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Chr_Vogler
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
SAP has released the first “Feature Pack Stack” (FPS), SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01 for the 2020 release, on February 24, 2021. This is the first in a sequence of FPS’s that will be delivered twice a year and introduce new optional capabilities. And once again, it comes up with a new set of capabilities bringing simplification, innovation, automation, analytics, and user experience to customers. In total, we delivered more than 105 innovations and enhancements in this FPS01!

The following blog summarizes SAP’s first shipment of this year for SAP S/4HANA 2020 and its highlights across near all lines of business and industries.

The blog is built as a series of 2 parts and present the key highlights for:

The picture below provides an overview of the key innovations that were shipped with SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01.


Picture 1: The highlights at a glance

There have been many innovations for all the lines of business. In the following, I will go into details for selected Lines of Business.

 

Finance


Corporate close: Automated functionality for equity pickup


With Equity Pickup, you can re-evaluate investments that are owned by a holding consolidation unit. Equity Pickup is used to adjust investments in the Balance Sheet of the holding consolidation unit, which reflects the current value of the corresponding share in the equity for the consolidation unit. This adjustment provides a realistic picture of the value of the portfolio, which is owned by the

holding consolidation unit. The Equity Pickup feature supports multiple ownership chains, such as multi-parents ownership, multi-level ownership, and circular ownership. This feature determines, based on the defined thresholds, whether a Controlling or a Non-Controlling scenario applies, and users can overwrite the default if required. The Equity Pickup adjustments are created in the form of a spreadsheet file that can be imported into the application.

For more information see Equity Pickup

Corporate close: Multiple group currencies


With this innovation, you can consolidate group financial statements in multiple group currencies, or using multiple translations (using different exchange rates or methods) simultaneously by running the consolidation process only once.

For this, you can use versions of different version types (standard, extension). You assign a group currency and different exchange rates to each version.

Extension versions only store data in group currency and read data in a local currency, transaction currency, and quantity from the standard version.

The consolidation process run is driven by the standard version.

When running the consolidation tasks for the standard version, the group statements are also consolidated in the extension versions with additional group currencies or different exchange rates or methods. Task logs are available for all versions.

For more information, see Multiple Group Currencies

 

Contract accounting: New SAP Fiori app to manage dispute cases


With this new SAP Fiori app, you can create and display dispute cases reflecting customer complaints about incorrect invoices, incorrect credit memos, missing credit memos, or missing payments.

In addition, you can use the app to change dispute cases, upload attachments, and add notes to dispute cases.


Picture 2: Streamlined management of customer complaints on invoices and financial accounts receivable and payable processes

Financial accounting: Central processes in Central Finance


With the FPS01, we have added functionality for payment processes for receivables and payables replicated from source systems based on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This feature enables you to do Central Payment, that is make centralized payments and perform centralized clearing activities in the Central Finance (SAP S/4HANA (on-premise)) system, even when an SAP S/4HANA Cloud source system is connected in your system landscape within the Central Finance scenario.

 

Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management (EPPM)


Project financials control: Master data integration service for project controlling objects


This feature helps to simplify the integration of work breakdown structure elements, network header, and network activities with consuming applications on the SAP Cloud Platform. Using this feature, WBS elements and network objects are enabled as project controlling objects within the SAP One Domain Model and can be manually or automatically replicated from SAP S/4HANA to the SAP Cloud Platform Master Data Integration.


Picture 3:Simplified project integration leveraging SAP Master Data Integration for project controlling object data

Project financial control: Visualize network activities in a graphic view that is based on SAPUI5


With the FPS01, we have added functionality for payment processes for receivables and payables replicated from source systems based on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This feature enables you to do Central Payment, that is make centralized payments and perform centralized clearing activities in the Central Finance (SAP S/4HANA (on-premise)) system, even when an SAP S/4HANA Cloud source system is connected in your system landscape within the Central Finance scenario.

You can use this SAP Fiori app to display network activities and their relationships as an interactive graph. The app allows you to identify critical activities, their dependencies, confirmation status, and display detailed information for selected objects.


