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This blog covers the key highlights in the area of Sourcing & Procurement of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1911 release. In detail, this article covers the following highlights:



Watch my video to get a quick overview on the 1911 highlights:



Lean Service Integration with Ariba Network (42K)


With 1911 release we go a step further to tighten the integration between S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Ariba. We now offer the possibility to streamline lean service procurement processes with SAP Ariba Network. You want to speed up the service procurement process? This is how an automated process could look like:


In the role of a purchaser, you open the 'Manage Purchase Order' app and create a service purchase order (PO). Let's say you want to order a consulting service. Once you provided all the required information, like the service hour quantity for instance, your request is being sent electronically to your supplier into Ariba Network. When the supplier opens the portal and checks his inbox your consulting service PO will pop up in the list of open Orders and Releases. Once your supplier has delivered the service he can create a service entry sheet, that is bound to the PO, directly in Ariba Network. It is also possible for the supplier to submit a partially performed service for release into S/4HANA Cloud. As a purchaser, you will then be notified in your Fiori Launchpad Notifications and can immediately take action and approve the delivered service right from the touch of a button. Now, the supplier can create an invoice for the consulting service in Ariba Network and send it to S/4HANA Cloud where the payment process can be triggered.


The lean service integration between Ariba Network and S/4HANA Cloud reduces transaction costs as less manual steps are needed and documents are exchanged in an automated way. This should help making things a lot easier and more automated! With all the time we saved you, you can finally read that book you’ve been putting off for three months… Spoiler alert, the main character lives happily ever after.


If you want to gain more insights on the combinations and integrations between SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass solutions in detail, check out this SAP Whitepaper.


Want to know how this looks in a demo, check this out:



Flexible integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud for enterprise contract assembly* (1XV, 2OQ)


We write integration big this time! Enterprise Contract Management will benefit from the integration with Enterprise Contract Assembly. Enterprise Contract Assembly is an application on SAP Cloud Platform that enables the authoring and assembly of legal content. The legal department can create contractual and legal document templates by using text blocks and rules. Through the integration with Contract Management these templates can be utilized to build legal documents, where placeholder variables get automatically filled by the information delivered from the procurement business object. This means that documents, that are created during the procurement process like purchasing contracts, supplier terms and conditions and many more can be managed and adapted in a flexible way. Users can easily link a procurement business object to a legal transaction and the appropriate contractual document. Depending on the nature of the transaction, one can link for example a purchase order, a purchase contract or a request for quotation. All documents are being stored in a central online repository.


In other words, more automation and faster provision of legal content. Users benefit from a much easier creation and management of legal content in enterprises in alignment with core business processes and run enterprise-wide legal process more efficiently. You might as well start singing Hakuna Matata because you’re about to have no worries for the rest of your days!


Check out the following demo to see the full process in action:



Automatic creation of central purchase contracts via purchase requisition automation framework* (2XT)


“Great [Applications] are not born great, they grow great…”



  • Don Corleone (The Godfather)


In Don’s honor, and to increase your work efficiency and reduce time delay, you can now configure predefined complex actions such as automatic creation of central purchase contracts for purchase requisition items in SAP S/4HANA for central procurement. The purchase requisition automation rule framework provides a standard rule to automatically convert the open purchase requisition to central purchase contracts in SAP S/4HANA for central procurement. This reduces the possibility of errors resulting from manual input. No more manual creation of contracts from open purchase requisitions, yay!



Fig. 1: Automatically convert open purchase requisitions to central purchase contracts.


Define individual supplier evaluation criteria, weighting and scoring (SL4)


In the area of Procurement Analytics more flexibility is offered for supplier evaluation. Users can analyze the supplier performance based on individual defined criteria. How does the process look like: As a configuration expert open the 'Manage Your Solution' app and go into the procurement analytics solution configuration. Define the supplier criteria that reflect your business needs, for example number of returns, lead time or defect rates. You can define and activate up to five individual criteria. The Strategic Buyer can then define the specific weighting and scoring factors using the 'Supplier Evaluation Weighting and Scoring' app. Now, the user can maintain values for the individual rating by supplier for a time frame using the 'Manage User Defined Criteria for Supplier Evaluation' app. Finally, the goal is to get an understanding of your suppliers' performance with regards to your company KPIs to quickly discover trends and potential areas of supplier performance improvement. An analysis and supplier score evaluation on basis of individual criteria provides customer-specific insights which will result in better decisions.



Fig. 2: Configure your Solution: adding user defined criteria for supplier evaluation.



Fig. 3: Monitor your supplier evaluation criteria in a report.


Bulk upload of invoice documents (J13, J45, BNX)


Who doesn’t love automation? With this release, you’ll have the ability to upload supplier invoice attachments in an automated way. This is possible as we offer a SOAP-based API that can be called from an external system to upload documents in different file formats such as PDF or JPEG. You might wonder what happens to the uploaded documents? Well, they are stored as drafts and can be processed by invoice verification. Check out the SAP API Business Hub or our Help Page for more details.



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




Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via LinkedIn



*Requires additional license

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