Highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2308 Release

[BeSchulze]

Time flies–while our customers are still enjoying the benefits of the last release, we have been working vigorously to offer you a new release with more innovations, more enhancements, and more highlights. Today, I am proud to share the release highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308 release.

Cloud ERP is at the heart of the digital enterprise. We equip you with software as a service designed to continuously adopt innovation in line with the fast pace of change. With the remarkable progress made in the past 12 months, artificial intelligence has entered our reality, and it will continue to grow as a fundamental part of technology, education, and businesses. More and more processes are becoming intelligent, while more and more is being invested in ensuring these processes run smoothly. The Cloud ERP Product Success organization started delivering the intelligent ERP early on and continues to contribute to the significant uptake that accelerates past and future investments to new adoption heights.

Therefore, let me point you to the TOP 3 most used intelligent cases:

1. SAP Cash Application


2. Predicted Delivery Date


3. Sales Performance Prediction

If you haven’t adopted them yet, hurry and see how your business will benefit immediately.

Now, without any further ado, let’s jump right into my top highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308 release. Watch my video below to get a glimpse:

https://youtu.be/IisTsPgexPE

Figure 1: Watch this video to get an overview on my personal top highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308 release.

SAP User Experience

Our number one priority is ensuring a seamless and straight-forward user experience. Therefore, we encourage you to switch from groups to spaces and pages, SAP’s go-to approach for visualization and layout on the SAP Fiori launchpad. Compared to the groups setup on the classic homepage, spaces and pages structure the access to apps following work processes in an intuitive and organized way. Additionally, they are the prerequisite for the My Home, which was introduced in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2208 release as the new standard entry page into your system. In this release, we offer enhancements such as

• color-coding to indicate the system type,


• personalization of the navigation bar,


• the display of custom news,


• the ability to group your favorite apps via drag and drop,


• and more.

Spaces and pages and My Home are already the default for new customers. So, existing customers, this is your chance to switch to spaces and pages before the planned deprecation of the groups setup in the next release!

Find more UX innovations in maria.silipo‘s blog post and video.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_5k2kirwu

Figure 2: My Home leverages spaces and pages and orchestrates tasks, applications, and apps in an intuitive and organized way. Take advantage of more personalization options and other enhancements shipped with this release.

Talking about organizing your work more efficiently–what better way to facilitate your tasks than to enhance collaboration? Great news here: The next feature of the Collaborative ERP is now generally available! With the “Share as Tab” option, you can now accelerate decision-making by sharing business data from SAP Fiori apps through “tabs” in Microsoft Teams channels, groups, and chats.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_60aucj8m

Figure 3: Share information from your SAP Fiori apps easily through tabs in Microsoft Teams channels, groups, and chats.

Finance

In order to ensure accuracy, completeness, and compliance of financial results, accountants need to validate account balances on various financial positions and other dimensions such as cost object, profit center, or segment during the financial close process. They need to run preventive validations prior to closing tasks, validations after closing, milestone validations, and more. To support this process, we have shipped the automated supervision of closing tasks with account balance validation through the new ‘Manage Balance Validation Rules and Groups’ and ‘View Balance Validation Results’ in SAP Fiori apps. With this, we improve entity closing process governance, reduce manual effort on closing tasks, and accelerate the closing, leading in higher financial statement quality.

Check out ulrich.hauke‘s blog post and watch his video to find out more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_uevishxx

Figure 4: Automated supervision of closing tasks with account balance validation reduces manual effort on closing tasks and ensures higher financial statement quality.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)

Compliance specialists now benefit from full transparency into the status quo of issue and remediation management provided by the ‘Issues Overview’ app. Thanks to the intuitive operational dashboard, they are guided by the system to those issues that require their attention and can directly drill-down to take immediate action. Here, we offer pre-defined cards to analyze most frequently used topics such as issues by conclusion, open issues by status, validation findings that need follow-ups, and more. With this, we provide real-time insights and full transparency and reduce reaction time.

Check out this blog post by katrin.deissner and watch her video to learn more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_h98chf4e

Figure 5: The new operational dashboard provides real-time insights and full transparency and reduces reaction time.

Manufacturing

Advanced order split for production orders enables you to split an existing production order for which processing may have already begun into two separate production orders. These production orders are then executed separately from a logistic perspective. ​For production orders that are settled by event-based production cost posting, the system reposts the proportional actual costs determined by the split quantity from the parent to the child order.​ This lets you react more quickly to quality issues or bottlenecks and analyze costs involved with the orders in detail, which offers you an enhanced flexibility in handling your orders.

