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Dear SAP Highered & Research Cloud ERP enthusiast,
As the summer sun shines brightly, we proudly welcome the latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition release, 2408, for Higher Education & Research. This new release is again packed with new features, and groundbreaking UX and AI innovations. This release promises to elevate the user experience and harness the power of artificial intelligence, offering enhanced capabilities and efficiencies.
In addition to these innovations, the 2408 release introduces enhanced features in Grants and Budget (Funds) Management, crucial for higher education and research institutions. These enhancements include more sophisticated tracking and reporting capabilities for grants, allowing institutions to manage funds more effectively and ensure compliance with funding requirements. The enhanced budget management features offer comprehensive tools for planning, monitoring, and adjusting budgets, providing greater financial control and transparency.
As higher education and research institutions, globally, increasingly migrate to cloud solutions, they have a specific focus on embracing best practices and standardizing processes to boost resilience and cost-effectiveness in managing finance, procurement, and funded research project operations. The 2408 release is tailored to meet these evolving needs, ensuring that universities, colleges, K-12 schools, and research institutes can streamline their back-office processes and achieve greater operational efficiency.
One notable trend driving this shift is the focus on "Financial Keys to the Future" as highlighted in EDUCAUSE's Top 10 IT Issues, Technologies, and Trends for 2024. This trend emphasizes the critical need for modernized, flexible, ERP that drives process automation — goals that SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2408 directly addresses with its cutting-edge cloud capabilities and best-practices processes.
We hereby invite you to dive deeper into the exciting new features and enhancements of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2408 release. And explore how these innovations are set to support your higher education and research institutions, making them work smarter and more agile.
Enjoy reading and drop me a message if you have any questions!
Cloud ERP core enhancements
Before diving into the innovations for Grants & Budget Management please find below a range of new core Cloud ERP feature-based innovations for S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, and the 2408 release. Out of the range of line of business enhancements, I have selected 3 topics which I believe are very relevant for institutions of highered and research: UX, Finance, and Environment, Health and Safety.
If you are interested in other areas of innovations for SAP’s Cloud ERP, please check out the Release Video from Bert Schulze:
User Experience
Through AI, we speed up your work and transform the user experience, starting with our generative AI copilot, Joule. After a successful phased roll-out in the Early Adopter Care program, Joule will soon be available for your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system, expected in Q3/2024. Joule allows you to express business needs in natural language, providing easy access to applications and data, reducing manual tasks, and boosting productivity.
Screenshot: Our natural-language, generative AI copilot Joule provides easy access to applications and data.
Finance
In finance, we now offer a new cost center review booklet. This app presents actual and planned costs clearly, organizing various predefined reports under the 'Actuals' and 'Plan/Actuals' sections. It integrates essential insights into the business context, effectively answering key business queries. Combining application logic, guidance, and multidimensional insights, it fulfills the "insight to action" promise within embedded analytics. Users can review actual and planned data in a single report and switch between guided views and flexible slicing, dicing, and pivoting according to specific business needs.
Screenshot: Display, analyze, and validate cost center data with the new review booklet.
Also, you can now analyze and summarize data from the cost-center review booklet into actionable financial business insights with the help of generative AI.
Please note this use case is available in beta testing! Check out the SAP Customer Influence page to sign up: https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#campaign/3698
Screenshot: Gain financial business insights with the help of generative AI.
Environment, Health, and Safety
A new app for Environment, Health & Safety, for managing investigations significantly enhances tracking and oversight, making processes more efficient in managing your (investigation) projects. The 'Manage Investigations' app offers a detailed platform to document and manage phases, personnel, and timelines of investigations. Administrators can easily guide investigations and assign tasks. This tool combines simplicity with robust features, ensuring procedural integrity. It ultimately improves user experience, accountability, and overall efficiency in investigation management.
Screenshot: The new ‘Manage Investigations’ app fosters great efficiency in managing the investigation process.
Grants & Budget Management
The S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition offers a comprehensive set of features and functions of Grants and Budget Management for public sector entities that include state and local governments, cities, K-12 schools, and Higher Education & Research.
With the 2408 release, there have been a range of new enhancements delivered and made available for our (Higher) Education & Research customers. Below an overview on the new 2408 enhancements.
New country versions for: Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom
The 2408 release introduces the Public Sector Management (PSM) scope bundle, now as well accessible, beside the US, Germany, and Canada, also for Australia, The Netherlands, and the UK. This specific industry scope bundle, which is built, with and for Higher Education & Research, comprises specific processes designed for higher education and research. These higher education and research-specific processes include the unique functionality required for the financial management of sponsored research, grants, and funds. Also, they are complemented by for example core processes for finance, procurement, logistics, asset accounting, treasury, leasing, sales, plant maintenance, contract account and project management.
You can use the SAP Process Navigator for further details, and to get a complete overview of which scope items are made available in this new global PSM scope bundle.
Direct link to the Roadmap Explorer: road map item
Screenshot: SAP for Me, and the Higher Education & Research specific scope items.
Navigational assistance with the Joule co-pilot
Features:
Express your business requirement in natural language and have the Joule copilot enable navigation to applications in budget management, grantee management, and fund accounting, where you can execute your business processes
Benefits:
- Improve user satisfaction through the ability to express business requirements in natural language
- Quickly and efficiently navigate to the ideal, relevant applications, with the help of Joule
Screenshot: SAP Joule, using to navigate through the system.
Substitution Tool for Budget Maintenance
Features:
You now have the ability to automatically derive values (for example, for account assignments, budget type, and item description) when creating a budget document using the app for maintaining budget document
Benefits:
- Better usability and faster end-user input
- Improve data quality by prepopulating the right data
Screenshot: SAP app for Manage Substitution and Validation Rules
Ability to consume the budget for an expected expense instead of the posting date
Features:
- Configure the behavior of the budget consumption date
- Leverage this feature to use a due date (or expected expense date) as a budget consumption date; for instance, update purchase orders with a delivery date of next year to consume next year’s budget
Benefits:
- Post commitments into future years even when the document is created today
- Avoid consuming this year’s budget and prevent unnecessary carry forwards
- Improve compliance in some countries where this is a legal requirement
Direct link to the Roadmap Explorer: road map item
Screenshot: SAP configuration for define update date for budget consumption.
Checking budget availability using project hierarchies
Features:
- Summarize a project budget using universal hierarchies
- Use project hierarchies with work breakdown structure elements and universal hierarchies
Benefits:
- You can now roll up budgets for certain projects within the project hierarchy and other projects using universal hierarchies
- Capabilities to model a program structure above project hierarchies
- Use project hierarchies without maintaining additional universal hierarchies
Screenshot: SAP configuration for defining availability control profile and Journal Field Dependencies.
Budget updates for generating budget documents
Features:
Allowing the generation of budget documents when the budget is uploaded, including documents from budget planning tools or Microsoft Excel
Benefits:
Give users a consistent base of budget maintenance documents for uploaded and manually created budget documents
Screenshot: SAP app to manage jobs, in this case automatic budget header creation.
Reporting on the budget versus payments and open invoices
Features:
- Ability to compare budgets against payments and open invoices
- Align budgetary reporting with financial and management reporting
Benefits:
Obtain real-time information about budget spending
Direct link to the Roadmap Explorer: road map item
Screenshot: SAP app to query and report on budget and payment line items.
Higher Education & Research Learning Journeys
In late 2023, three new learning journeys were released on Learnings.sap.com. These journeys provide access to close to 500 pages of educational content, with ongoing digital content updates. Seize the chance to enhance your comprehension of the solution through these comprehensive courses covering Budget Management, Grants Management, and Fund Accounting (US specific)!
Screenshot: SAP Learning Hub - Learning Journeys
More info on the Grant and Budget management functionalities can be found via the Product Documentation and Help webpage: SAP.Help.com
Screenshot: SAP Help.com
For more information on what is coming into the next release for S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, please scroll through the SAP Roadmap Explorer.
Screenshot: SAP Roadmap Explorer
Watch the Replays of Our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2408 Early Release Series!
From July 8 to July 12, we hosted a series of 20 compelling live sessions to highlight the exciting innovations shipped with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2408 release. Did you miss the live sessions? We've got you covered!
Take advantage of the entire series or pick and choose the sessions most relevant to you. Don't miss this chance and watch them on demand –anywhere, anytime.
Find All of Our Assets
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the foundation of the intelligent, sustainable enterprise and is an innovative, robust, and scalable ERP. We at Cloud ERP Product Success and Cloud Co-Innovation offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our team has created for you below:
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Closing Words
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Thank you!
Rob Jonkers - SAP Higher Education & Research
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