Welcome back to this blogging series and the Product Management Updates for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. In this blog I will guide you through some of the new innovations for the professional services with this 1805 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud
So, let us get started right away. The first highlight for professional services customers with the 1805 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the new BAdi for timesheet approver determination. This BAdI (Business Add-in) can be used to determine the approver for each timesheet entry. It also enables you to auto approve the timesheet entries. This BAdI gets called only when the approval scenario is enabled in the configuration app ‘Maintain Data Entry Profiles’ for timesheet.
The approver for customer projects is the 'Project Manager' by default, but it is possible to overwrite it with the 'Project Controller' as approver or to auto approve the tasks related to customer projects.
This next innovation I want to point out, has been highly anticipated. Professional Services customers ask for a very flexible cost rate maintenance. Defining cost rates for the combination of sending cost center and activity types is often not detailed enough. Up to this point this was already possible with the app “Maintain Activity Cost Rates”.
With this new release, we not only enhanced usability, but also incorporated additional functionality in the new Fiori UI “Manage Cost Rates – Professional Services” app, which will replace the previous app “Maintain Activity Cost Rates”.
This app will also include a new indicator, called “ICO cost rate”, which allows our customers to maintain intercompany cost rates.
One note for customers, which are already using the previous app and have existing cost rates in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, these will be automatically migrated to the new app.
Another highlight is the profit center on billing item level. This new functionality brings further flexibility to revenue allocation of customer projects. The revenue can be assigned to several profit centers and therefore a higher transparency on the project profits is realized.
In the billing tab of the “Plan Customer Projects” app, you can now find the new attribute “profit center”. The profit center, which is part of the project header is defaulted for all work packages of the project, but can be exchanged.
You are able to change the profit centers on item level as long as the project phase is “Contract Preparation” and no postings on the assigned work packages or the item itself have been executed.
Also, let us take a look at the latest functionality in the area of the resource manager. Now a resource manager can assign multiple resources to a resource request. This may be required, for example, if the skills or number of hours required by a resource request cannot be provided by a single resource. You can create the assignments for each resource individually or for all resources at once.
The benefits with this innovations help to compensate for missing resource availability or skills by staffing multiple resources for a project role with a easy and quick assignment creation.
Last but definitely not least, I want to mention the new functionality in the “Manage my timesheet” app. With the 1805 release this app has been enabled to support time recordings for global employment and concurrent employment scenarios.
If an employee has a global assignment or has been transferred to another country, he will now be able to record time against the new task list assigned to them. The same works for employees having multiple active employment contracts.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via LinkedIn
So, let us get started right away. The first highlight for professional services customers with the 1805 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the new BAdi for timesheet approver determination. This BAdI (Business Add-in) can be used to determine the approver for each timesheet entry. It also enables you to auto approve the timesheet entries. This BAdI gets called only when the approval scenario is enabled in the configuration app ‘Maintain Data Entry Profiles’ for timesheet.
The approver for customer projects is the 'Project Manager' by default, but it is possible to overwrite it with the 'Project Controller' as approver or to auto approve the tasks related to customer projects.
This next innovation I want to point out, has been highly anticipated. Professional Services customers ask for a very flexible cost rate maintenance. Defining cost rates for the combination of sending cost center and activity types is often not detailed enough. Up to this point this was already possible with the app “Maintain Activity Cost Rates”.
With this new release, we not only enhanced usability, but also incorporated additional functionality in the new Fiori UI “Manage Cost Rates – Professional Services” app, which will replace the previous app “Maintain Activity Cost Rates”.
This app will also include a new indicator, called “ICO cost rate”, which allows our customers to maintain intercompany cost rates.
One note for customers, which are already using the previous app and have existing cost rates in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, these will be automatically migrated to the new app.
Another highlight is the profit center on billing item level. This new functionality brings further flexibility to revenue allocation of customer projects. The revenue can be assigned to several profit centers and therefore a higher transparency on the project profits is realized.
In the billing tab of the “Plan Customer Projects” app, you can now find the new attribute “profit center”. The profit center, which is part of the project header is defaulted for all work packages of the project, but can be exchanged.
You are able to change the profit centers on item level as long as the project phase is “Contract Preparation” and no postings on the assigned work packages or the item itself have been executed.
Also, let us take a look at the latest functionality in the area of the resource manager. Now a resource manager can assign multiple resources to a resource request. This may be required, for example, if the skills or number of hours required by a resource request cannot be provided by a single resource. You can create the assignments for each resource individually or for all resources at once.
The benefits with this innovations help to compensate for missing resource availability or skills by staffing multiple resources for a project role with a easy and quick assignment creation.
Last but definitely not least, I want to mention the new functionality in the “Manage my timesheet” app. With the 1805 release this app has been enabled to support time recordings for global employment and concurrent employment scenarios.
If an employee has a global assignment or has been transferred to another country, he will now be able to record time against the new task list assigned to them. The same works for employees having multiple active employment contracts.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1805 Release Blog
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- Feature Scope Description here
- Best practices for all the cloud editions here
- New SAP S/4HANA Cloud User Community: register here
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via LinkedIn
- SAP Managed Tags:
