Understanding the Business Process Steps, Apps, and Roles, for Managing Resources in Standard SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Objective
After completing this lesson, you will be able to Comprehend and apply the roles, apps, and steps of business process for proficient resource management in Standard SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Introduction – Decentralized Staffing through scope item J11 in S/4HANA Cloud
Decentralized Staffing is carried out entirely within the SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution within the Plan Customer Projects app as part of scope item J11. It's the default staffing method.
The process is as follows:
Role is planned on the customer / internal project, in terms of
Role (for example senior consultant)
Team roles are activity types setup with the cost center category C (Professional Service) in the master data. A configuration expert must use the configuration activity Map Resources to Resource Types to assign such activity types to the resource type 0ACT.
Effort (for example 160 hours)
The distribution of the effort can be defined by clicking the pencil icon next to the Effort box. By default, the effort will be distributed evenly over the current & future months of the work package.
Note
Distribution is only possible by month.
Service Organization (for example US Service Organization) – Optional
Skills (for example Artificial Intelligence) – Optional
Skills are free text entry but previous entries are provided as options as the user types the desired skill to minimize redundant entries.
Staffing Instructions (for example Internal employees only) - Optional
This is a free text box allowing up to 1000 characters.
A resource search is carried out
Search results can be filtered
A resource is selected
If multiple resources are selected, the role will be multiplied by that number of resources – that is only one resource may be staffed to a role via this method.
The role is staffed
The Confirm toggle must be set to Yes to finalize the assignment.
Business Roles
In order to carry out the service and material procurement processes described above, certain business catalogues must be assigned to the user’s Business Role (please see section on finding and allocating business roles in Unit 1 - Introducing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, Professional Services).
For the service and material procurement processes, the necessary business roles are:
Business Role
Business Role
Business Role Description
Project Manager - Professional Services
SAP_BR_PROJECT_MANAGER_PROF
Administrator - HR Info
SAP_BR_ADMINISTRATOR_HRINFO
Applications
Plan Customer Projects
You can use this app to manage customer projects for which you are responsible. This app allows you to search for projects, copy existing projects, and edit your projects to plan work packages, efforts, resources, and billing, recalculate cost and revenue, and analyze financial KPIs (key performance indicators).
Key Features
You can perform the following tasks if you are a project manager for customer projects:
Note
Your ability to display or change projects depends on your authorization for the service organization, company code, cost center, profit center, and permissions to access private projects.
View a list of projects for which you are the responsible, as a project manager or any other project responsibility.
Filter the list of displayed projects.
Manage your list of favorite projects.
Search for projects using the project ID, or the name of the customer, the project, and the project manager.
The results are displayed based on your authorization.
Create new customer projects
Analyze the financial performance of projects for which you are responsible.
However, the profit center cannot be changed if it is registered for an organizational change or has been reassigned to the project due to an organizational change.
Manage the billing process that must be used to invoice the services and expenses planned in the project. You can change the billing process only for projects that are in the In Planning stage.
Note
Although you can choose between two different billing processes, it is recommended that you use the new billing solution for all new projects and projects that are still being planned.
Update the profit center for the project, but only as long as no actual cost or revenue has been posted.
However, the profit center cannot be changed if it is registered for an organizational change or has been reassigned to the project due to an organizational change.
Manage the project life cycle using the following stages:
In Planning: You can update the project currency, choose the billing process, and plan work packages, work items, resources, and expenses. You can also delete a project.
Contract Preparation: You can review your project plan, and create work packages and billing plans. You can also maintain project-specific prices in the Billing area.
In Execution: You can confirm the staffing of assigned resources, and thereby allow staffed resources to record their effort towards the project. You can also assign purchase order items to work packages.
When you set a project to this stage, the system automatically creates a baseline version of the project plan.
Completed: In this stage, resources can no longer record effort towards the project. However, you can process invoices, post expenses, and transfer costs to accounting.
Closed: This stage prevents further processing of invoices or account posting for the project. However, you can reset the stage to In Execution (to allow recording of effort and processing of effort-related cost) or to Completed (to process pending invoices).
Create a new project by copying information from an existing one.
Manage work packages and resources.
Manage resource staffing. For more information, see section below, Manage Team Resources.
Maintain project-specific prices.
Calculate cost and revenue.
Manage the billing of services.
Compare and update project versions.
Manage attachments for a project. Note that attachments can be managed separately for projects and work packages.
