Artificial Intelligence technologies to automate routine tasks and identify opportunities for innovation, allows you to create synergy, and here I like to show you one example to illustrate how SAP S/4HANA Cloud is Delivering Value with Intelligent Innovations and how Intelligent Technologies helps the Sales process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

 This blog provides you with the latest and greatest innovations that our SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102 release has in store for you in the area of Sales. To name just a few highlights:

• Automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data – Enhancement 1
• Enhancements in Manage Sales Orders
• Sales Billing – Improved Integration with SAP Subscription Billing
• Flexible numbering of Sales and Delivery Documents with CPF
• … and more.

 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 with the top 3 key innovations:

Release video: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102 for Sales: Top 3 key innovations

Automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data – Enhancement 1

The first version of this innovation was delivered with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2011 release, and with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102, the app has been enhanced to simulate order creation and to show these order simulation results, as well as to enable you to create custom logic (BAdI) to overwrite changeable sales order request fields based on your custom proposal rules.

Just as a recapitulation, let me explain a business example: A significant amount of sales orders are captured from an unstructured format like PDF documents. To generate the sales order, an internal sales representative needs to check purchasing details in these files, identify sales data based on the purchasing data (for example, identify the sold-to party based on the purchaser’s name and address), and enter the sales data manually in the structured format as required to be processed into SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Demo 1: Enhanced ‘Create Sales Orders – Automatic Extraction’ SAP Fiori app  (note: no audio voice available)

What is new with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102 release?

• The processing status is now visualized as micro process flow in the SAP Fiori list page
• Customers can now influence the result of master data determination via a Cloud BADI. For example, propose sales area or sales order type according to the customer’s own logic.
• Ship-to party is now determined from ship-to address automatically, customer can double-check or change the determined the ship-to party
• Before creating a sales order from a sales order request, you can now simulate the order creation and get an overview of the to-be sales order:
  • Simulated net value vs. extracted net value
  • The actual sales order items to be created from the sales order request items
• The last simulation result will be persisted in the sales order request as a reference to your next action.

Simulate Order creation

The simulation result serves only as a reference because it applies merely at the particular time the system simulates order creation.

For example, you performed a simulation and the simulation result indicated errors due to stock deficiency. Two days later, you might still successfully create a sales order from the sales order request due to stock replenishment between the simulation time and order creation time.

If the simulated creation is successful, you can preview data differences between the sales order request and sales-order-to-be. Simulation results on the object page may indicate a difference in the net value or count of items. For example, two order items may be generated for a sales order request item because the preset free goods conditions are met.

App Extensibility: Custom Proposal for Sales Order Request Fields (BAdI)

As a key user, you can extend this app by implementing custom logic for the Business Add-In (BAdI) in the Custom Fields and Logic app.

Figure 1: Influence the result of master data determination via a Cloud BADI

This BAdI is called immediately after the system completes the initial proposal for changeable fields, which include the header and item fields that can be changed when you edit a sales order request, based on rules pre-delivered by SAP.

During the system processing, your custom logic overrides the pre-delivered rules, overwriting the initially proposed values for these fields. The figure shows the positioning of the BAdI in the overall processing flow of the app.

Before creating your custom logic, you may need to evaluate the proposal rules pre-delivered by SAP. For details about the default proposal rules, see the app description for the SAP Fiori app “Creation Sales Orders – Automatic Extraction”.

Prerequisites

Before using the Create Sales Orders – Automatic Extraction app, the following two prerequisites must have been fulfilled:

• The scope item 4X9 (Create Sales Orders from Unstructured Data) has been activated in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
• Key users have set up the required communication scenario to integrate with Document Information Extraction on SAP Cloud Platform

NOTE: The data extraction function in this app is provided by the Document Information Extraction service.

References

• For integration details, see Integrating Document Information Extraction.
• To learn more about Document information Extraction, see What Is Document Information Extraction?
• To learn more about scope item 4X9, see SAP Best Practices Explorer.
• You need more information on this? Read the following What’s New Document and Product Assistance

Manage Sales Orders

The second key innovation is about sales orders, and with the 2102 release, the SAP Fiori app “Create Sales Orders” is enhanced on the header and item level. With this, you can make fast editing directly in the header.

The requested Delivery Date field is available in General Information. It is used as a default for newly created items/schedule lines. Via SSCUIs it is also possible to define flexible rules for date proposals

The system determines also pricing elements, and this during the order creation.

Change Ship-To Party Address

• Ship-To Party address data in a sales order by default is proposed from business partner master data.
• A user can change the address of the Ship-To Party for a sales order by invoking the action Change Ship-To Address.
• Address attributes, for example, Name, Street, House Number, City, Region, and Country/Region can then be changed.
• After confirming and saving the changed Ship-To Party address, it is considered a so-called document address.

NOTE: Be aware, that the offered address fields are only a subset of the ship-to address fields. Fields that are not visible for editing, will be set to initial

Creating Items using Product Proposals

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102, you can receive product and quantity proposals for potential items to ensure a faster selection of products. This feature was delivered in the last release, but only in the classical create sales order app.

Now, a user can add sales order items by choosing Propose Items, an action available for the Items table. Products and quantities are then automatically proposed.

