This blog provides you with the latest and greatest innovations that our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 release has in store for you in the area of Sales. To name just a few highlights:
In case you do not need all the information below and just briefly want to get an overview of the release highlights, please watch this video:
Figure 1: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 for Sales: Top 3 key innovations
With this release, we introduce a new SAP Fiori app “Manage Prices – Sales”, and now you can create and update condition records by importing data from a template-based spreadsheet. You can also export condition records that match the filter criteria to a spreadsheet.
Let me quickly explain the background here: A Pricing Specialist wants to mass create or update condition records by importing data from a template-based spreadsheet.
The first step is to Download the Template: The template consists of two sheets, the first sheet is about cover page, it explains all the attributes you are using to maintain prices and data format you need to take care.
The second part is about condition maintenance, and here you maintain your key attributes like sales organization, distribution channel, and so on.
In the next step you import your Microsoft excel data into SAP S/4HANA Cloud and the system check also for you the data consistency and, in the same way, you can check the error information and correct the errors.
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation and watch the video below.
Figure 2: Upload prices in sales from template-based spreadsheets
With this new SAP Fiori app "Customers Overview “, you can get an overview of the sales data of one or more selected customers. Let’s take an example: you are the internal sales representative in your company, and you need to respond to customer inquiries, or needs to call or visit your customer. To get quickly an overview of all relevant data, you need information concerning, for example:
You can also, of course, navigate deeper with the intuitive forward navigation to the related application, for further analysis. Let’s take a second example: Frequency of Sales Orders
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation and watch the video below.
Figure 3: Get a customer overview with the new SAP Fiori app “Customers Overview”
The sales order is key in the Sales Order Management and Processing, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers you different ways you can use to create sales orders, depending on your specific needs.
Figure 4: Enhancement from SAP Fiori app “Manage Sales Orders”
In the digital payment process (1Z1), the credit block is set on the sales document in case the credit card authorization is failed. The payment card on the sales document needs to be reauthorized to make sure the valid payment card authorization is granted for processing sales documents and its subsequent processes.
However, there was no functionality available on SAP S/4HANA Cloud to search for sales documents either being blocked for payment card authorization check or payment card authorization is expired. Now with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, a new SAP Fiori application “Resolve Payment Card Issues – Reauthorizations” is provided to manage sales documents with payment card authorization issues.
Following scenarios of using payment cards are considered in the SAP Fiori application:
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation and watch the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FFsmbB0mgU&feature=youtu.be
Figure 5: New SAP Fiori app “Resolve Payment Card Issues – Reauthorizations”
In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we continue to extend our workflows in the Sales area, and you can already set up approval workflows for the following sales document categories:
Now, with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 release, we add one more document category:
To explain the background, in certain cases, it can make sense to make sure that a sales document is first approved by a sales manager before the internal sales representative or returns and refund clerk can process it further. You could, for example, define that sales orders with a net value that is higher than USD 1,000 or sales quotations for a specific customer always need to be sent to an approver.
With the 2008 release, you can either set up the entire approval workflow within your system (internal workflow), or you can connect your system to a workflow you already use in another system (external workflow) and approve or reject the sales document with specific OData APIs for sales documents.
Prerequisites:
Figure 6: Overview of mandatory and optional settings
Figure 6 gives you an overview concerning the different steps needed to understand how you activate the workflow including the mandatory and optional steps.
Below, you find some details about these different steps.
Configuration settings for enabling approval workflow
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation.
With this new SAP Fiori app, you can analyze a pricing element, that is, a condition type in billing documents (for example, to check current discount conditions and pricing strategies). In the same way, you are also able to analyze a condition type with quantity and amount over sales organizations and other dimensions, by a freely definable quarter, for example, starting on 03.08.2020.
The app provides the prerequisites for answering the following business questions:
Figure 7: SAP Fiori app “Analyze price elements of billing items”
This app uses the Analytics - Billing Item Pricing Element for Condition Type (C_BillgItmPrcgElForCoTypQ) CDS view.
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation.
