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Chr_Vogler
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
This industry cluster provides solutions to companies that relate to products purchased by individuals and households rather than by manufacturers and industries.

Consumer products (CP) companies face pressures from all sides, including empowered consumers, new competitors, and channel partners that are competing with their own private label products. Added to all that, tremendous volatility persists in basic costs, from raw materials to labor, to shipping and beyond.

Bringing SAP S/4HANA and intelligent technology together as a digital foundation results in a more flexible and intelligent enterprise. To achieve next-generation business processes, companies need Intelligent ERP to continuously enhance and extend innovative business services and applications built on emerging technologies. Many consumer products companies have already begun the journey.

In this blog series, I will give you an expert view, from product experts to product experts, of some selected highlights for Industries of our SAP S/4HANA 2021 release. All these innovations will also be available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition.

The blog is built as a series of 6 parts and present the key highlights for:

  • Part 1: Consumer: Consumer Products and Fashion and Vertical Business

  • Part 2: Consumer: Retail and Wholesale Distribution

  • Part 3: Financial Services

  • Part 4: Public Services

  • Part 5: Energy & Resources

  • Part 6: Discrete


In this first blog, you can find information on functions that are used by Consumer Industries.

Industry coverage


SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management contains core functions for the industries listed below.

 























































































Industry Cluster Industry
Consumer Consumer Products
Wholesale
Life Science
Retail including Fashion and vertical business
Discrete Aerospace & Defense
High Tech
Industrial Machinery and Components
Automotive
Energy & Resources Chemicals
Mining
Mill Products
Utilities
Financial Services Banking
Insurance
Public Services PS & Postal
Services Engineering Construction, and Operations
Professional Services
Telecommunications
Sports & Entertainment Sports & Entertainment
Transportation & Logistics Transportation & Logistics

SAP S/4HANA Industry-Specific LoB Functions enhance core functions of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management to provide industry-specific business benefits for your line of business (LoB). Please note that you might need a separate license. For further information, please contact your SAP Account Executive.

 

Consumer: Last Mile Distribution for Direct Distribution


In a product's journey from warehouse shelf, to the back of a truck, to customer doorstep, the "last mile" of delivery is the final step of the process — the point at which the package finally arrives at the buyer's door. In addition to being a key to customer satisfaction, last-mile delivery is both the most expensive and time-consuming part of the shipping process.

Last Mile Distribution (LMD) enables manufacturers and suppliers of different consumer goods industries to coordinate the distribution process and all its subprocesses centrally. This process supports manufacturers and suppliers of different consumer goods industries as an alternative approach to central retail deliveries for providing goods to stores. LMD is most suitable for supporting the needs of consumer goods companies involved with beverages and food production, as well as tobacco distribution and oil and gas companies.

In SAP S/4HANA, this feature supports the last mile distribution of consumer goods to the final point of sale (POS), such as a retail store or a mom-and-pop store, from planning to delivery through to final settlement.

 

Settlement of generic batches and intermediate route settlement


With the SAP S/4HANA 2021 release, this feature enables the use of an intermediate settlement in a mobile scenario and allows you to settle stops directly after they have been executed.

With the use of the intermediate settlement of routes capability, the system workload is distributed more evenly over a longer period of time. Moreover, the system can provide information about the current route stock after each visit and reduce the risk of losing data in case of a broken device. Additionally, billing documents can be created earlier in the process and can therefore be sent to customers sooner.

The intermediate settlement of routes can be used both for the delivery process for ordered goods and for the van sales process.


Picture 1: Increase route stock visibility during route execution for each vehicle.

Support of van sales with effective tracking of stock availability and sales on routes


This feature enables you to generate product proposals for load requests for van sales routes based on the predicted sales on routes and to generate product proposals for specific customers in a visit list.

Last Mile Distribution processes can be integrated with capabilities provided by SAP S/4HANA Sales to support the delivery process for ordered goods and the van sales process. The intelligent product proposal feature is based on the dynamic product proposal framework, which enables you to receive product and quantity proposals as an input to help to enable faster selection of products during sales order entry.


Picture 2: Distribute goods with greater flexibility by managing van sales and the delivery of ordered goods with the same solution.

Management of updates that support a mobile scenario and a recovery scenario


With this new release, you can monitor the transfer status of mobile data and the processing status of routes in a mobile scenario.

In a mobile scenario, drivers and van sellers use mobile devices to record all activities on routes, for example, payments and returns. If an intermediate settlement is enabled, the information recorded about a customer visit or sales can be uploaded to the back-end system via the mobile adapter, and the system immediately settles the stops. The status of mobile data transfer and route processing can be monitored by using the Monitor Route Data app.

