Enterprise Management Layer for SAP S/4HANA – FAQ: What is the Difference Between the Enterprise Management Layer and SAP Best Practices?

I often get the question

What is the Difference Between the Enterprise Management Layer and SAP Best Practices?

While the enterprise management layer is based on SAP Best Practices, there are many differences!

In a Nutshell:

The enterprise management layer is best suited for multinational corporations. It is deployed as an appliance (in technical terms: an SAP S/4HANA database backup), fully configured and documented, and ready to deploy in any customer landscape, typically for greenfield implementation projects. We can provide a customer-specific sandbox within one or a few weeks, depending on the scope. It is positioned as a service and attracts a cost.

SAP Best Practices are generally better suited when you want to deploy preconfigured standard business processes for one country (although it is possible to activate multiple countries). It is typically a Do-it-Yourself process that involves many manual, technical tasks.

Both approaches are valid and although there are differences, they both help you explore SAP’s standard functionality and innovations in SAP S/4HANA and are the perfect support for our SAP Activate project methodology.

Main Differences in More Detail:

SPEED

When you receive the enterprise management layer, we have already done the groundwork of all tasks related the activation of the SAP Best Practices, including:

• Technical setup up of the SAP S/4HANA system as described in the Administration Guide to Implementation of SAP S/4HANA 2022 with SAP Best Practices in chapters ‘Prerequisite Settings’ and ‘Implementation’, such as installing languages (25 languages are already installed), creating clients, enable Fiori apps, creating users, activating business functions, etc.
• Activation of the SAP Best Practices for 43 countries
• Post-activation tasks as described in above mentioned Administration Guide in chapter ‘Carrying Out Post-Activation Configuration’

QUALITY

After configuring the system and activating the SAP Best Practices, the next step you would perform is the test or walk-through of the scope items.

You will still perform a walk-through of the scope items that are relevant for your project but we have already eliminated roadblocks in the system and in the documentation to ensure a smooth process at your end:

• We have tested and enhanced the SAP Best Practices scope items that we include in the enterprise management layer, such as configuration and master data.
• We have patched the system with relevant SAP notes pertaining to the scope items included in the enterprise management layer.
• We provide additional documentation where required when the SAP Best Practices test scripts are not complete or misleading.

ENHANCED CONTENT

On top of the content coming from the SAP Best Practices, we changed or added content in many areas to ensure you start off on the right foot, with an optimal corporate design that ensure you will not face any pitfalls later on in the project, hence reducing the risk and duration of your project:

• Finance / Parallel Accounting: When you configure an SAP S/4HANA system for several legal entities in multiple countries, you typically need a corporate structure that accommodates and enables parallel reporting according to Group / Local / Tax accounting principles and ledgers (the group GAAP being the leading accounting principle, local and tax GAAPs in parallel). SAP Best Practices come with a different design, where the local GAAP is leading and parallel reporting according to IFRS is possible
• Country Coverage: We offer the possibility to set up 6 additional countries (43 countries from SAP Best Practices plus Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), with a smaller scope focused on Finance
• Localization: We offer enhanced content for each of the countries, including for example additional payment methods, eDocuments and local reporting requirements.
• Intercompany Processes: As an additional service, we can implement intercompany processes between 2 countries of your choice, covering the following requirements:
  • Advanced Intercompany Sales, Stock Transfer, and Returns with valuated stock in transit
  • Intercompany Sales, Stock Transfer and Returns without valuated stock in transit
  • Intercompany Billing of Fixed Price or Resource-Related Projects
  • Intercompany Billing of Service and Repair Orders
• Project System: As and additional service, we can implement processes for the following requirements:
  • Overhead and Investment Projects
  • Billing of Fixed Price or Resource-Related Projects
  • Engineering Projects
• Supply Chain: We provide additional content in the following areas:
  • Cross-Plant Stock Transfer between 2 plants within the same company code / country
  • EWM: various additional scope items, for example, Physical Inventory Cycle Counting or Synchronous Goods Receipts
  • Transportation Management: Basic Inbound and Outbound Transportation
• Process Industries: These processes are more industry-specific:
  • Stability Studies with Quality Management
  • Inspection of Material with Multiple Specifications
  • Batch Derivation
• End-to-End Processes:
  • Produce and Sell Standard Products – Inventory Management
  • Produce and Sell Standard Products – Warehouse Managed

FLEXIBILTY

Taylor the country coverage and the functional scope of your customer-specific enterprise management layer for optimal fit. Use the template as a jump start for your SAP S/4HANA implementation and deploy it throughout your system landscape, including in your Development, Quality and Production systems:

• Based on a questionnaire, you can choose among pre-defined scope options which business processes (scope items) you want us to install. This will make it possible to deploy the enterprise management layer in your productive landscape without having to worry about enabling functionality that you might not have licensed. Working with the questionnaire makes the scoping process easier.
• You can choose any combination of countries and will receive localized functionality for all of them, including print forms in local languages.
• We can also set your company’s group currency and fiscal year variant for your group, and you will be able to set local fiscal year variants on company code level, as required in India or Japan for example. This option is possible due to the enhanced corporate design available in the enterprise management layer.

Conclusion

You can probably achieve the same outcome when you activate SAP Best Practices yourself. However, you need to invest the time and resources and you need to have the expert skills available in your project team.

With a deployment of the enterprise management layer, you know exactly what you get and when.