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn
- Upload prices in sales from template-based spreadsheets
- Detect and reauthorize expiring payment card authorizations for sales orders
- Overview of a customer's main key performance indicators
- Fast editing of sales order with SAP Fiori app “Manage Sales Orders”
- Approval workflows for customer returns
- Flexible analysis of pricing elements or condition types of billing items
- Documented credit decisions for sales orders with a payment card-credit block
- Handling bills of materials enabled for the accelerated returns process
In case you do not need all the information below and just briefly want to get an overview of the release highlights, please watch this video:
Figure 1: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 for Sales: Top 3 key innovations
Upload prices in sales from template-based spreadsheets
With this release, we introduce a new SAP Fiori app “Manage Prices – Sales”, and now you can create and update condition records by importing data from a template-based spreadsheet. You can also export condition records that match the filter criteria to a spreadsheet.
Let me quickly explain the background here: A Pricing Specialist wants to mass create or update condition records by importing data from a template-based spreadsheet.
The first step is to Download the Template: The template consists of two sheets, the first sheet is about cover page, it explains all the attributes you are using to maintain prices and data format you need to take care.
The second part is about condition maintenance, and here you maintain your key attributes like sales organization, distribution channel, and so on.
In the next step you import your Microsoft excel data into SAP S/4HANA Cloud and the system check also for you the data consistency and, in the same way, you can check the error information and correct the errors.
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation and watch the video below.
Figure 2: Upload prices in sales from template-based spreadsheets
Overview of a customer's main key performance indicators
With this new SAP Fiori app "Customers Overview “, you can get an overview of the sales data of one or more selected customers. Let’s take an example: you are the internal sales representative in your company, and you need to respond to customer inquiries, or needs to call or visit your customer. To get quickly an overview of all relevant data, you need information concerning, for example:
- Frequency and the average net value of incoming orders
- Sales volume and margin
- Open and rejected sales orders
- Latest returns
- Open quotations
- Delivery performance over the last quarters
You can also, of course, navigate deeper with the intuitive forward navigation to the related application, for further analysis. Let’s take a second example: Frequency of Sales Orders
- In this card, details of the sales orders created in the last 6 months are displayed (named as frequency). This information helps to quantify sales.
- In the header section of the card, you can view the average number of sales orders created (i.e., total sales orders/6) for the last 6 months from the current month.
- In the item section of the card, total sales orders created in every month is displayed as a line chart.
- On clicking the header section, it navigates to Manage Sales Orders app and displays the list of the total number of sales orders created in the last 6 months (note that average amount is displayed only on the card).
- On clicking a graph point for a month, it navigates to the "Manage Sales Orders" app and opens a list of sales orders created in that month.
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation and watch the video below.
Figure 3: Get a customer overview with the new SAP Fiori app “Customers Overview”
Fast editing of sales order with SAP Fiori app “Manage Sales Orders”
The sales order is key in the Sales Order Management and Processing, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers you different ways you can use to create sales orders, depending on your specific needs.
- For complex scenarios, SAP recommends using the Create Sales Orders app (Transaction VA01!). This SAP Fiori app is an SAP GUI for HTML transaction. These transactions are available in the SAP Fiori theme to support a seamless user experience across the SAP Fiori launchpad.
- With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2005 release: you can create sales orders through spreadsheet upload, this means that you can batch-create sales orders directly from XLSX spreadsheet files, and after the data file is uploaded, the system automatically create sales orders.
- And with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1911, we deliver the first version of the New SAP Fiori app “Manage Sales Orders”. And this new Fiori app does not intend to replace at the moment, the Transaction VA01. And now with the 2008 release, we extend this SAP Fiori app with a quick action 'Update Pricing' on the header and item level. In the same way, we improve the usability for adding items, text handling, and process flow visualization.
Figure 4: Enhancement from SAP Fiori app “Manage Sales Orders”
Detect and reauthorize expiring payment card authorizations for sales orders
In the digital payment process (1Z1), the credit block is set on the sales document in case the credit card authorization is failed. The payment card on the sales document needs to be reauthorized to make sure the valid payment card authorization is granted for processing sales documents and its subsequent processes.
However, there was no functionality available on SAP S/4HANA Cloud to search for sales documents either being blocked for payment card authorization check or payment card authorization is expired. Now with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, a new SAP Fiori application “Resolve Payment Card Issues – Reauthorizations” is provided to manage sales documents with payment card authorization issues.