Greater stock transparency at warehouses and on routes


With this release, you can monitor the transfer status of mobile data and the processing status of routes in a mobile scenario.

In a mobile scenario, drivers and van sellers use mobile devices to record all activities on routes, for example, payments and returns. If an intermediate settlement is enabled, the information recorded about a customer visit or sales can be uploaded to the back-end system via the mobile adapter, and the system immediately settles the stops. The status of mobile data transfer and route processing can be monitored by using the Monitor Route Data app.

 

Fashion and Vertical Business


SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business is an end-to-end solution that supports companies with retail, wholesale, and manufacturing processes across the supply chain.

This solution enables fashion retailers and vertical fashion companies to manage their business processes across one large data system landscape. It also enables the companies in the fashion industry to use the power of in-memory computing to analyze large data volumes for a fast and accurate overview of products. This results in greater efficiency, quicker time to market, and better inventory control.

This solution enables fashion companies to transform business models, reengineer business processes, and reimagine work:

  • Deliver a real-time fashion platform: Create smarter, faster fashion based on a common data and forecast foundation.

  • Empower employees and redefine customer engagement and commerce: Contextual and personal experience for all touchpoints along the customer journey.

  • Create efficiencies, insights, and new revenue models through business networks. Reinvent commerce with business partners, connected consumers, and connected devices.

  • Build leading fashion functionality: Transform business processes with a complete and real-time understanding of customers, inventory, and sales.

  • Simplify your IT landscape and business processes to unlock business innovation


Implementation Considerations


Some functionalities that have been developed with fashion management processes in mind is available without the activation of business functions, for example, segmentation functionality. However, to use further fashion-specific solution capabilities and solutions for vertical business operations, it may be necessary to activate one or more business functions.

For more information, see SAP Help.

 

Planned and Production Order Management for Fashion


Updates to fashion and vertical business for production processes


With SAP S/4HANA 2021 release, we are now supporting Seasons for Master Orders in Production Control Workbench. This feature enables you to maintain the valid season for planned orders and production orders in a master-planned and master production order using the production control workbench.


Picture 3: Enable supervisors and engineers to use fashion-specific production master data and related processes during the production.

Key Features

  • Maintenance of seasonality information on a master-planned order and on a master production order in the production control workbench

  • Usage of standard material in production control workbench

  • Integration of handling unit management (HUM) within production control workbench to:

  • Create handling units for finish goods and components

  • Support goods issues of the components and with handling units

  • Support goods receipt of the finished product with handling units

  • Integration with the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for insights solution to leverage on its capabilities of for insights with fashion and vertical business.



Picture 4: Use retail articles with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for Insight to do an analysis of manufacturing performance within and across manufacturing plants of the enterprise.

  • Integration of SAP Product Lifecycle Costing with fashion and vertical business to meet the requirements of preorder costing. With this feature, you can use retail articles with SAP Product Lifecycle Costing to calculate costs and other dimensions for new products or quotations at an early stage in the product lifecycle, quickly identify cost drivers along the lifecycle, and easily simulate and compare alternatives.



Picture 5: Enhance visibility of approved costs before production.

Purchase Order Processing


In Purchase Order Processing, we have now the ability to view purchase orders at different levels and perform mass changes in bulk.

New SAP Fiori app "Manage Purchase Orders" to provide:

  • Three different views (header, generic article, and article-level) on the purchase order

  • Navigation to the Mass Changes to Purchase Orders app to change the fields of multiple purchase orders simultaneously at the header and item levels

  • Ability to consolidate multiple smaller PO items into one new PO item based on customer-defined rules

  • Traceability details of purchase order items created after consolidation



Picture 6: Increase purchaser efficiency inside the organization through the ability to view open purchase order items at different levels and perform a consolidation process across multiple PO items.

Sales Order Management and Processing


Ability to create sales contracts on generic articles without specifying variants.

With this new SAP Fiori app, you can display the provisional sales contract details at header and generic product levels, so you can get a complete view of different items in these contracts. You can also use this app to create provisional sales contracts as well as create subsequent orders (call-offs) for these contracts.

Key features:

  • contracts on generic products without any variants

  • Create provisional sales contracts as well as create subsequent orders or call-offs (also, if the variant of the generic product is not assigned to the contract)

  • Allow the creation of the contract for generic products whose quantity is greater than or equal to the consolidated quantity of variants under the generic product

  • Display the provisional sales contract details at header, generic product, and variant levels



Picture 7: Increase order acceptance and fulfillment efficiency by improving procurement collaboration with the vendor.

