Enterprise Management Layer for SAP S/4HANA – Focus Topic: Content

In today’s blog, let us take a closer look at the functional scope and content included in the enterprise management layer for SAP S/4HANA.

Generally speaking, the enterprise management layer provides business content for a standard SAP S/4HANA system, no enhancements of the underlying standard functionality as such. → For details on standard functionality, please refer to the SAP Help Portal.

The business content (configuration and sample master data) helps you explore and use the SAP S/4HANA system capabilities from day one of your implementation project. The content as such is based on SAP Best Practices but enhanced in many areas.

Country Coverage and Localization

The enterprise management layer for SAP S/4HANA provides functional, localized content for 49 countries across all lines of business, translated in 25 languages:

Each customer can select the countries relevant for their implementation project.

We have added 4 EU countries to the 43 that are covered by SAP Best Practices: Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as well as Colombia and Chile. However, we cover a Finance-centric scope for these countries.

The business processes are called ‘scope items’ and are based on SAP Best Practices (on premise), but enhanced for multinational corporations in many areas:

• Parallel accounting: Record and report your financial data according to your group accounting principle, as well as local and tax accounting principles. The enterprise management layer includes 5 ledgers: the group ledger is leading, while 2 pairs of ledgers are available for local GAAP and for tax requirements. The second ledger of each pair can reflect diverging local fiscal year requirements, for example for India or Japan with fiscal years starting in April.

We provide a specific test script that describes the overall design and reporting capabilities: AC01 Parallel Accounting 

• Localization: The business processes – mostly in Financial Accounting, Purchasing and Sales – are localized according to local legal and tax requirements as well as local business practices in each country.

The country-specific functions and features are described in the following documents: 

LOC01 Country-Specific Functionality: In addition to the content that comes with the respective SAP Best Practices country versions, this document provides:

• • An overview of the functionality covered for each of the countries
  • Enhanced documentation of the functions and features
  • Additional scope items, for example to cover requirements pertaining to country-specific reports like e-Bilanz in Germany or SAF-T in various countries.

LOC** – for various countries, we provide additional configuration and test scripts for broader topics, for example country-specific payment methods or reporting capabilities.

Note: Customers who already received an earlier version of the enterprise management layer can configure these scope items manually based on the description in the respective chapters in the LOC01 or the respective LOC** documents

Functional Scope

The functional scope of the enterprise management layer spans across all lines of business and is clustered in 3 layers:

1. Standard Scope scope items that are always provided, listed in green
2. Scope Options scope items that are deployed on request, listed in orange
3. Service Options scope items that are customer-specific, listed in yellow

Scope for release 2022

1. Standard Scope

The over 200 scope items included in the standard scope are always included, for all customers, regardless of their industry or scope of their implementation project. They are based on SAP Best Practices, however often enhanced:

Functional enhancements are described in the configuration document and documentation enhancements are described in the user guide, both provided in the content library (SAP Best Practices Explorer) or in the respective test scripts as listed below.

Additional scope items for standard scope (release 2022)

Note: Customers who already received an earlier version of the enterprise management layer can configure these scope items manually based on the description in the configuration document.

2. Scope Options

These scope items will be implemented on customer request.

Typically, they either require an additional software license or are simply not relevant for many customers. For many scope items, we provide our own documentation, tailored to the enterprise management layer specific functionality for parallel accounting or simply adding additional functionality:

Additional test scripts for scope options (release 2021)

Note: The number of countries and scope options selected (orange) do not impact the cost of the service.

3. Service Options

Service options are scope enhancements that are also available on request and will be deployed individually for each customer based on each customer’s needs.

For Intercompany Processes, 2 countries can be selected: country A owning the central stock and country B, the subsidiary, who is selling to the end-customer. Option [VP01b] includes the new Intercompany Sales process with valuated stock in transit.

For Cross-Plant Stock Transfer, we will create a second plant in the country of choice.

For each of these processes, we provide configuration documents that allow you to deploy the processes manually in additional countries.

Note: These scenarios impact the cost of the service. The documentation for these processes is not publicly available and will be adapted and made available for each customer when we provide the system.

Documentation

For a full overview of all scope items included in the enterprise management as well as overview documents and the individual enterprise management layer-specific test scripts, please refer to our content in the SAP Best Practices Explorer.

Further reading:

Enterprise Management Layer for SAP S/4HANA – FAQs | SAP Blogs