Intelligent ERP Update: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 for Professional Services
As we welcome the third release in this year of our intelligent ERP in the cloud, I would like to take some time to illustrate some of the most interesting innovations this 1808 release brings for the professional services industry.
Let us get started with the new Staffing Analysis app, which is designed in the flexible column layout, a newly introduced screen in Fiori, which allows the user to see the path he or she clicked on from one column to the next.
This new application is available for both, the resource manager and the project manager role and therefore can be used with the direct staffing functionality from the project or the indirect staffing functionality.
The project manager can review the upcoming project demands in terms of required resources across his entire projects, as well as the respective supply and effort distribution.
This new functionality delivers the possibility to monitor the upcoming resource needs to ensure that all requests are fulfilled in time. Also, it allows to oversee the monthly distribution of the resources based on their staffed efforts.
The second highlight I want to tell you about today, is the Cap in Time and Expense Billing.
If you are a project manager of a Time and Expense project, you can now define an upper cap limit for the services at billing line item level.
This cap can be defined during the project creation and represents the upper limit of the amount negotiated with the client.
Afterwards the cap value can be further monitored in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system by the project manager to ensure that billing and invoicing does not cross this defined limit.
There are several enhancements in the Resource Management area, for instance in the Assignment Board, where the resource manager can now show more information for resources and resource requests by showing additional columns in the table area, adjust the amount of data shown by showing and hiding columns as needed and trigger the change and deletion of assignments directly from the Assignment Board.
In addition, before staffing a resource request, resource managers can now check how project managers want the required hours to be distributed per month. This helps them to create assignments that fulfill staffing requirements optimally.
For more flexibility and easier access to the needed data, resource managers can now add two new tiles to their SAP Fiori launchpad home page. This allows them to directly access the resources and resource requests for which they are responsible.
Next let me point out the new synchronous transfer to the service entry sheet from the time recording that will support the contingent worker process with more automation.
With the process up until now, the service entry sheet creation and deletion were manual processes and not done automatically when a time entry is created or deleted by a contingent worker. The purchaser had to adjust the service entry sheet accordingly.
With this new feature, this process has been automated and now the consultant can create, update and delete the timesheet entry directly using timesheet and the service entry sheet gets created, updated and deleted automatically with this process. Update of a service entry sheet was not supported earlier. With this process, whenever a timesheet entry is updated, the service entry sheet is also updated.
Last but not least, I wanted to remark that with the 1808 release, consultants will now receive notifications in the notification center of their Launchpad, when a project manager rejects their time entries. Of course, the consultant can navigate directly into the timesheet by clicking on the notification banner.
This allows the consultant to react immediately and make any needed adjustments before resubmitting this time recording.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 Release Blog
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud User Community: register here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here