Following scenarios of using payment cards are considered in the SAP Fiori application:
- Sales orders with failed payment card authorization checks
- Sales orders with preauthorization checks
- Sales orders with expired payment card authorizations and outbound delivery don’t exist
- Sales orders with expired payment card authorizations and outbound delivery exist
- Sales orders with multiple outbound deliveries, payment card authorization are consumed by outbound deliveries
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation and watch the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FFsmbB0mgU&feature=youtu.be
Figure 5: New SAP Fiori app “Resolve Payment Card Issues – Reauthorizations”
Approval workflows for customer returns
In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, we continue to extend our workflows in the Sales area, and you can already set up approval workflows for the following sales document categories:
- Sales quotations
- Sales orders
- Credit memo requests
Now, with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 release, we add one more document category:
- Customer returns (Note: The workflow fully supports accelerated returns.)
To explain the background, in certain cases, it can make sense to make sure that a sales document is first approved by a sales manager before the internal sales representative or returns and refund clerk can process it further. You could, for example, define that sales orders with a net value that is higher than USD 1,000 or sales quotations for a specific customer always need to be sent to an approver.
With the 2008 release, you can either set up the entire approval workflow within your system (internal workflow), or you can connect your system to a workflow you already use in another system (external workflow) and approve or reject the sales document with specific OData APIs for sales documents.
Prerequisites:
- The Cloud BAdI “Approval Request Reasons for Sales Documents” has been implemented and the restrictions are set by the administrator (business role: SAP_BR_ADMINISTRATOR).
- The teams and responsibilities have been defined by the business process specialist (business role: SAP_BR_BUSINESS_PROCESS_SPEC).
- The workflow has been defined by the business configuration expert (business role: SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT).
Figure 6: Overview of mandatory and optional settings
Figure 6 gives you an overview concerning the different steps needed to understand how you activate the workflow including the mandatory and optional steps.
Below, you find some details about these different steps.
Configuration settings for enabling approval workflow
- Set approval request reasons and assign to customer returns [Mandatory]
The configuration expert use this configuration steps for document approval in the Manage Your Solution app under Configure Your Solution à Sales à Basic Functions. - Indicate approval relevance by using Cloud BAdI [Mandatory]
To determine whether a customer return is relevant for approval and must be sent to an approver, you need implement and publish the Business Add-In (BAdI) “Set Approval Request Reasons for Sales Documents” (SD_APM_SET_APPROVAL_REASON). - Define Teams & Responsibilities [Mandatory]
Create a team of approvers, add team members, and assign functions. - Create and manage workflows for customer returns [Mandatory]
In the Manage Sales Document Workflows app, Choose the workflow for customer return, provide a description and validity period.
Define the preconditions at workflow and step levels. Several precondition attributes can be used to refine your workflow and steps.
Create step(s) of type Release of Customer Return, select the agent responsible for the workflow step(s), define the preconditions (if needed) and define the Rework exception.
Activate and define the order for all workflows that should be considered by the workflow process. - Define restrictions for the My Inbox app [Optional]
This step is strongly recommended if you want to restrict the user’s authorization of approving customer returns. To do this, you can maintain the restrictions for relevant business roles in the Maintain Business Roles
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation.
Analyze price elements of billing items
With this new SAP Fiori app, you can analyze a pricing element, that is, a condition type in billing documents (for example, to check current discount conditions and pricing strategies). In the same way, you are also able to analyze a condition type with quantity and amount over sales organizations and other dimensions, by a freely definable quarter, for example, starting on 03.08.2020.
The app provides the prerequisites for answering the following business questions:
- How is a specific condition type distributed over my sales organizations in a specific quarter?
- Which pricing elements or condition types influence my sales volume by either lowering or increasing it?
- Is the current pricing strategy adequate?
- Are the current discount conditions adequate?
- Which elements, for example, discounts or price, affect my net price?
Figure 7: SAP Fiori app “Analyze price elements of billing items”
This app uses the Analytics - Billing Item Pricing Element for Condition Type (C_BillgItmPrcgElForCoTypQ) CDS view.
You need more information on this? Read the following documentation.
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 2008 Release Blog
- The Link Collection for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Sales here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community: register here
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @VoglerChrist and LinkedIn
- SAP Managed Tags:
6 Comments