The action Propose Items is only available in case

• intelligent product proposal functionality has been configured (SSCUIs)
• Sold-To Party master data supports product proposals (PP Customer Procedure assigned)
• transactional data has been created for the Sold-To Party
• transactional data was updated via background job

Stay tuned on the progress of this function as in the future release, SAP will continuously add more intelligence here.

Pricing on Header

With this new release, the user can create, change, display or delete header price conditions considering the current settings. In general, header price conditions are only added manually.

• Inactive price conditions are visualized in yellow color.
• Erroneous price conditions are visualized in red color

Demo 2: Enhanced ‘Create Sales Orders’ SAP Fiori app. (note: no audio voice available)

Action Processing: Header level

The user can execute the following actions for the sales order header:

• Create Delivery
• Set Billing Block
• Remove Billing Block
• Set Delivery Block
• Remove Delivery Block
• Update Pricing

Updated: Create Delivery action was moved to header facet.

Remove actions are only visible once Set actions have been executed and the actions can be executed from display or edit mode.

Action Processing: Item level

The user can select an item and execute the following actions for a sales order item:

• Set Billing Block
• Remove Billing Block
• Update Pricing

New: Set Rejection Reason allows us to set a rejection reason for a sales order item.

SSCUIs can be used to define their own rejection reasons. In addition, rejection reasons can be defined per order type/sales organization.

Actions are available both for the items table and within the item details, and the actions can be executed from display or edit mode

Messages in Details Screens

• The sales order application contains one main and two details screens, the item details, and the text details screen.
• In case of errors, messages are always raised on the relevant screen, either the main or the details screen.
• From the message window, it is possible to use a hyperlink to navigate to the field causing the error.

Self Billing

Starting with the 2011 release, SAP S/4HANA Cloud supports the integration with the SAP Self-Billing.

The SAP Self-Billing Cockpit based on the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) allows you to run self-billing processes with your customers. With this integration, you can receive and process self-billing messages, edit messages in case of errors, and receive multiple order reasons and condition types in case of any differences. With this new feature, we support the basic business process and offer a central entry and overview page for you as users, leading to a more efficient process.

Figure 2: Improved Integration with SAP Subscription Billing

When integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, it provides key features that enable suppliers to do the following:

Receiving self-billing documents

• SAP Self-Billing Cockpit receives and verifies self-billing documents that the customer sends after one of the following delivery procedures has taken place:
• Standard outbound deliveries (identified by delivery IDs)
• Outbound deliveries for consignment processes (identified by external delivery note numbers)

Self-billing with automatic posting:

• After the corresponding billing documents are created in the integrated system, SAP Self-Billing Cockpit compares them with the received self-billing documents.
• Based on the comparison results, you can trigger the following changes in the integrated system:
• Update of billing documents and accounting documents
• Creation of credit memos and debit memos

Monitoring self-billing processes

• You can display details of self-billing documents (for example, the overall status and issue type).

Handling errors in self-billing documents

• You can rectify errors in self-billing documents (for example, edit, deactivate, or reactivate self-billing documents).

Configuring self-billing processes

• You can configure how SAP Self-Billing Cockpit processes self-billing documents (for example, you can define tolerance limits).

New with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102:

New SOAP service for the creation of billing document requests by SAP Subscription Billing: Subscription Billing Document Request – Create

This service facilitates improved integration with SAP Subscription Billing, allowing invoicing of recurrent, one-time, and usage charges.

If you need more information about SAP Subscription Billing, please have a look at this blog post here.

Flexible numbering of Sales and Delivery Documents with CPF

The last key innovation concerns the flexible numbering of Sales and Delivery Documents.

Let me explain the background here:

With this numbering, we allow customers to use internal number range intervals with, for example, alphanumerical prefixes!

To do this, we use the Configurable Parameter and Formula Framework (CPF)

The configuration expert can create rules in a decision table used by the system to determine internal number range intervals for the numbering of newly created sales documents.

Demo 3: Flexible numbering of Sales and Delivery Documents with CPF (note: no audio voice available)

Configuration experts and developers can implement flexible sales document numbering using the Configurable Parameters and Formulas framework.

Using the Configurable Parameters and Formulas framework, you as a configuration expert can create rules in a decision table that the system uses to determine number range intervals for the numbering of newly created sales documents. These number range intervals will then replace the default number range interval for internal numbering of the sales document type. The decision table enables a flexible allocation of the sales documents.

Introducing Solution Order Management (4GT)

In this chapter, I like to introduce the solution order management that we already delivered with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 release. This feature is located in Services, but as the end-to-end process touch also Sales features as enables now a solution with sales and service products in a single order.

By releasing the solution order with different products like physical goods, one-time service or long-running services, a Sales Order, a Service Order, and a Service Contract will be generated for further processing. You will need to process delivery for the sales order. And for the Service order, the service confirmation should be followed. Both will go through the billing process either as separate invoices or as a single invoice by utilizing extensibility. All necessary documents in the process are connected to the solution order so it is convenient to check the process flow and progress at a glance

Please have a look at this demo about the end to end process of processing a solution order, which provides the hybrid solution with Sales and Service products.

Demo 4: Transform into a Solutions and Subscriptions Business with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102

Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: to deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.

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 2102 Release Blog
• The Link Collection for Sales here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community for Sales here
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
• Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• Early Release Webinar Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• SAP S/4HANA Microlearning (OP/CL) – The ultimate collection blog
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here
• Help Portal Product Page here
• Implementation Portal here

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