Hello Everyone, My name is Harish Mangtani and I work for the SAP S/4HANA Product Success team at SAP SE Germany. I hope I was able to keep you updated with information on innovations from the last release on my blog SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 in Souring and Procurement.
I welcome you again to present to you some of the major highlights of SAP S/4HANA Cloud release 2108 in Sourcing and Procurement, which help customers to run their business better, more efficient, and intelligent with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Let's start with the Product Video where I walk you through the 4 major innovations of this release.
https://youtu.be/1tjpHBBoPz4
If you would like to see detailed demos of these innovations then you should probably watch the replay of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Early Release Series. More information here on the blog
Central Procurement helps to control the procurement processes centrally from the Hub SAP S/4HANA Cloud Central system from multiple connected backend systems.
We make the user experience even more intuitive and seamless for Central Purchasers with Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a Central Hub System.
As a Purchaser, you can navigate from the Central Procurement Hub system to the object pages of either the Fiori Purchase Requisition or Fiori Purchase Order to any of its connected S/4HANA satellite systems. Therefore not navigating via SAP WebGUI transactions like ME51n or ME21n, which would still be the case if the connected system is the SAP ECC system where Fiori UIs are not available.
Purchaser can navigate into Fiori app 'Manage Purchase Requisition Professional' of an SAP S/4HANA connected system
Similarly, a Purchaser can navigate into Fiori app 'Manage Purchase Orders' of an SAP S/4HANA connected system
This helps with increased usability as end-users are delighted with the user experience by seamlessly navigating from one Fiori environment to another without getting directed to SAP WebGUIs in the connected backend systems.
Have a look at the demo of this innovation:
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_q6c5s3ia
Demo: Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a Central Hub System
This innovation is in the area of Operational Procurement in the Purchase Requisition Workflow. Flexible workflow for Purchase Requisitions allows you to define approval processes according to your requirements, and you can configure workflows to optimize the approval process for purchase requisitions.
We can always add one or more approvers to the PR approval workflow who is responsible to approve or reject the PR workflow.
Now with the “Review Activities in PR Approval Workflow” we can even define multiple reviewers in PR Approval Workflows, along with the review steps that can be defined with step conditions, determination rules with deadlines for the reviewer tasks.
Reviewers are then responsible for monitoring the progress of the workflow. When a workflow is started, all reviewers are notified who can then track the progress of the workflow through the Workflow Lifecycle. Reviewers can be defined without assigning any manual actions like Approve or Reject to them as this will be done by approvers.
Approval details show that the reviewers have received the reviewer task which is also restarted when the Approval Workflow is restarted. This helps in monitoring the progress of the PR approval workflow with great transparency by showing who has reviewed the task in approval details.
If you would like to see how efficiently the PR Workflow mechanism works in SAP S/4HANA Cloud System, then this demo you would definitely not like to miss.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_68gq5pad
Demo: Review activities in Purchase Requisition approval Workflow
In the Analytics are for the Central Purchasing Contracts, we have a new Fiori App, “Price History for Central Purchase Contract” which visualizes the price changes in central purchase contract items over a specified period of time, hence it helps in monitoring the changes in price and conditions for central purchase contract items.
Central Purchasers can easily compare contract items for the same or different materials and how the price and the conditions have been changed. This is done by analyzing the cost breakdown of the effective price and the changes across all version histories of that central purchase contract items.
To highlight a few capabilities:
This helps to have increased transparency into price volatility and improved analytical insights into price trends in Central Purchase Contract items.
Price Variance History for Central Purchasing Contracts
With this release, we have additional purchasing spend analytics in embedded SAC dashboard which provides real-time insights into purchasing spend across various dimensions, such as spend by quarter, supplier, material group, purchasing organization, group, plant, and supplier country.
With this, for example, we can track non-compliant purchase orders, where payment terms in the purchase order do not match with the payment terms in the supplier master.
This helps by increasing transparency into spend in regions and monitoring compliance issues related to payment terms.
*requires SAP Analytics Cloud subscription.
With this development in this release, users are able to extract detailed data on Purchasing documents, this data can further be used to feed business intelligence systems to view detailed analysis and identify trends over time.
With the provision of new extraction-enabled core data services (CDS) views, users can extract data on Purchasing documents like:
and send this data to an external system.
In this new innovation, we make use of the intelligent Situation Handling framework of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in the Purchasing Process to send notifications to all relevant stakeholders on any proposal made to change in standard Supplier List.
This is how it works:
If a Purchaser makes any proposals to change the Standard Supplier List, notification will be sent to the Category Managers (Standard Role Buyer) so that they can decide to accept or reject the proposal. To make an informed decision, information like supplier name & ID, country of supplier, the buyer who proposed the supplier, and (if available) a comment with additional information is provided. Then if the Category Manager accepts the proposal the supplier will be added automatically to the Standard Supplier List and if he rejects then the supplier will not be added and the proposal disappears from the proposal list.
Notifications will be sent to
This way proactive information on the proposal for the standard supplier list is sent to the Category Manager and the most up-to-date information is also sent back to Purchasers who have made the proposals. This helps foster efficient communication through automatic notifications
The integration of the sourcing process between SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA Central Procurement system with SAP Ariba Sourcing helps and enables buyers to get the best suppliers in the vast supplier network. With the “Guided sourcing UI for an improved sourcing integration flow,” we offer a new, simplified, intuitive user experience for your Sourcing Project. Guided Sourcing UI can be implemented with scope items 4BL(Sourcing with SAP Ariba Sourcing) and 4QN(Central Procurement with SAP Ariba Sourcing).
Let's take an example of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Central Procurement System integrated with SAP Ariba Sourcing.
As a Central Purchaser, for your Central Sourcing project, you have created a single central RFQ in the central system from multiple Purchase Requisitions from various backend systems. After publishing the RFQ externally it is reflected in SAP Ariba Sourcing and with Guided Sourcing, in a simple single-page event creation of your sourcing project all information of the Sourcing request can be copied and the best supplier can be identified from the wide network and bid can be awarded. This helps you take advantage of bulk negotiations and reduced costs to achieve better savings.
Guided Souring UI helps with improved usability, faster adoption, and user satisfaction for end-users with drastic time reduction in creating the Souring event in SAP Ariba Souring for PRs from Central System. Users can still work with integrated scope items 4BL and 4QN without Guided Sourcing, and with easy configuration they can switch anytime at their convenience to Guided Souring when ready without disruption.
Here is the demo for the same, it's a little long but explains how the end to end process works.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_m5997dov
Demo: Guided Sourcing UI for an improved Sourcing Integration flow
Service Procurement with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Network, and SAP Fieldglass brings to SAP’s Integrated Intelligent Suite the best of these SAP Procurement products together in an end to end procure to pay scenario. A seamless digital process from requisition to payment through SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Network, and SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement with guided buying capability for planned and unplanned lean services and mixed orders including materials.
This Integration of all 3 Procurement Solutions together provides efficient and cost-effective streamlined procurement processes via collaboration between buyers, purchasers, and suppliers. This greatly reduces manual steps, ensuring highly automated service procurement processes with fewer errors. It helps to perform real-time monitoring of service fulfillment and lowers the cost of supplier transactions with improved compliance and reduced inquiries about payments from suppliers.
With the release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105, we delivered integration that connects three products, providing a seamless flow from a purchase order in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Procurement, to purchase order confirmation via Ariba Network, and SOW creation, proof-of-service, and service entry sheets (SES) in SAP Fieldglass.
With this release 2108, Suppliers can create ship notices and service sheets for mixed orders, allowing support for the receipts process of both materials and lean-service line items independently and creating one invoice. This Integration Scenario supports orders containing both material and lean-service items by implementing the 4R2 scope item.
Well, that is all I wanted to share with you in this release, if you have any questions or thoughts feel free to post in the comments section or you can also ask directly in the SAP Community
Do follow my profile if you would like to know the latest and greatest features in Sourcing & Procurement with every release.
Dive deeper by checking out the following links:
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself on @LinkedinHarish & @twitterHarryMangtani
I welcome you again to present to you some of the major highlights of SAP S/4HANA Cloud release 2108 in Sourcing and Procurement, which help customers to run their business better, more efficient, and intelligent with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Let's start with the Product Video where I walk you through the 4 major innovations of this release.
https://youtu.be/1tjpHBBoPz4
If you would like to see detailed demos of these innovations then you should probably watch the replay of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Early Release Series. More information here on the blog
Key Highlights:
Central Procurement:
- Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a Central Hub System
Operational Procurement:
- Review activities in Purchase Requisition approval Workflow
Procurement Analytics:
- Price Variance History for Central Purchasing Contracts
- Additional purchasing spend analytics in embedded SAP Analytics Cloud
- Data-extraction enablement for purchasing documents
Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud:
- Situation Handling for standard Supplier List proposals
Integration:
- Guided Sourcing UI for an improved Sourcing Integration flow
- Service Procurement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Central Procurement:
Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a Central Hub System
Central Procurement helps to control the procurement processes centrally from the Hub SAP S/4HANA Cloud Central system from multiple connected backend systems.
We make the user experience even more intuitive and seamless for Central Purchasers with Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a Central Hub System.
As a Purchaser, you can navigate from the Central Procurement Hub system to the object pages of either the Fiori Purchase Requisition or Fiori Purchase Order to any of its connected S/4HANA satellite systems. Therefore not navigating via SAP WebGUI transactions like ME51n or ME21n, which would still be the case if the connected system is the SAP ECC system where Fiori UIs are not available.
Purchaser can navigate into Fiori app 'Manage Purchase Requisition Professional' of an SAP S/4HANA connected system
- By using the Open Document link in the proxy purchase requisition’s object page
- By creating a backend purchase requisition in the connected system from scratch
Similarly, a Purchaser can navigate into Fiori app 'Manage Purchase Orders' of an SAP S/4HANA connected system
- By using the Open Document link on the proxy purchase order’s object page
- By creating a backend purchase order in the connected system from scratch
- Finally, bundling purchase requisitions into a backend purchase order in the connected system (except via the Expert Mode option).
Pic: Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from the Central Hub System
This helps with increased usability as end-users are delighted with the user experience by seamlessly navigating from one Fiori environment to another without getting directed to SAP WebGUIs in the connected backend systems.
Have a look at the demo of this innovation:
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_q6c5s3ia
Demo: Forward navigation into SAP Fiori apps from a Central Hub System
Operational Procurement:
Review activities in Purchase Requisition approval Workflow
This innovation is in the area of Operational Procurement in the Purchase Requisition Workflow. Flexible workflow for Purchase Requisitions allows you to define approval processes according to your requirements, and you can configure workflows to optimize the approval process for purchase requisitions.
We can always add one or more approvers to the PR approval workflow who is responsible to approve or reject the PR workflow.
Now with the “Review Activities in PR Approval Workflow” we can even define multiple reviewers in PR Approval Workflows, along with the review steps that can be defined with step conditions, determination rules with deadlines for the reviewer tasks.
Reviewers are then responsible for monitoring the progress of the workflow. When a workflow is started, all reviewers are notified who can then track the progress of the workflow through the Workflow Lifecycle. Reviewers can be defined without assigning any manual actions like Approve or Reject to them as this will be done by approvers.
Approval details show that the reviewers have received the reviewer task which is also restarted when the Approval Workflow is restarted. This helps in monitoring the progress of the PR approval workflow with great transparency by showing who has reviewed the task in approval details.
Pic: Review activities in Purchase Requisition approval Workflow
If you would like to see how efficiently the PR Workflow mechanism works in SAP S/4HANA Cloud System, then this demo you would definitely not like to miss.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_68gq5pad
Demo: Review activities in Purchase Requisition approval Workflow
Procurement Analytics:
Price Variance History for Central Purchasing Contracts
In the Analytics are for the Central Purchasing Contracts, we have a new Fiori App, “Price History for Central Purchase Contract” which visualizes the price changes in central purchase contract items over a specified period of time, hence it helps in monitoring the changes in price and conditions for central purchase contract items.
Central Purchasers can easily compare contract items for the same or different materials and how the price and the conditions have been changed. This is done by analyzing the cost breakdown of the effective price and the changes across all version histories of that central purchase contract items.
To highlight a few capabilities:
- Price trends for central contract line items, ranging from the cause of time down to price-condition levels
- Differentiation by plant-independent and plant-specific price conditions
- Reasons for price changes on the price-condition level stored within the line-item history of the central contract
This helps to have increased transparency into price volatility and improved analytical insights into price trends in Central Purchase Contract items.
Price Variance History for Central Purchasing Contracts
Pic: Price Variance History for Central Purchasing Contracts
Additional Purchasing spend analytics in embedded SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard
With this release, we have additional purchasing spend analytics in embedded SAC dashboard which provides real-time insights into purchasing spend across various dimensions, such as spend by quarter, supplier, material group, purchasing organization, group, plant, and supplier country.
With this, for example, we can track non-compliant purchase orders, where payment terms in the purchase order do not match with the payment terms in the supplier master.
This helps by increasing transparency into spend in regions and monitoring compliance issues related to payment terms.
Pic: Additional purchasing spend analytics in embedded SAC Dashboard
*requires SAP Analytics Cloud subscription.
Data-extraction enablement for Purchasing documents
With this development in this release, users are able to extract detailed data on Purchasing documents, this data can further be used to feed business intelligence systems to view detailed analysis and identify trends over time.
With the provision of new extraction-enabled core data services (CDS) views, users can extract data on Purchasing documents like:
- Purchase Order Account Assignments
- Purchase Requisition Items
- Purchase Info Records
- Source List
- Scheduling Agreement Header and Item
- Scheduling Agreement Schedule Lines
and send this data to an external system.
Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud:
Situation handling for standard Supplier List proposals
In this new innovation, we make use of the intelligent Situation Handling framework of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in the Purchasing Process to send notifications to all relevant stakeholders on any proposal made to change in standard Supplier List.
This is how it works:
If a Purchaser makes any proposals to change the Standard Supplier List, notification will be sent to the Category Managers (Standard Role Buyer) so that they can decide to accept or reject the proposal. To make an informed decision, information like supplier name & ID, country of supplier, the buyer who proposed the supplier, and (if available) a comment with additional information is provided. Then if the Category Manager accepts the proposal the supplier will be added automatically to the Standard Supplier List and if he rejects then the supplier will not be added and the proposal disappears from the proposal list.
Notifications will be sent to
- the category manager for a new supplier proposal
- the purchaser if a supplier proposal has been accepted or rejected.
This way proactive information on the proposal for the standard supplier list is sent to the Category Manager and the most up-to-date information is also sent back to Purchasers who have made the proposals. This helps foster efficient communication through automatic notifications
Pic: Situation handling for standard Supplier List proposals
Integration:
Guided Sourcing UI for an improved Sourcing Integration flow(4BL & 4QN)
The integration of the sourcing process between SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA Central Procurement system with SAP Ariba Sourcing helps and enables buyers to get the best suppliers in the vast supplier network. With the “Guided sourcing UI for an improved sourcing integration flow,” we offer a new, simplified, intuitive user experience for your Sourcing Project. Guided Sourcing UI can be implemented with scope items 4BL(Sourcing with SAP Ariba Sourcing) and 4QN(Central Procurement with SAP Ariba Sourcing).
Let's take an example of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Central Procurement System integrated with SAP Ariba Sourcing.
As a Central Purchaser, for your Central Sourcing project, you have created a single central RFQ in the central system from multiple Purchase Requisitions from various backend systems. After publishing the RFQ externally it is reflected in SAP Ariba Sourcing and with Guided Sourcing, in a simple single-page event creation of your sourcing project all information of the Sourcing request can be copied and the best supplier can be identified from the wide network and bid can be awarded. This helps you take advantage of bulk negotiations and reduced costs to achieve better savings.
Pic: Guided Sourcing UI for an improved Sourcing Integration flow
Guided Souring UI helps with improved usability, faster adoption, and user satisfaction for end-users with drastic time reduction in creating the Souring event in SAP Ariba Souring for PRs from Central System. Users can still work with integrated scope items 4BL and 4QN without Guided Sourcing, and with easy configuration they can switch anytime at their convenience to Guided Souring when ready without disruption.
Here is the demo for the same, it's a little long but explains how the end to end process works.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_m5997dov
Demo: Guided Sourcing UI for an improved Sourcing Integration flow
Service Procurement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud(4R2)
Service Procurement with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Network, and SAP Fieldglass brings to SAP’s Integrated Intelligent Suite the best of these SAP Procurement products together in an end to end procure to pay scenario. A seamless digital process from requisition to payment through SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Network, and SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement with guided buying capability for planned and unplanned lean services and mixed orders including materials.
This Integration of all 3 Procurement Solutions together provides efficient and cost-effective streamlined procurement processes via collaboration between buyers, purchasers, and suppliers. This greatly reduces manual steps, ensuring highly automated service procurement processes with fewer errors. It helps to perform real-time monitoring of service fulfillment and lowers the cost of supplier transactions with improved compliance and reduced inquiries about payments from suppliers.
Pic: Service Procurement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud
With the release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105, we delivered integration that connects three products, providing a seamless flow from a purchase order in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Procurement, to purchase order confirmation via Ariba Network, and SOW creation, proof-of-service, and service entry sheets (SES) in SAP Fieldglass.
With this release 2108, Suppliers can create ship notices and service sheets for mixed orders, allowing support for the receipts process of both materials and lean-service line items independently and creating one invoice. This Integration Scenario supports orders containing both material and lean-service items by implementing the 4R2 scope item.
Well, that is all I wanted to share with you in this release, if you have any questions or thoughts feel free to post in the comments section or you can also ask directly in the SAP Community
Do follow my profile if you would like to know the latest and greatest features in Sourcing & Procurement with every release.
Dive deeper by checking out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
- sven.denecken SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Product Update here
- jan.gilg SAP News Center article here
- 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 Microlearning 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 @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself on @LinkedinHarish & @twitterHarryMangtani
- SAP Managed Tags:
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