model.
• The future of digital HR in the cloud is powered by SAP SuccessFactors.

H4S4 is the short term for HCM based on the S/4HANA technology. Customers who implement this technical upgrade need to do the S/4HANA Readiness Check. This Check includes a readiness check for HCM.

Customers who desire to keep HCM on-premise have two options: they can stay on SAP Business Suite 7.0; or move to SAP S/4HANA on-premise (leveraging the SAP S/4HANA Compatibility Pack for SAP HCM).

• RP HCM customers can move to SAP SuccessFactors to accelerate their digital HR transformations.
• SAP does recognize that a subset of SAP ERP HCM customers will desire to run their on-premise environment for the foreseeable future.
• In order to continue to support these customers’ needs, SAP will offer the SAP Human Capital Management for SAP S/4HANA.
• SAP Human Capital Management for SAP S/4HANA is available since Q4 2022.
• This option is intended to serve those customers who are not yet ready to partially or fully transform their HR processes into a cloud-based model.