Picture 4: Improved usability by graphical representation of network

 

Transportation Management


Advanced transportation management: SAP S/4HANA Fiori Collaboration app for freight agreement requests for quotation


 In the application Manage Freight Agreement RFQs, excel file integration is used primarily to respond to the incoming quotation by service provider representatives.

The excel file integration provides the following capabilities to users of this application:

Download

  • Download action on application header, allows users to download freight agreement RFQ as an excel file.

  • The download action is available for all documents irrespective of the status of the document.

  • Downloaded excel files can be in either structured format or compatible format based on the customizing setting in the freight agreement RFQ type.

  • User can enter the required information in the editable fields of the MS Excel file


Upload

  • Upload action is only available for the freight agreement RFQs which are currently in Open for Response status.

  • Upon upload, the user is notified of any errors that might have occurred during the updating individual carrier freight agreement RFQ

  • User is allowed to upload files as many times which will update the respective freight agreement RFQ

  • The upload action is possible until submit response has been performed which is also deemed as the final response.


Carrier collaboration

  • With this feature you can, as a shipper, request quotations for transportation services and negotiate rates with carriers even if they don't use Transportation Management (TM) in SAP S/4HANA. Your carriers can access the Manage Freight Agreement RFQs app to monitor and respond to the requests for quotation (RFQs). Your carriers can also use Microsoft Excel to respond to your RFQs with their rates.




Video 1: Shipping and receiving based on harmonized data objects

Advanced transportation management: Support of mixed and multi-warehouse scenarios within one freight order based on the new advanced shipping and receiving functionality


Let me explain the business Background here: To support the new inbound process it comes clear that a truck could arrive at one plant location or industry park and deliver within the logistical complex to multiple warehouses or warehouse doors, e.g. a normal and a cooled warehouse or to a warehouse and to a production line. However, the logistical planning for the routing between different logistical locations should remain unchanged on the level of logistical locations.

In the future, we will give the customer the option to handle their execution processes (especially the warehouse interaction) on a more detailed level.

Now with the SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS02 release, you can handle mixed and multi-warehouse scenarios within one road freight order in the Advanced Shipping and Receiving process in Transportation Management (TM). If a truck driver has to deliver goods to or pick up goods from several warehouses within a company's premises, you can provide the truck driver with detailed information about these warehouses.

Enhancement to support mixed and multi-warehouse scenario:

1) Introduce new loading and unloading points master data

2) Enhancements in road freight order UI for loading and unloading Points

3) New master data table for Warehouse/Door assignments

4) New Search help for warehouse doors

5) Requirement based loading stop determination

6) User-Defined loading stop definition

7) New Validation within the loading stops


Picture 5:  One shipping object for TM and warehouses

Quality Management


Quality improvement: Defects processing with further integration in quality notifications


Define Defect Causers: With the FPS01 release for SAP S/4HANA 2020, you can now define causers of defects in Customizing that can be entered for a defect and that can be used as filter criteria in the Process Defects and Record Defects apps. The causers are valid for all defects of the defect category Warehouse Defect and all defects with customer-specific defect categories. If you have defined defect causers, the Defect Caused By field is included in the header data of the defects.

Transfer Quality Tasks and Attachments: With this feature, you can transfer completed quality tasks and attachments of a defect to a quality notification. The quality tasks and the attachments are referenced in the quality notification and can be displayed in the notification item. The quality tasks are displayed by jumping to the Process Quality Task app.

Follow-up actions: You can execute follow-up actions in defects with affected objects. In Standard affected objects are maintained in warehouse defects. You can execute the following EWM-relevant stock postings:

  • Post to Blocked Stock

  • Cancel Post to Blocked Stock

  • Scrap to Cost Center

  • Post to Unrestricted Stock


You can select the follow-up actions directly in the affected objects list and execute the follow-up action individually for each object.


