In SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1902 release, we shipped many innovations and enhancements across all Lines of Business and of course procurement being the front runner delivering the intelligent ERP. In this blog, I would like to provide an update on procurement highlights shipped with 1902 release,
Situation Handling for overdue PO, contract expiry & consumption
let me start off with overdue of purchase orders. central procurement team is proactively informed about overdue of purchase order items which are managed centrally from connected systems. The overdue of purchase order items based on the delivery date can be maintained in terms of days or months in custom situation types. The Situation framework checks if the delivery date of a purchase order from the connected system is less than or equal to the delivery date that is configured in custom situation types, then a situation is triggered, and notification is sent. One of the purchasers from the procurement team can navigate from the Fiori notification to item object, and then choose to dismiss the situation and take corrective actions. Dismissing a situation will ensure that no further situation message is triggered for the same situation type and purchase order number.
Next situation handling functionality is about central contract Expiry and consumption: In this scenario, the central procurement team will be informed about potential central contract expiry, based on expiration date criteria. Similarly, for value and quantity based central contract consumption, the total consumption is calculated at the item level, and whenever a threshold consumption % value reached, the team will be notified about it. One of the purchasers from the procurement team can navigate from the Fiori notification to the central contract object and choose to dismiss the situation and take corrective actions.
Situation Handling for supplier delivery deficit & Overdue confirmation of purchase requisition items
Let`s now turn to the area of operational procurement. As you might be aware, with 1802 we have announced situation handling functionality with pending supplier confirmations for purchase orders. On top of this, now with 1902 release, we have shipped the new situation handling functionality for supplier delivery deficit. In this case, If the supplier has a deficit in delivering purchase order items, then Purchaser will be proactively informed about deliverable quantity based on the supplier confirmation. This enables the purchaser to react to potential supply shortages and avoid negative implications to the business processes of the company.
Similarly, in case of overdue confirmations for purchase requisition items, Purchaser will be informed based on goods ordered and days past delivery. This enables the purchaser to react to potential supply shortages and avoid negative implications to the business processes of the company.
Analytics for Change in purchase order items
The next highlight is leveraging S/4HANA Cloud’s embedded analytics capabilities. Here, I would like to emphasize the Analytical App for changes in purchase order item. Now procurement organizations can now get more transparency regarding the type of changes made to a purchase order item such as:
This will help purchasing organizations to monitor effectively the creation and modification of purchase order items.
Increased flexibility and extensibility in purchase requisition workflow
Customers often need to adopt standard business workflow processes tailored to their specific approval rules. To accommodate that need customers can now, for example, add preconditions for custom fields or use a Business Add-in to define the set of fields in a purchase requisition.
By using Custom fields and logic app, you can create custom logic to enhance the existing Purchase Requisition item by defining a set of fields in both self-service requisitions and professional purchase requisitions. And further, configure conditions which can restart the approval workflow.
Centralized approval of purchase requisitions
Within Central Procurement area, we have an enhancement that would help to manage workflows and approve purchase requisitions centrally. This will be beneficial to reduce customers operational costs or workflows required in the connected back-end system.
you can configure workflows for the approval process of centrally managed purchase requisitions as a configuration expert. Workflows can be defined with several preconditions for the release of centrally managed purchase requisitions. It also provides options to determine the approvers of their release. The approval process can be either an automatic or a one-step or multi-step process.
SAP Enable Now
Another hot topic that I would like to draw your attention to is the new SAP Enable Now framework, our harmonized onboarding and continuous enablement concept which is embedded directly in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The framework provides standard enablement content which is constantly updated and comprises context-sensitive help, guided tours and tutorials directly within SAP S/4HANA Cloud. In addition, you can customize or produce your own enablement content and upload to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. For more information on efficient End-User enablement with SAP Enable Now, check out the following links:
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @SSaimadhav and LinkedIn
Situation Handling for overdue PO, contract expiry & consumption
let me start off with overdue of purchase orders. central procurement team is proactively informed about overdue of purchase order items which are managed centrally from connected systems. The overdue of purchase order items based on the delivery date can be maintained in terms of days or months in custom situation types. The Situation framework checks if the delivery date of a purchase order from the connected system is less than or equal to the delivery date that is configured in custom situation types, then a situation is triggered, and notification is sent. One of the purchasers from the procurement team can navigate from the Fiori notification to item object, and then choose to dismiss the situation and take corrective actions. Dismissing a situation will ensure that no further situation message is triggered for the same situation type and purchase order number.
