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corina_reisenauer
Contributor
In this blog, you will find out about the innovations for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management which are delivered in our 1902 release. As in our last update in 1811, we’re releasing innovations for our two foundation processes Project Financial Control (1NT) and Project Review (1YF): Project budget reporting and availability control across fiscal years including situations handling, a new OData API to create, update and delete work packages for enterprise projects as well as new project migration options.

Watch the video below to get a first glimpse:



 

Project Budget Reporting and Availability Control Across Fiscal Years


In my last blog, I explained how budget availability control enhances the control of project budget consumption. With our last release, Project Financial Controllers have already had the possibility to assign a budget availability control profile to a project and activate it. In doing so, the system can automatically check during costs postings whether certain budget thresholds get exceeded. In this case, the system informs the end user via warning or error messages.

Profile Settings


With our 1902 release, we further enhance this functionality. Whereas before, only project availability checks against annual budgets have been enabled, Project Financial Controllers can now make use of additional settings in the configuration of the profile and define for every profile whether the availability control check shall be run against annual or overall budgets by simply using the time range type setting.



Fig. 1: Time range type setting can be used to determine whether availability control checks shall be run against annual or overall budgets

 

A further extension is the specification of budget thresholds. This means that Project Financial Controllers can define a certain threshold, and once this gets exceeded, the system will trigger a first situation (for more information on situations check the next chapter of this blog). After a situation has been triggered, information messages are shown, and notifications automatically can be sent to the Project Financial Controller or to a group of people. On top, you can define an increment which will trigger further situations and corresponding notifications.

In the example below, the first situation shall be triggered when 80 % of the budget has been consumed. As soon as this is the case, information messages and notifications will be displayed and sent out to the respective Financial Controller. Furthermore, the responsible Financial Controller defined a 5 % increment for further notifications. Whenever additional 5 % of project budget has been consumed (meaning 85 %, 90 %, 95 % etc. of the overall project budget), the system will automatically send further notifications.

Having this intelligence in place, it’s a lot easier for Project Financial Controllers to stay on top on project budgets and prohibit budget overruns.



Fig. 2: Defining thresholds which trigger situations

 

Reporting


As of 1902, the former card ‘Budget Consumption’ shown by default has been renamed into ‘Annual Budget Consumption’. In addition, now we released a second card on the budget consumption, the ‘Overall Budget Consumption’ which shows the overall consumption, and which can be activated and brought to the overview page of the Project Financial Controller.

On top, we have enhanced the Project Budget Report for Project Financial Controllers, so that they can view the overall budget as well as the overall consumption. Along with this improvement, we have also enhanced the Project Monitoring App for Project Managers. Project Managers are now enabled to use new settings which are referring to the time range type. That means that they can choose whether they want to view projects which are checked against overall budgets, or annual budgets, or both. For projects checking their budget consumption against the annual values you can also specify an individual year to be displayed.

 
For more Information on Project Budget Availability Control Profile, please read these blogs from April / May 2020:



 

Situations / Notifications in Case of Exceeding Project Budget Thresholds


As already stated in the previous chapter, Financial Controllers can make use of situations in case budget thresholds are exceeded. The central framework of situations enables you to react to certain business events, e.g. critical exceptions. In the example above, the event is the budget consumption of 80 % which triggers the first situation. For the situation itself, a Configuration Expert can instrument the system on how it should react to a certain event.

Therefore, we now offer a new situation template which can be used as a basis to create own situations. Within these situations, you can define texts which should be shown and notifications which should be sent out to specific groups of people. In case of an exceeded budget threshold, Financial Controllers get a notification from where they can navigate into the Project Budget Report for further analysis.



Fig. 3: Project Financial Controllers get notified in case budget threshold gets exceeded

 

Additionally, the corresponding situation is shown in the Project Control app where Financial Controllers can drill into more details of the budget and take corrective measures if needed, and finally dismiss the situation.



Fig. 4: Situation text is displayed in the Project Control App for Project Financial Controllers

 

OData API to Create, Update and Delete Work Packages for Enterprise Projects


With 1811, we already provided an OData API to read work package information. To complement this functionality, with 1902 you can now also create, update and delete work packages for enterprise projects. With this, we’re adding more flexibility for our customers and partners to build additional functionalities on top of our standard delivery.

Visit the SAP API Business Hub for more information.

 

Extended Project Migration Options


Last but not least, we now offer extended project migration options. Previously, it was possible to migrate project header information. As of 1902 you can migrate entire project structures, which means work package information as well as their hierarchy.

You can now easily use the migration tool to migrate enterprise project structures comprising general project data, work packages and their hierarchical relationship to each other into the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

 

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



 

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