One of the reasons I like Star Trek is how, especially Picard, wants options when facing a challenge. This was a thread throughout day 2 of the product compliance info days.
Wow, with over 900 people registered and an average of 350 people per day in attendance, there is a lot of interest in the SAP product compliance applications. There were a lot of great presentations, I wanted to highlight a couple.
First was the roadmap update, this provided a vision of future functionality (as well as a brief looking at the history) and a schedule of different versions and maintenance timelines, as well as the strategy evolution over the past year. There was a brief summation about how Product Compliance fits into the Sustainable Enterprise framework, you can read more information
here. Some of the new features are integrated regulatory content, new processing and data models, and embedded analytics. Another important point is the deployment methods available, on premise in addition to private and public cloud options.
Integration, delivery, and transportation checks on, for example, product marketability, output of dangerous goods data, and automated safety data sheet distribution is being continually improved. For procurement, supplier material checks and checks to ensure compliant stock transports. Finally, for product engineering to activate embedded product compliance for all compliance-relevant products.
What's coming next, in January there will, of course, be a regulatory content update, because the world is getting more complicated, with new compliance requirements and updates for product marketability, safety data sheets, and dangerous goods. There will also be an upgrade of substance volume tracking precision for sales or manufacturing document evaluation. The new View Regulatory Data app for dangerous goods will also be delivered, with this app you can see all available data for each dangerous goods regulation and improves navigation with other dangerous goods apps. For safety data sheets, those will now be able to support multiple product or material name translations, an example would be if you needed to have Mandarin Chinese and English together in section 1.
The second presentation was from 2 staff members of
FUCHS, an SAP customer; they discussed their experience moving to the new product compliance solution. Those in attendance had great questions about data, challenges, and so many other topics. Among other things, FUCHS was looking into simplifying everything from updates and reducing licensing costs or data volume for distribution.
Moving from the classic to S/4 HANA is a long, multi-year process, by that I mean over 5 years for FUCHS. While they expressed that they had doubts, in the end they know they are on the best path, and it will make their company more flexible and profitable. If you have 40 minutes, I suggest watching this presentation. How can you do that?
If you are interested in watching the recordings and viewing the slides from the presentations, you can register, by sending and email to
product.compliance@sap.com, for access
here.
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here