For the third time this year, I am proud to announce the general availability of our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release today, offering you exciting innovations and enhancements in all lines of business and industries to help your business run better. We continue to improve our offerings for our valued cloud customers and support the intelligent enterprise with a large number of new features and improvements.
I have the pleasure to walk you through my favourite highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release in this blog. Take a look at my video below to get a first impression of the many innovations this release brings to you.
https://youtu.be/L2ooQKDbP80
Finance
As always, we start with Finance. Here we ship the new
‘group planning’ content in addition to the already existing integrated financial planning content in SAP Analytics Cloud. Group planning is based on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud data model and enables you to use the group’s master data and transaction data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a starting point for planning, giving you the possibility to do profit and loss and balance sheet planning using group reporting dimensions, such as consolidation unit and financial statement item for companies managed outside of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Here, planning administrators can pre-populate planning screens based on past actual data and get further insights into the planned data through reporting stories.
Figure 1: The new ‘group planning’ content enables you to do profit and loss and balance sheet planning for companies managed outside of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Ulrich Hauke provides more insights in his
blog post.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance
We continue with an enhancement in Governance, Risk, and Compliance where we provide
25 additional predefined controls for SAP Financial Compliance Management enabling your organization to remain compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and other regulations. The solution allows you to detect compliance risks before their effects become material to financials and are identified by auditors. You can monitor and review changes made to customers, suppliers, general ledger accounts, products, and product plants. With the provided invoice checks, you can ensure that no critical information is missing, and detect inconsistent, missing, or suspicious document data. With the new control for revenue recognition, you can ensure your products are being sold for the correct standalone selling price.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_w2po183y
Figure 2: Take advantage of 25 additional predefined controls for SAP Financial Compliance Management offering you a more comfortable way of remaining compliant.
Read more in Katrin Deissner’s blog post.
Solution Order Management
The next topic on my list is the
integration between Professional Services and Solution Order Management. This important extension enhances solution orders with the capability to sell projects together with physical goods, services, and subscription in a single order, supporting the creation of orders which include a professional service component. With this innovation, we offer a seamless integration of customer projects into Solution Order Management and subsequent financial and controlling processes. By introducing this capability, we support business transformations which enable the sale of, for example, consulting projects as part of a comprehensive solution. You can create a project item in solution order management, maintain project details such as start and end dates, organizational data, project managers, and net value, and track the project via Solution Order Progress.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_06185arq
Figure 3: The integration between Professional Services and Solution Order Management supports business transformations from selling products to providing higher-margin solutions.
Greg Hutcheon shares detailed insights into this in his
blog post.
Professional Services
With the
enablement of contract type periodic service in the new project billing in Professional Services, you can now prepare project billing requests and billing document requests for billing elements of contract type ‘
Periodic Service’ in the ‘
Manage Project Billing’ SAP Fiori app. Additionally, it is now possible to schedule the preparation of billing documents requests for billing elements of contract type
‘Periodic Service’ in the ‘
Schedule Project Billing Preparation’ SAP Fiori app. This innovation makes it easy to monitor and prepare billing as well as create a billing document request, leading to an increased bill value in project billing through the periodic service scenario.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_sfovhqqi
Figure 4: The enablement of contract type periodic service in the new project billing ensures an easy preparation of project billing requests and billing document requests.
Find out more in Katharina Stopf’s
blog post.
Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management
In the area of Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management, we offer
detailed descriptions for enterprise projects. When collaborating with several stakeholders on joint projects, it is important to maintain detailed descriptions to create transparency. Up until today, project financial controllers and project managers could only maintain detailed descriptions of project headers and WBS elements in the
‘Project Builder’ application. With this new SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 release, detailed descriptions of project headers and WBS elements can be maintained in SAP Fiori apps directly. This ensures a better communication of the expected scope and deliverables to project team members and stakeholders as well as a reduced manual effort by avoiding maintenance of scope information in additional documents.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_8zujhlpd
Figure 5: Detailed Descriptions for Enterprise Projects supports you in maintaining detailed descriptions of project headers and WBS elements in SAP Fiori apps.
Learn more in Corina Kinzel’s new
blog post.