Enterprise Search for Customer Projects
Enterprise search provides autosuggest for the following fields in customer projects. Auto-suggestion is triggered once you enter at least three characters in the search field. Search is carried out in the following order of priority:
Project ID
Project name
Project manager name
Customer name
Manage Team Resources
You use roles to plan the profiles required to fulfill the scope of work planned in a work package. Once this is done, you staff people from your internal and external workforce. This role planning can be carried out on either the Team tab or the Work Packages tab by clicking into the a work package.
Note
Team roles are activity types setup with the cost center category C (Professional Service) in the master data. A configuration expert must use the configuration activity Map Resources to Resource Types to assign such activity types to the resource type 0ACT.
To plan a team resource, follow these steps:
Choose a work package to add the team resource.
Choose Add Team Role to create a new entry.
Select a role and enter the effort required.
Choose Add. The new entry is displayed at the top of the list. On saving the changes, the new entry moves to the end of the list.
Select the delivery organization for the resource and specify the skills as needed, to help you find a suitable match. You may enter up to five skills.
Select a work item if necessary.
Maintain staffing instructions as needed, to help the resource manager find the right resource.
Use Billing Control Category to decide if the resource is billable or not.
Choose Add Resource to add a team resource to the role. You can search for a resource using the name of the person, the role name, or skills.
You can also use the Add Role and Add Resource options in the Team tab to add roles and resources to a work package.
Confirm the staffing of resources when the project stage is set to In Execution stage. This confirmation results in staffing the resource as per their availability for the work package.
Searching for a Resource
You can search for a resource using the person's name, role name, or skills. You can also use the following filters to refine the search:
Delivery Organization
If intercompany restrictions are maintained, then only the relevant delivery organization IDs are displayed here based on intercompany check.
Cost Center
Include External Workers
Company Code
If no delivery organization is maintained in the resource plan, the company code of the project is selected here by default.
Service Cost Level
In the search results you can view the following details of the person:
Name, role name, photo, skills, and employment type. You can also view the previous roles of the person, if any.
Availability based on employments within the duration of the work package, where each employment is also indicated by its corresponding cost center. In the Team tab availability is calculated based on the duration of the project.
The search result also indicates whether the employment would end before the end of the work package.
Availability per month (in hours or days), for the calendar year.
Note
Availability is calculated based on the working hours per week defined for the person, and staffing in other projects. If advanced resource management has been activated, the availability is based on the daily working hours maintained for the person.
You can view additional details of the person such as contact details, employment details, and project assignments in the employee fact sheet that you can access by choosing the name of the person.
You can customize the search results using the Settings option.
Plan Internal Projects
You can use this app to manage internal projects for which you are the responsible project manager. This app allows you to search for projects, copy existing projects, and edit your projects to plan work packages, efforts, resources, and recalculate cost.
Features
You can perform the following tasks if you are a project manager for internal projects:
Note
Your ability to display or change projects depends on your authorization for the service organization, company code, cost center, profit center, and permissions to access private projects.
View a list of projects you are the responsible for, as a project manager or one of the additional project roles.
Filter the list of displayed projects.
Manage your list of favorite projects.
Search for projects using the project ID, the project name, or the name of the project manager.
The results are displayed based on your authorization.
Create new internal projects
Analyze the performance of projects for which you are responsible.
You can use available filters to view information such as cost performance and work performance.
Manage the project life cycle using the following stages:
In Planning: You can change the project currency, and plan work packages, work items, resources, and expenses. You can also delete a project.
In Execution: You can confirm the staffing of assigned resources, and thereby allow staffed resources to record their effort towards the project.
When you set a project to this stage, the system automatically creates a baseline version of the project plan.
Completed: In this stage, resources can no longer record effort towards the project.
However, you can post expense, and transfer costs to accounting.
Closed: This stage prevents further account postings for the project. However, you can reset the stage to In Execution (to allow recording of effort and processing of effort-related cost) or to Completed (to transfer costs to accounting).
Update the profit center for the project, but only as long as no actual cost has been posted.
However, the profit center cannot be changed if it is registered for an organizational change or has been reassigned to the project due to an organizational change.
Copy an internal project.
Plan and staff work packages.
Manage resource staffing. For more information, see section below, Manage Team Resources.
Calculate costs.
Compare and update project versions.
Manage attachments for a project. Note that attachments can be managed separately for projects and work packages.
Enterprise Search for Internal Projects
Enterprise search provides autosuggest for the following fields in internal projects. Auto-suggestion is triggered once you enter at least three characters in the search field. Search is carried out in the following order of priority:
Project ID
Project name
Project manager name
Manage Team Resources
You use roles to plan the profiles required to fulfil the scope of work planned in a work package. Once this is done, you staff people from your internal and external workforce. This role planning can be carried out on either the Team tab or the Work Packages tab by clicking into the work package.
