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Author's profile photo Amin Hoque

Enterprise Management Layer and Multinational Corporations Model Company for SAP S/4HANA

Updated: December 21 2022

The SAP Enterprise Management Layer (EML) is based on SAP Best Practices.  It will accelerate SAP S/4HANA ERP implementation projects saving time and money.  (This is the new name for the service formerly called SAP Model Company for Multinational Corporations).  Why a blog about these SAP Best Practices?  Because they are an important “foundation”  and are positioned by SAP in a majority of our new implementations.  SAP believe that customers and partners can achieve significant savings using this content to accelerate the start of a project.

The Enterprise Management Layer is available for  SAP S/4HANA Cloud private edition and SAP S/4HANA on-premise.   In all cases, it is possible to take the configuration into a development system and hence a QA system and production system in addition to sandboxes.  See my blog on SAP S/4HANA deployment options.

If you are not familiar with SAP Best Practices you should read this blog first.

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/06/03/what-is-the-difference-between-sap-best-practices-and-sap-model-companies/

More detail on Enterprise Management Layer see this links:

https://blogs.sap.com/2021/08/17/enterprise-management-layer-for-sap-s-4hana-faqs/

https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/packageversions/BP_OP_EML

SAP provides SAP Best Practices and some other partners and organizations provide their own “template” solutions for SAP.  Why is the Enterprise Management Layer  unique and why is it your best choice when starting with SAP S/4HANA?  Here are 10 reasons.

 

1  Multi-country

Some template solutions are built for just one baseline country e.g. USA. This means that you must localise the configuration for each country in your project scope adding cost to your project.  SAP Best Practices are available for SAP S/4HANA in 43 countries and 25 languages. Just select which countries you need.  It includes many localisations for statutory requirements in each country. These are typically for finance business processes.  For a good overview of all localizations included in the SAP Best Practices and EML look at the useful Excel summary called “Localization Overview” in the EML BPX page: https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/packageversions/BP_OP_EML

2  Assemble to Order 

SAP Best Practices are built to work together. They are compatible (or inter-operable). This allows SAP to assemble them to order. You can get a combination of a multi-country baseline solutions in one instance.

3  Fast

SAP can set up for you very quickly: within 2 weeks. This means that your organisation does not need to “activate” SAP Best Practices and up-skill people on how to do this.

4  See Scope before you Buy

You can look at detailed documentation of the scope items before you purchase it.  Just look at the SAP Best Practice scope items in the Best Practice Explorer: https://rapid.sap.com/bp

5  Choose your Scope

Includes a large set of scope items from the SAP Best Practices including many LoBs e.g. finance, sales, procurement, production planning, quality management, warehousing and supplier management. EML also has extra optional countries and scope not available in SAP Best Practices.

6  Multi-Language

The content is currently available in 20 system languages.

7  Intercompany Processes

Currently the SAP Best Practices do not contain intercompany processes as standard. These are a very common business requirement and can be time consuming to set up. The Enterprise Management Layer provides a model solution with scope items for intercompany processes between two countries. You can then replicate this solution to other countries.  EML includes other extra scope items not available in SAP Best Practices.

8  Parallel Accounting and Currencies

When you get the content you can select your Group GAAP and two local ledgers for local GAAP. This is a common financial requirement in many projects. You can also select one group currency and local currencies per country.

9  Select your Fiscal Year Variant

When you get the content you can select a group fiscal year variant and a local fiscal year variant in the second local Ledger. Some organizations require this and it not possible through activating SAP Best Practices on your own.

10  Fiori Apps

The content provides S/4HANA Fiori apps that are ready to run. These give you the latest SAP user interfaces that appear in the SAP Best Practice business processes.

The content based on SAP on-premise Best Practices. Like other content, it is updated at least once a year.  The main update comes about a quarter after the latest version of the SAP on-premise Best Practices.

I hope you found this blog informative.

Amin Hoque
Application Architect at SAP Services UK

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      12 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Shaji Narayanan
      Shaji Narayanan

      Hi Amin,

      Thank you for your informative post.

      I have a query on the deployment options for Business-As-Usual systems using SAP Model Company.

      Let us assume an organisation has purchased and configured SAP Model Company to jump-start a programme.

      What is SAP’s recommended option to build the rest of the systems (DEV, QA, PROD) in the landscape?

      Obviously, they would prefer:

      1. to re-use the configurations performed in the Model Company system, rather than re-key in to a vanilla DEV system.
      2. not to bring in the additional languages and activated function modules that are present in the standard Model Company, but not relevant for their business.

      Thanks in advance for your recommendations,

      Shaji

      Author's profile photo Amin Hoque
      Amin Hoque
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Shaji

      Before configuration and development work starts in the Realize phase, the Development environment needs to be set up. There are 4 possible approaches:

      1. Re-use Sandbox. This approach is rarely used and is only feasible if the sandbox was set up and activated manually without a Model Company or an S/4HANA software appliance.
      2. Development system with SAP Best Practices. Set up a fresh S/4HANA development system. Create a new client and then import and activate selected SAP Best Practices using the SAP Solution Builder tool.
      3. Empty Development System. This approach provides complete flexibility and control. Once the new client is available, configuration is keyed from scratch using the sandbox system as a reference.
      4. Selective transfer of Sandbox. If a custom edition has been deployed, content can be selectively transferred from the sandbox into a development system or in some cases a "shell" copy of configuration can be transferred. SAP must know that this is the intention before setting up the sandbox.

      Kind regards

      Amin Hoque.

      Author's profile photo Manuel Cabello
      Manuel Cabello

      Hello, Amin,

      can you give me information about the hardware requirements for a sandbox with MC4MC?

      Thanks a lot

      Regards

      Manuel

      Author's profile photo Amin Hoque
      Amin Hoque
      Blog Post Author

      Hello

      It will vary depending on how many countries you purchase.  SAP does not provide hardware sizing for your own data centre: a partner must provide that.

      However, you can get a rough idea by looking in the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL) for a similar product.  For example:

      https://cal.sap.com/console/tenant_3ESZOHKDENZQ#/solutions/0332ceb8-ac02-4e9f-b538-c0269170875c

      Recommended VM sizes are below as a guide only

       

       

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Ahmad Quraishi
      Ahmad Quraishi

      Hi Amin,

      Thanks for your post.

      I have a question on Model company deployment for SAP Cloud Ex. When a customer purchases an SAP Cloud Ex with MC,  What is SAP’s recommended option to build (DEV, QA, PROD) in the landscape? I am assuming initially a Sandbox system S/4HANA 1909 with Best practice activated and MC installed is provided by the SAP HEC team?

       

      Thanks in advance!

      Ahmad

      Author's profile photo Amin Hoque
      Amin Hoque
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Ahmad

      The content from the multinational corporations model company often goes into the development system.  It Extended Edition it is called "Enterprise Management Layer".  Currently other MC content is available in a sandbox only.

      Cheers

      Amin

      Author's profile photo Racherla Vyomakesh Bharadwaj
      Racherla Vyomakesh Bharadwaj

      Hi Amin,

      Very useful information about Multinational corporation Model company. Just wondering what is the main difference with Recommender and Per Industry Accelerators while Deployment.

      Recommender, yes it is used for selecting the Industry either one or more  (Assemble to order) but How about Per Industry

      Thanks & Regards,

      Vyomakesh Bharadwaj Racherla

       

      Author's profile photo Amin Hoque
      Amin Hoque
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Vyomakesh

      The Recommender is now called a navigator. It is only helpful when selecting content for Assemble to Order.  Once you have bought a model company, all the industry specific content is available through SAP Solution Manager.

      Cheers

      Amin

       

      Author's profile photo Nicolas Loewe
      Nicolas Loewe

      why I can't find in the below list a model company item for "Multinational Corporations" ?

      https://rapid.sap.com/bp

      model%20company%20list

      model company list

      Author's profile photo Amin Hoque
      Amin Hoque
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Nicolas

      The SAP Model Company for Multinational Corporations is not shown in the BPX.  It is not available through CAL either.  The one page summary is here.  For more details, please contact your SAP service sales person. It includes nearly all the SAP Best Practice scope items in each country and a few extra.  See scope items for S/4 on-premise in the BPX

      https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/categories/sap_s%254hana/areas/on-premise/packageversions/BP_OP_ENTPR/S4HANA/1909/US/6/en

      Cheers

      Amin Hoque

      Author's profile photo Naren Jain
      Naren Jain

      Amin Hoque - A good informative blog. Question for you - If the Multinational Model Co (Ent. Management Layer) has been activated across the landscape will it create dummy master data in Production and can that be deleted for extended edition. Also does this restrict any available configurations which will typically be available in Best Practice scenario.

       

      Regards

      Naren

      Author's profile photo Amin Hoque
      Amin Hoque
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Naren

      The model company is activated in the sandbox or development system only. Configuration is transported to quality and production from there.  You can choose to create dummy master data in the development system or not. This does not restrict your configuration changes. However some changes could break the best practice processes which would need to be adjusted. Your production system will not contain Model Company dummy master data.

      Kind regards

      Amin Hoque