Next situation handling functionality is about central contract Expiry and consumption: In this scenario, the central procurement team will be informed about potential central contract expiry, based on expiration date criteria. Similarly, for value and quantity based central contract consumption, the total consumption is calculated at the item level, and whenever a threshold consumption % value reached, the team will be notified about it. One of the purchasers from the procurement team can navigate from the Fiori notification to the central contract object and choose to dismiss the situation and take corrective actions.
Situation Handling for supplier delivery deficit & Overdue confirmation of purchase requisition items
Let`s now turn to the area of operational procurement. As you might be aware, with 1802 we have announced situation handling functionality with pending supplier confirmations for purchase orders. On top of this, now with 1902 release, we have shipped the new situation handling functionality for supplier delivery deficit. In this case, If the supplier has a deficit in delivering purchase order items, then Purchaser will be proactively informed about deliverable quantity based on the supplier confirmation. This enables the purchaser to react to potential supply shortages and avoid negative implications to the business processes of the company.
Similarly, in case of overdue confirmations for purchase requisition items, Purchaser will be informed based on goods ordered and days past delivery. This enables the purchaser to react to potential supply shortages and avoid negative implications to the business processes of the company.
Analytics for Change in purchase order items
The next highlight is leveraging S/4HANA Cloud’s embedded analytics capabilities. Here, I would like to emphasize the Analytical App for changes in purchase order item. Now procurement organizations can now get more transparency regarding the type of changes made to a purchase order item such as:
- Quantity
- Purchasing group
- Storage Location
- Number of items added
- Payment terms
- Delivery Date
- Material group
- Price in real-time.
This will help purchasing organizations to monitor effectively the creation and modification of purchase order items.
Increased flexibility and extensibility in purchase requisition workflow
Customers often need to adopt standard business workflow processes tailored to their specific approval rules. To accommodate that need customers can now, for example, add preconditions for custom fields or use a Business Add-in to define the set of fields in a purchase requisition.
By using Custom fields and logic app, you can create custom logic to enhance the existing Purchase Requisition item by defining a set of fields in both self-service requisitions and professional purchase requisitions. And further, configure conditions which can restart the approval workflow.
Centralized approval of purchase requisitions
Within Central Procurement area, we have an enhancement that would help to manage workflows and approve purchase requisitions centrally. This will be beneficial to reduce customers operational costs or workflows required in the connected back-end system.
you can configure workflows for the approval process of centrally managed purchase requisitions as a configuration expert. Workflows can be defined with several preconditions for the release of centrally managed purchase requisitions. It also provides options to determine the approvers of their release. The approval process can be either an automatic or a one-step or multi-step process.
SAP Enable Now
Another hot topic that I would like to draw your attention to is the new SAP Enable Now framework, our harmonized onboarding and continuous enablement concept which is embedded directly in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The framework provides standard enablement content which is constantly updated and comprises context-sensitive help, guided tours and tutorials directly within SAP S/4HANA Cloud. In addition, you can customize or produce your own enablement content and upload to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. For more information on efficient End-User enablement with SAP Enable Now, check out the following links:
- Increase SAP S/4HANA User Adoption with SAP Enable Now Framework
- SAP Enable Now Introduction Video on SAP
- SAP Enable Now Web Assistant Authoring Guide
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 1902 blog on SAP News here
- 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
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @SSaimadhav and LinkedIn
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