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Author's profile photo Monika Patel

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

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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 ]

s4HANA-Solution-Landscape-20160122.JPG

SAP S/4HANA 1511 in a NUT-Shell….

Summarizing key changes within S/4HANA

s4HANA-CORE-Changes-20160122.JPG

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…

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      2 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Damean-BF Chen
      Damean-BF Chen

      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?

      Author's profile photo Damean-BF Chen
      Damean-BF Chen

      Looks like I got my answer (2214409 - The release information for Add-Ons). The APO on ERP add-on will NOT be supported