Note
Team roles are activity types setup with the cost center category C (Professional Service) in the master data. A configuration expert must use the configuration activity Map Resources to Resource Types to assign such activity types to the resource type 0ACT.
To plan a team resource, follow these steps:
Choose a work package to add the team resource.
Choose Add Team Role to create a new entry.
Select a role and enter the effort required.
Choose Add. The new entry is displayed at the top of the list. On saving the changes, the new entry moves to the end of the list.
Select the delivery organization for the resource and specify the skills as needed, to help you find a suitable match. You may enter up to five skills.
Select a work item if necessary.
Maintain staffing instructions as needed, to help the resource manager find the right resource.
Use Billing Control Category to decide if the resource is billable or not.
Choose Add Resource to add a team resource to the role. You can search for a resource using the name of the person, the role name, or skills.
You can also use the Add Role and Add Resource options in the Team tab to add roles and resources to a work package.
Confirm the staffing of resources when the project stage is set to In Execution stage. This confirmation results in staffing the resource as per their availability for the work package.
Searching for a Resource
You can search for a resource using the person's name, role name, or skills. You can also use the following filters to refine the search:
Delivery Organization
If intercompany restrictions are maintained, then only the relevant delivery organization IDs are displayed here based on intercompany check.
Cost Center
Include External Workers
Company Code
If no delivery organization is maintained in the resource plan, the company code of the project is selected here by default.
Service Cost Level
In the search results you can view the following details of the person:
Name, role name, photo, skills, and employment type. You can also view the previous roles of the person, if any.
Availability based on employments within the duration of the work package, where each employment is also indicated by its corresponding cost center. In the Team tab availability is calculated based on the duration of the project.
The search result also indicates whether the employment would end before the end of the work package.
Availability per month (in hours or days), for the calendar year.
Note
Availability is calculated based on the working hours per week defined for the person, and staffing in other projects. If advanced resource management has been activated, the availability is based on the daily working hours maintained for the person.
You can view additional details of the person such as contact details, employment details, and project assignments in the employee fact sheet that you can access by choosing the name of the person.
You can customize the search results using the Settings option.
Project Staffing Analysis App
With this app project managers can view and analyze the staffing situations in projects for which they are responsible. You can view information about resource requests, whether staffing has been fulfilled, the resources assigned to a request, the distribution of planned and staffed effort across months, and the cost.
Key Features
You can use this app to:
Filter and search for resource requests. By default, the app displays resource requests that are pending and overdue.
Personalize the display of information by creating your own views. By default, the list displays resource requests only from projects for which you are responsible, or assigned as the project partner, project controller, or project accountant. However, you may use the Project or the Work Package filters to view resource requests from other projects.
View resource requests and the status of staffing
View whether resource requests have been fulfilled, are overdue, or due in the future
View the progress of staffing per resource request
Display an overview of the project, especially information such as:
The total planned cost for the project, and a comparison between the planned cost of resources and the cost after staffing
The overall progress of staffing within the project
Display detailed information for a resource request, such as the duration, planned and staffed hours, resources staffed to a request, skills of the assigned resource, the delivery organization of resources, and the cost per resource. You can also view how the staffed effort is distributed across months.
Note
The name of the resource manager is displayed only if you've activated Advanced Resource Management - Project-Based Services (1KC) or if the information is provided by an external system, for example SAP S/4HANA Cloud for projects, resource management.
Manage Workforce
With this app, you can create and update workers (employees and contingent workers), including work agreements, and change employment situations. It is with this app that employee’s skills tags can be updated directly.
Key Features
Note
You have limited write-access when your Entry Source is not the Manage Workforce app. When your Entry Source is the Manage Workforce app, the only editable field is the Tag. You need to edit your HR workforce data in your integrated external HR system. This is to avoid data inconsistency.
You can use this app to do the following:
Create workers directly in the app.
Edit personal or employment details.
Create work agreements and assign company codes, cost centers, and so on.
Change employment situations: global assignment, concurrent employment, transfers, or rehires.
In addition, the app supports the following technical features and options:
Go to theMaintain Business Users app to assign a business user and business roles to your worker.
Go to the Business Partner app to enter business partner details of each worker, such as private address or bank account.
Go to the Fact Sheet object page to view worker-related information, such as project or payment details.
