Product Management Update: SAP #S4HANA Cloud 1802 for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management is designed to address simple projects (internal order like) up to highly complex hierarchical project structures. Currently, the solution supports internal projects, R&D projects, overhead type of projects, and to some extent also capital projects. With future releases, we intend to cover more project types.

In this blog, you will learn about the key innovations for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management. Our 1802 release brings updates for the business processes Project Financial Control and Project Review. 

Overview Page for Project Financial Controllers

As project financial controllers support several project managers in managing and controlling their projects, they always need to have an overview of all the projects in their area of responsibility.

As of 1802, the new SAP Fiori overview page enables project financial controllers to easily monitor all projects. Containing four cards, the overview page allows instant insight into the planned projects which are not yet released, and the active projects without recent postings which are candidates for project closure activities. Moreover, the card for actual costs and commitments allows projects financial controllers to easily compare the planned costs of his projects with the actual costs and commitments on a periodic basis. The card costs to date by cost component provides an aggregated view of all the planned and actual costs posted to date for the project selected. The graphical display by cost components easily enables project financial controllers to identify cost drivers and deviations.

Watch the overview page in action in this demo video.

Fig. 1: Project Financial Controller Overview Page

Monitor Projects App

Another highlight available as of 1802 is the Monitor Projects app. This app serves as central list report for the project financial controller. The focus of this app in 1802 is on the tabular analysis of various key financial data at project level.

The Monitor Projects app can be called up from the Project Financial Controller Overview Page or via a separate tile in the SAP Fiori Launchpad. In the first case, the context on the overview page will be automatically passed on to the Monitor Project app to show the relevant fields and data only. Here, the project financial controller can further analyze, e.g. the cost distribution by work packages or line item reporting by navigating to the project cost report for selected projects.

Fig. 2: Monitor Projects app called up from the SAP Fiori Launchpad

Selection of Project Profiles

Another innovation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1802 for the Project Financial Control process is the continuous sharpening of different accounting scenarios for projects as started in 1711. For this, the existing project profile ‘Enterprise Project – Internal’ is replaced by four new profiles: ‘Overhead Project’, ‘Investment Project’, ‘Statistical Project’, and ‘Project with Revenue’. The introduction of separate profiles now allows clear handling of project accounting processes and period-end closing activities.

Innovations in the Project Brief App

As part of the business process Project Review, there are three innovations which improve managing the project lifecycle in the Project Brief app.

Approval Status for Project Milestones

As of 1802, project managers can use the new ‘Approval Status’ field for milestones. This field allows them to document the approval relevance and current approval status of milestones in the Project Brief app. This enables project managers to manage the project lifecycle in a simple, and for all stakeholder’s transparent way. This is also the first step towards a more advanced milestone approval processes as planned for future releases.

Fig. 3: New ‘Approval Status’ field for project milestones

Team Member Role

The new team member role enables project managers to assign – apart from project financial controllers and steering committee members – now also team members to his projects. The team members assigned to the projects will then be able to record times against the project. However, team members will not have the full authorizations compared to the project manager or project financial controller.

Fig. 4: Assigning team members to projects

Ability to open Project Cost Report

In order to analyze the financial status of a project in more detail, project managers, project financial controllers and steering committee members can now navigate from the cost section within the Project Brief to the cost report. This enables them to drill down starting from the Project Brief to individual line items if required.

OData based API for simple projects

Last but not least, SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management provides an OData based API for simple projects. As of 1802, this new OData API which supports functionalities to read, create, update, and delete simple projects allows more flexibility for the handling of simple projects. Such simple projects are internal order like projects, without a dedicated project hierarchy.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

• Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1802 Release Blog
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
• Best practices for all the cloud editions here

Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @CorinaReise and LinkedIn