Picture 6: Enable a lean process through triggering follow-up actions from warehouse defects

R&D/Engineering


Integrated product development: Advanced process route support in the change record


With FPS01 we provide support for parallel tasks, ad-hoc tasks, and background tasks.

Users can manage process route tasks of the change record; setting processing times or deadlines, priorities, and the recipients (agents) to each.

  • Tasks can be parallel or sequential and can be added ad-hoc or via a template, executed by the user, or in the background.


Users can configure the change record to use the new advanced process route (based on BRFplus) for a change record type by selecting the Proc.Rout checkbox in Customizing activity Define Engineering Change Record Types.

  • In this case, no SAP Business Workflow scenario is required, as that is related to the simple workflow.


Process route based on BRFplus will use the workflow template defined via Global Process Route Templates Workbench application.

The second innovation for the advanced process route support in the change record is the automatic template determination. Now, power users can set up automatic template determination using the Business Rule Framework Plus to fit their business needs.

For example, different global process route templates can be loaded automatically in different change record types.

 

Service


In-House repair: Enhancement of the in-house repair process by introducing repair quotations


In-House Repair supports companies that offer a repair and maintenance service for products. This service is performed in-house at repair centers.

The in-house repair process provides core activities for repair and maintenance such as prechecking, quotation processing, planning, repairing, and triggering billing for the repair objects.

Now with FPS01, we introduce a new SAP Fiori app and you can use this app to do the following:

  • Call up a worklist of repair objects to process the related repair quotations on an individual basis.

  • You can filter, sort, and group a list of repair objects that are currently found in the quotation process. You can also filter for repair objects by repair quotation status or by their validity end date.

  • Display the details of the repair objects that are currently found in the quotation process.

  • Access the repair quotation to enter the estimated labor and material consumptions that are required to perform the repair.



Picture 7: Providing repair quotes (cost estimates) as a predecessor object in the in-house repair process

Sales


Sales order management and processing: Flexible numbering of sales and delivery documents, with configurable parameters and formulas.

Using the Configurable Parameters and Formulas (CPF) framework, you as a configuration expert can define rules that the system uses to determine number range intervals for the numbering of newly created sales documents and delivery documents. These rules enable a flexible allocation of sales documents or delivery documents to number range intervals and, optionally, number range prefixes that are controlled by one or more header fields of the sales document or delivery document to be created.

With FPS01, we address these two requirements:

  • Enable the various sales and logistics documents types, excluding accelerated returns (ARM) orders, to invoke CPF to flexibly identify the wanted internal number range based on the context of the document header

  • Allow customers to use internal number range intervals with alphanumerical prefixes


 

Sales billing: Flexible numbering of billing documents, with configurable parameters and formulas

Using the Configurable Parameters and Formulas (CPF) framework, you can create rules in a decision table that the system uses to determine number range intervals for the numbering of newly created billing documents.

  • The decision table enables a flexible allocation of billing documents to number range intervals and, optionally, number range prefixes that are controlled by one or more header fields of the billing document to be created.

  • The advantage of the CPF implementation over the previous Business Add-in (BAdI) implementation of flexible billing document numbering is that it doesn't require any programming effort. Instead of evaluating rules implemented as custom ABAP logic in a BAdI, the CPF implementation evaluates decision table rules within a CPF formula.



Picture 8: Comply more easily with country-specific legal requirements for the way in which billing documents are numbered.

 

Supply Chain


Extended warehouse management: New, simplified integration with SAP Transportation Management


With this app, you can directly use the planned freight orders from Transportation Management (TM) to process shipping and receiving activities.

In the outbound process, picking and staging are performed in Extended Warehouse Management (EWM). When this is finished, the status "Ready for Shipping" is set in EWM and the responsibility for the process is handed over from EWM to Transportation Management (TM). When the status "Ready for Shipping" is set, information about the staged quantity and the handling units is replicated to TM. TM uses this information to plan the transport.