Manufacturing
In Manufacturing, the
new SAP Fiori app ‘Mass Maintenance of Work Center Capacities’ changes the implementation of capacity master data in a mass manner. To meet future demands, the production planner can create mass updates of intervals and shifts for multiple capacities and manage them across different work centers. Filter capabilities, based on material, production version or work center groups help to increase the speed of mass updates with just one click, offering a fast creation of interval and shift definitions for multiple capacities. Here we offer a wide-ranging selection screen with a whole set of different options to choose from and an extensive details page providing the capacity information along with in-screen validations to correct the data.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_1341g4nc
Figure 6: The new SAP Fiori app ‘Mass Maintenance of Work Center Capacities’ supports you in the creation of mass updates of intervals and ships for an easy management across different work centers.
Gerhard Welker shares his insights into this and many more innovations in his
blog post.
Supply Chain
As part of Supply Chain, we offer a
brand-new end-to-end solution in Transportation Management. Here, our strategy is to provide a basic transportation management functionality in SAP S/4HANA Cloud to serve an ERP-like transportation, offering one single holistic platform with end-to-end supply chain planning and execution. A combination of inbound and outbound freight as well as the comprehensive integration into Order-to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay processes ensure an accurate integrated freight costing, settlement with carrier invoice verification, and payment. The benefit here: new best practice scenarios for
Manual Transportation Planning enable manual freight planning within SAP S/4HANA Cloud and remove the need of an external Transportation Management system to create freight orders.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_46hz75s7
Figure 7: With our brand-new end-to-end solution we ensure an accurate integrated freight costing and remove the need of an external Transportation Management system to create freight orders.
Read more in Gerhard Welker’s
blog post.
Read Markus Oertelt’s latest
blog post to learn about Discrete Industries.
Sourcing and Procurement
In Sourcing and Procurement, we offer the function
forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a central hub system to make the user experience even more intuitive and seamless. With this innovation, you can now navigate directly to SAP Fiori apps of connected SAP S/4HANA satellite systems from the central Procurement hub system without having to go through SAP S/4HANA’s WebGUI transactions. For example, you can navigate into the
‘Manage Purchase Requisition Professional’ SAP Fiori app when using the open document link in the proxy ‘
Purchase Requisition’ object page and when creating a back-end purchase requisition in the connected system from scratch.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_q6c5s3ia
Figure 8: By forwarding the navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a central hub system, we enable you to directly navigate to SAP Fiori apps of connected SAP S/4HANA satellite systems from the central Procurement hub system.
Read Harish Mangtani’s
blog post to learn more.
Sales
In Sales we offer the
automatic removal of billing block in down payments. With this feature, you can use the SAP Fiori app ‘
Schedule Update of Down Payment Status – Sales Orders’ to schedule the update of down payment status in sales orders. When the down payment status is updated to ‘
Fully Paid’, the schedule job automatically removes the billing block from closing invoices. You can run a periodic job in SAP S/4HANA Sales for order management to check the status of the expected down payments and automatically remove the billing block in order to proceed to generate the closing invoice with the next billing run. This ensures an increased sales productivity through low-touch order management as well as a seamless, end-to-end process integration using contract accounts receivables and payables software.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_5lnnoepu
Figure 9: Automatic removal of billing block in down payments helps you to schedule the update of down payment status in sales orders.
Christian Vogler offers a detailed overview in his
blog post.
Service
Let’s move to Service, where we ship
credit management in service orders and contracts. With this innovation, we enable you to run credit checks while saving service orders and service contracts by defining credit limits. Here, we ensure higher visibility of customer credits and increase the likelihood of on-time payment of service orders and service contracts, reducing the risk of financial loss and lowering costs of unpaid services.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_dhog7n0f
Figure 10: Run credit checks while saving service orders and service contracts by defining credit limits and increase visibility of customer credits with Credit Management in Service Orders and Contracts.
Find out more in Young Hwae Koo’s
blog post.
Asset Management
Next on, we have Asset Management, where we deliver
graphical relationship management between order operations. With the
‘Maintenance Scheduling Board’ SAP Fiori app you can now graphically draw relationships between maintenance order operations, trigger actions such as change, dispatch, or remove constraints, and delete relationships – all through an easy-to-use right-click context menu. Here you can optimize processes by creating and managing additional scheduling and execution-relevant relationship information as well as reduce navigation by triggering actions from your current location on screen without the need to select first. A real time-saver!
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_7aj5uuvl
Figure 11: Graphical relationship management between order operations optimizes your process by letting you graphically draw relationships between maintenance order operations and trigger actions such as delete relationships, dispatch, and remove constraints.
Find out more in Gerhard Welker’s blog post.
Product Compliance
We move on to Product Compliance where we enable you to
track, calculate, and monitor volumes for substances that are exported to a country or region. With this feature, you can get an overview of the aggregated volumes of substances that are exported to a country or region by a legal entity in your company. The substance volume tracking functionality is now integrated with the sales-delivery process, so that it selects and pre-processes relevant material documents that result from outbound deliveries.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_15pi9c5d
Figure 12: This innovation gives you an overview of the aggregated volumes of substances that are exported to a country or region and enables you to track, calculate, and monitor them.
Christian Vogler shares his insights in this
blog post.
Environment, Health, and Safety
Preserving Environment, Health, and Safety is now more important than ever. Therefore, we continue to offer various solutions and innovations in this field. In SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108, we deliver the
ability to capture information related to environmental releases. With this feature, you can manage environmental releases that are associated with an incident. You can enter detailed information about this release, including description of the released material, the type and size of the release, and the cleanup responses. Additionally, you can create and manage material and substance lists if needed. Emission factor regulatory lists help you to manage factors for indirect emission in a more usable way. Here we provide an improved monitoring of emission data with data classifiers which help you to split and filter transactional data for the reporting on direct and indirect emissions as well as to split actual and forecast emissions.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_wg9tn2kb
Figure 13: The ability to capture information related to environmental releases enables you to enter detailed information about the releases as well as create and manage material and substance lists.:
Learn more in this
blog post by Christian Vogler.
Two-Tier ERP
With the
integration of two-tier-based predictive material and resource planning (pMRP) with scheduling agreement, we enable effective planning with resource-based simulations by providing the capability to create simulations at both headquarter and subsidiary considering types of flexible constraints. This makes it easy for the headquarter and subsidiary to find a consensus plan for the final product through joint planning. Operative planning notifies Forecast (FRC) schedules with forecast schedules for the subsidiary to initiate material and resource planning. Just-in-Time (JIT) schedule lines replicated at the subsidiary provide instructions with required quantities and time for the subsidiary to create deliveries.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_rh1cb43h
Figure 14: The integration of Two-Tier-based pMRP with scheduling agreement enables effective planning with resource-based simulations.
Find out more in Swati Balani’s
blog post.
SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
As always, we keep improving our
SAP Active Methodology for SAP S/4HANA Cloud to adapt to our ever-changing environment. Therefore, I’m happy to announce the launch of the new SAP Activate Community. You can access value blogs from SAP Activate experts and use the space to stay up to date on all news for SAP Activate. You can also post your pressing questions and engage with experts. We encourage you to follow the
SAP Activate Community. We are looking forward to your posts and questions.
Figure 15: Stay up to date and engage with experts in our new SAP Activate Community.
Read Jan Musil’s latest
blog post to learn more.
SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation
Additionally, we continuously invest in our products’ intelligence and automation with
SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation. With the last release, we already introduced our new bot environment, SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation 2.0. In addition to releasing brand-new bots monthly, we convert already existing bots into this new environment to ensure an even more convenient usage. Check out our
iRPA Bot store and
Best Practice Explorer to find out how hundreds of bots can help you meet your automation goal. Learn more about this in
yannick.peterschmitt#content video and blog post.
Figure 16: The iRPA Bot store offers hundreds of bots that help you meet your automation goal.
Read more about iRPA in Hardeep Tulsi’s
blog post.
Consume our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Early Release Series Offline
As we recently delivered a number of live sessions around all of these topics as part of our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Early Release series, there is even more information that you can consume in order to learn more about the latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud release. While our customers, partners and colleagues had the chance to participate and engage with the experts during the live sessions hosted via the
SAP Learning Hub, we don’t want to keep this great compilation of information from you. Therefore, we have designed this new
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Early Release Series Brochure which enables you to consume the replays, presentations, and system demos of the online sessions at your convenience. Find the topics of your interest, view or download the materials, or just bookmark the brochure to benefit from the latest information on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud release.
Figure 17: The new brochure of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Early Release Series contains replays, presentations and system demos of the online sessions that were recently held.
Additional Topics
Read Katrin Deissner’s
blog post to learn about Technology Topics.
Learn about SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool in Anurag Nayak’s
blog post.
Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast
As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast “
Inside SAP S/4HANA”. This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners, and customers to address your needs by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success – we help you get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA projects a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.
Your Voice Matters!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community – now fully integrated with SAP Community. The community brings together SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers, partners and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your SAP S/4HANA Cloud journey.
For More Information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Check Out the Following Links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
- jan.gilg
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here and previous release highlights here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Early Release Webinar Series here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Implementation Portal here
Follow us via
@Sisn and #S4HANA, or myself via
@SDenecken