After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
Describe the vision of the intelligent enterprise
List core integrated processes
SAP S/4HANA Finance
SAP believes best-run businesses are intelligent enterprises. They apply advanced technologies and best practices within agile, integrated business processes.
The Intelligent Enterprise consists of four components:
The Business Collaboration area focuses on being able to connect and collaborate with external and internal business partners to bridge the gap between locations, organizations, and system landscapes. An example of collaboration would be the use of the Ariba Network, where the company can find, interact, and collaborate with suppliers.
The Business Processes area focuses on the end-to-end scenario for each business transaction and has the integration of these processes as a top priority. In this training we will focus on the financial portions of the business processes.
The Business Applications area focuses on the solutions to record data for the Intelligent Enterprise. In this training we will focus on the SAP S/4HANA solution.
The Business Technology area focuses on the technical infrastructure and information management that introduce the intelligence into the Intelligent Enterprise.
The figure shows SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise solution portfolio and how the pieces come together.
Select the highlighted elements in the figure below to read about each of the components that make up the digital enterprise:
Business Scope
Integrated Business Processes
A key part of the SAP strategy is the seamless integration of end-to-end business processes. The breadth of SAP solutions with SAP S/4HANA at the center makes this possible. Business Processes usually affect multiple function areas during the course of the process.
For example, in the Source to Pay process, the SAP S/4HANA areas affected during this process are Materials Management (MM), Logistics (LO), and Finance (FI). Each Business Process will feed information to other relevant Business Processes, such as:
Record to Report – this is the basic Financial Execution and Reporting process.
Treasury and Risk Management – this is the area to manage and optimize the use of Cash Assets.
Hire to Retire – this is the area to manage People Assets.
In the figure below, select the highlighted areas to read additional details about each process. The filled arrows indicate areas that we will cover in this course:
