SAP S/4HANA 1511 : Key Principles, Implementation Impact & Solution-Landscape
In one of my earlier blogs I had shared a document that stated “what is SAP S/4HANA 1511 & WHAT it is NOT !!!”
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-68846
Continuing with the study and analysis of innovations in SAP S/4HANA 1511 MMO – Materials Management & Operations ( Simple !??! Logistics) area, I share below my findings further :
The Key Principles : SAP HANA based products
Followed by SAP for and in SAP HANA based products :
- Re-Architecture for HANA
- Consolidation of Existing Functionality
- New Innovation based on and utilizing the HANA-Capabilities
- Retiring of Obsolete Functionality
- (A) At “Solution Stack” level à The same is visible in >> what SAP “DIGITAL CORE” and supported by EXTENDED Line-of-Business(LOB) Solutions
- The Digital CORE = SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management Solution
- Line-Of-Business Solutions
- § LOB Sales like BRIM, Sales Planning & Performance
- § LOB Sourcing & Procurement like Supplier Collaboration, Business network…. And so on
- (B) Within a particular solution, in our case – SAP S/4HANA 1511 Edition, this results into the Technical impact as : Functionality Consolidation, Obsolete – Replaced by, Not-Supported, Available in 1511 but NOT in S/4 Architecture
Solution Landscape – with S/4HANA 1511
For customers who plan to migrate to SAP S/4HANA 1511 release the suggestive solution landscape would look like a “bundle” of applications & add-ons” natively integrated and orchestrated for an “end-to-End” process. [ *Solution consolidation in SCM & Manufacturing, will be added to the diagram soon ]
SAP S/4HANA 1511 in a NUT-Shell….
Summarizing key changes within S/4HANA
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Simplified Operational Analytics – thru ODATA & ABAP Managed CDS |
DIMP Added to the CORE |
Simplified inventory management data model – Introduction of LARGE TABLE — MATDOC |
The Business Partner approach is Mandatory in SAP S/4HANA. |
|
Foreign trade are covered by SAP Global Trade Services (GTS) with Restrictions |
Long Material Number with restrictions |
On-the-fly calculation of stock. Aggregates and indices removed |
Material Master : Simplified and supports the optimized MRP functionality |
|
Billing – Simplified Output Management – thru Adobe Document Server and Adobe Forms “ONLY” |
It is mandatory for manufacturing BOMs to maintain the product version for correct BOM explosion- as Only BOMs with valid production version are considered during BOM explosion |
Material Valuation : Statistical MAP – significant increase of transactional data throughput for goods movements, by deactivating the statistical moving average. – “soft-lock” Caution: Activation is OPTIONAL & once activated, the deactivation is not possible & update of Unit-Cost of Material ONLY thru MR21 |
The tools that support an automated migration from FI-AR Credit Management to FIN-FSCM Credit Management cannot be used in 1511 |
|
Supports optimized Order Processing – Status Tables removed and status now captured in respective Documents (Order, Delivery, Billing) – HEADER & DETAIL tables |
Optimized process for REBATE Processing – VBOX (especially useful for CRM-TPM Customers) Rebate Processing >>Settlement Mgmt |
Tighter integration between sFIN & simplified logistics. |
Simplification Database that summarizes all changes and new innovations |
|
Commodity Management NOT Supported in S/4HANA 1511 SPS00 |
Contract Billing is not available in SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511 |
Co-Deployment with SAP SRM is Not Supported |
The ITS services for the Internet Application Components (IAC) in QM are not available |
|
Optimized Pricing – Introduction on NEW table for PRICING PRCD_ELEMENTS CDS VIEW V_KNOV |
Material Ledger has become obligatorily active, Actual Costing is not. Activation of Actual Costing is still optional |
Optimized MRP-LIVE in HANA, Simplified Sourcing Optimized MRP Subcontractors SOP replaced by >> IBP |
“New” Service Type Material |
Analysis of other areas can be further added to findings…. however I am sure the similar principles have been followed and will be followed in other modules too (where changes are expected)….
THE READING on the WALL !!
While SAP S/4HANA 1511 release do promise many simplifications and innovations, it would be worth a wait for the product to stabilize and incorporate full-listing of new innovations (as promised and mentioned in Road-MAP – especially in SAP High-end products like SCM, SRM, CRM and so on ).
While business and clients may want to adopt a more “cautious” approach, they cannot effort to “simply-sit-and-watch”, and they sure need to start “planning” their journey and road-map if they wish to (in near future) adopt SAP HANA based products….Why ?? check this blog…
http://scn.sap.com/community/s4hana/blog/2016/01/01/remove-the-old-make-place-for-the-new
For New Clients too, adopting the technology while it’s “still evolving” can give a good platform to start however one would definitely want to be in “study-mode” and watch and learn from the frequent updates and modifications that are currently being introduced in the product.
Many of large existing clients with complex landscape and heavily customized systems, a Landscape Consolidation roadmap and or a Green-field implementation approach might be more appealing rather than “Complex Conversion & migration projects”
Move towards adopting SAP S/4HANA should be looked as not just TECHNICAL but rather a “Business Transformation” Project.
Look forward to your comments and views…
As part of SAP ERP EHP6, I understand that it's already possible to have "APO on ERP" as an add-on.So is this "ERP on ERP" AddOn a viable option on S/4 1511?
Looks like I got my answer (2214409 - The release information for Add-Ons). The APO on ERP add-on will NOT be supported