Changes to freight units and freight orders that are relevant for Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) are directly visible in EWM. These include changes to the quantity, packaging data, the carrier, and other fields. When the new status "Ready for Warehousing" is set in Transportation Management (TM), the responsibility for the process is handed over from TM to EWM. The inbound delivery in EWM gets the status "Ready for Warehouse Processing", and changes are replicated from EWM to TM (for example quantity, handling units, and goods movement status).

Extended warehouse management: Radiofrequency (RF) screens with touch enablement


This feature enables you to access standard radio frequency (RF) functions on touchscreen devices by using pushbuttons instead of function keys. You can specify standard function codes as pushbuttons and add the pushbuttons in a specific order. For example, you can add and sort the pushbuttons according to their function keys or to the end of the pushbutton groups.

Additional Details

You can specify the following standard function codes as pushbuttons:

  • F6 CLEAR (Clears the value in the field)

  • F7 BACK or BACKF (Goes back to the previous step)

  • F8 LIST or LISTF (Lists the values you can select for the field)

  • F9 FULLMS (Shows a message in a separate pop-up on the screen)


You can add the pushbuttons in the following ways, for example:

  • To the start or the end of the pushbutton groups

  • According to their function keys

  • The BACK or BACKF pushbutton and the CLEAR pushbutton to the first pushbutton group and the LIST or LISTF pushbutton and the FULLMS pushbutton to the last pushbutton group


Extended warehouse management: New follow-up actions for usage decisions in quality inspections for decentralized instances of SAP Extended Warehouse Management


This feature enables you to use the following follow-up actions in decentralized Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) based on SAP S/4HANA for usage decisions after performing a quality inspection:

  • Sample Consumption

  • Scrap to Cost Center


These follow-up actions are already available in EWM embedded in SAP S/4HANA 2020.

Sourcing and Procurement


Purchase order processing: Lean service integration with the guided-buying capability and Ariba Network

With FPS01, we address these three requirements

  • Creating lean service requisitions in the guided buying capability for SAP Ariba solutions

  • Processing follow-on documents for lean services, such as purchase orders, service entry sheets, and supplier invoices in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

  • If central procurement is integrated, creating follow-on documents in the systems connected to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, which acts as a hub system

  • Sending service purchase orders to suppliers on Ariba Network

  • Receiving and approving service entry sheets and invoices for lean service items in SAP S/4HANA Cloud from your suppliers on Ariba Network


 

Manufacturing


Extended production operations: Streamline manufacturing by integrating SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for production engineering and operations with SAP Manufacturing Execution

Now with the FPS01 for SAP S/4HANA 2020, we provide the integration of production engineering solution capabilities delivered in SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for production engineering and operations (PEO) with shop-floor execution in the SAP Manufacturing Execution (SAP ME). Production engineers create and change m-BOMs and shop-floor routings in PEO, production operators follow the instructions specified by the production engineer using the SAP ME production operator dashboard. On routing version release, PEO replicates shop-floor routings to SAP ME. Both PEO and SAP ME use version-managed routings. Therefore, PEO routings can more easily be mapped to SAP ME routings. Production orders are replicated from PEO to SAP ME on production order releases including BOM and routings versions used to create the production order. SAP ME instructs operators using the correct BOM and routing versions and confirms production once all operation activities of an operation have been completed.

The key benefits here are:

  • No double maintenance of master data required

  • Support for running the SAP ERP application and the manufacturing execution system process on different levels of granularity. Production planning and costing are on the operations level. Production operators are instructed by means of more granular operation activities.

  • Leverage production engineering and operations' capabilities such as change-impact analysis for production processes managed by SAP Manufacturing Execution.


 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, join our SAP S/4HANA Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.

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

  • UPDATE: don’t miss the blog from Yannick about the key innovations of the main release SAP S/4HANA 2020

  • Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist

  • SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here

  • Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here

  • SAP S/4HANA Microlearning (OP/CL) – The ultimate collection blog

  • Best practices for SAP S/4HANA here

  • Feature Scope Description here

  • What’s New here

  • Help Portal Product Page here

  • RISE with SAP here

  • SAP Fiori Application Library here

  • SAP S/4HANA Trials here


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