In addition, the app supports the following technical features and options:

  • Navigate to Manage Sales Documents - Fashion app to view, analyze and perform operations for the selected sales contracts on the header and generic product level.

  • View the logs and the details corresponding to each scheduled job run using the Job Overview app.


Visualization of the statuses of sales orders supporting special business processes

With this SAP Fiori app, you can monitor the status, that is, the overall progress of account assigned sales orders. This application allows you to identify the conditions based on quantity and status. It checks for exceptions and helps you make informed decisions and necessary actions.


Picture 8: Intuitive navigation to the document to view more details after looking at the high-level facts.

You can use this app to do the following:

  • Display details of the account assigned sales orders on header, generic product, and item level.

  • Monitor the overall progress of account assigned sales orders such as Created, Supply, Delivery, Invoice, and Completed on the header, generic product, and item level.

  • View the follow-on document status associated with the account assigned sales orders.

  • Display business-critical situations such as Cancellation Date in the Past, and so on, that helps you to make efficient and effective decisions faster.

  • View the sales order delivery situation based on the following pre-configured KPIs

    • Supply Delay: Comparison between delivery dates of sales orders and supply documents.

    • Item Requested Delivery Date: Comparison between expected and actual delivery dates of sales orders

    • Expected Delivery Date: Comparison between expected and actual delivery dates of the supply documents.



  • Configure default limits at a user-specific or global level to calculate the supply and demand delivery situation for the KPIs.


For restrictions, see SAP Help

Mass processing capabilities for multiple sales documents


With this app, you can display all required details of the logs for the changes scheduled for the selected open sales documents. The changes can then be easily analyzed from the log to improve usability. Currently, you can navigate to this app only from the Manage Sales Documents - Fashion app. There is no separate launchpad tile to launch this application.


Picture 9: Increase user productivity and efficiency through the ability to perform mass processing changes to different sales documents.

Key Features

This app provides the following key features:

  • View jobs, based on filter criteria such as Job Description, Document, Job Start Date, Created By, Application, and Action.

  • Select any job to view general information, messages, and documents affected by errors or warnings.

  • View the messages, the documents with errors, warnings, and other statuses, and the job status. For more information about the different types of statuses, see Job Statuses.


Supply Assignment


With this app, you can monitor and analyze the demand documents relevant for Supply Assignments. This application allows you to identify the situations based on quantity, amount, and status. It checks for exceptions and helps you make informed decisions and necessary actions.


Picture 10: Increase insight-to-action capabilities for business users by enabling the different assignment-related actions after the user has viewed the details of the selected documents.

Key Features:

With the enhancements delivered with the SAP S/4HANA 2021 release, we increase the ability to optimize the follow-on process after the assignment in the Monitor Supply Assignment Demand app

  • Allow necessary actions (manual assignment, delivery creation, transfer of assignment for assigned documents) on single or multiple document items after looking at the details of the selected document items

  • Trigger the above mass changes through background mode (with appropriate log messages) with notifications that can be readily monitored by users

  • Leverage OData APIs available for assign, release, block, and transfer of assignment operations


Planned and Production Order Management for Fashion


With this app, you can view the details of production orders at master, individual, and combined production order levels. In addition, you can use this app to create master production orders from individual production orders and combined production orders from master production orders.


Picture 11: Increased visibility of overall progress of master production order and combined production orders.

Key Features

You can use this app to do the following:

  • View details of production orders at master, individual, and combined production orders levels.

  • View the overall progress of master production orders or combined production orders using the created, released, confirmed, delivered, and technically completed indicators based on the progress of underlying individual production orders, that the user can check and take necessary action.

  • Indicate whether a production order has issues such as On Hold, Delay, Missing Components, Quantity Issues, and Quality Issues.

  • Create master production orders from individual production orders, and combined production orders from master production orders.

  • Notify about the completion of background jobs scheduled for the creation of master production orders and combined production orders.


In addition, the app supports the following technical features and options:

  • View the logs and the details corresponding to each scheduled job run using the Job Overview app.


 

Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!

If you are also interested in other Line of Business, I would like to draw your attention to my link collection blog – The Link Collection

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: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA 2021, check out the following links: 

  • SAP S/4HANA release info: sap.com/s4hana

  • SAP S/4HANA Community here

  • The Link Collection for Product Compliance here

  • SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here

  • Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here

  • Join the SAP S/4HANA Movement

  • Best practices for SAP S/4HANA here

  • Help Portal Product Page here

  • Feature Scope Description here

  • What’s New here


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