Read this blog post by gerhard.welker and watch his video to learn more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_nzc1izj7

Figure 6: Take advantage of advanced order split for production orders to easily split an existing production order into two separate production orders.

Supply Chain

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308, the possibility to handle composite barcodes has been added to the barcode scanning function in SAP Fiori apps. Such barcodes are based on the international GS1 standard. You can post more than one material at the same time if you first temporarily save the selected materials in an item list (‘Add to List’ action). From this item list, you can later select the materials to be posted at once. This innovation enables faster and more efficient processing of inventory adjustments and increases process coverage by enhancing apps to better support end users in their day-to-day operations in inventory management.

You can find more details in this blog post by gerhard.welker and this video by m.oertelt.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_aojblwdd

Figure 7: The possibility to handle composite barcodes enables faster and more efficient processing of inventory adjustments.

Service

In service, ad-hoc billing plans in service orders are now available. In addition to the periodic billing plans, you can now use an ad-hoc billing plan to define the dates on which the billing is to occur and the value that is to be billed. For fixed-price service order items with long duration, you can already create billing document requests on flexible dates and do not need to wait until the service order item is completed. For each billing date, you can enter a billing request line manually. This new process enables you to generate revenues much earlier than before.

Read dequan.xu‘s blog post and watch his video to find out more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_7mu59ia7

Figure 8: You can now use an ad-hoc billing plan to define the dates on which the billing is to occur and the value that is to be billed and thus, generate revenues more quickly.

Key User Extensibility

We have added the following key user extensibility features:

1. Key user custom fields of the type "code list based on CDS views": Here, we support intent-based navigation, a concept in SAP’s Fiori technology that allows a simple semantic definition of a forward navigation while abstracting the technical implementation of the navigation target.


2. Key user calculated fields: Within a CDS view enabled for key user calculated fields, customers can define transient calculated fields and implement the calculation logic in a Cloud BAdI. With this release, we also provide the support for semantic field types such as email, web address, phone number, Boolean and support for additional result field types of amount and quantity.


3. Key User ABAP editor: Use code snippets to insert prebuilt code blocks into your source code, e.g., for modifying custom business object entries or calling methods in custom reuse libraries.

Find more innovations in harish_mangtani‘s blog post  and video.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_vxl7u0vi

Figure 9: Key user custom fields of the type "code list based on CDS views" now supports intent-based navigation.

Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

In this release, we ship enhanced capabilities of the revenue recognition key in the billing WBS element. A recognition key that is assigned to the revenue recognition method determines how the revenue recognition values are calculated. With the recognition key, you can determine the revenue recognition method for the project. In projects with revenue, you can manually maintain the recognition key. On project level, you can maintain the key in the ‘Project Control – Enterprise Projects’ app. On the level of billing WBS elements, you can maintain the key in the ‘Project Planning’ app. You can either select the recognition key from a drop-down list or it can be automatically derived from a sales order item when assigning a relevant sales order item to the WBS element. With the help of the revenue recognition key, you can calculate project profitability early on, starting from the initial phase of the project, and you can choose a suitable recognition key based on your business processes.

Check out this blog post  by dequan.xu and watch his video to learn more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_dfy5hcz3

Figure 10: Enhanced capabilities of the revenue recognition key in the billing WBS element enable you to calculate project profitability early on, starting from the initial phase of the project, and to choose a suitable recognition key based on your business processes.

Professional Services

In this release, we enable new resource-related intercompany billing to replace the intercompany dynamic item processor (DIP) profile. The configuration expert can flexibly define and maintain the project billing material determination and its criteria for the intercompany billing profile, add additional activity types and materials to the end-to-end process of intercompany billing, and leverage the ‘activate new features’ application to enable the new intercompany billing. ​With this, we improve financial review of consulting revenue in billing of intercompany services while eliminating restrictions for adding further activity types and billing materials in the intercompany process.

Read more about this innovation in this blog post by katharina.stopfand this video by andreas_hammerschmidt.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_hgr8z7b7

Figure 11: Resource-related intercompany billing improves financial review of consulting revenue in billing of intercompany services.

Solution Order Management

Credit checks for solution orders support you to perform credit checks against the payer of solution orders when you release the solution orders. With the help of credit management for solution orders, you can provide solutions to your customers without financial risk. Credit management is already enabled for sales orders, service orders, and service contracts. When these are created from solution orders, credit check results can be applied on solution order level. You can get a warning or an error message in case the solution order has negative credit check results. his way, you can avoid open receivables remaining uncleared by checking the creditability of your customers before delivery.

Check out dequan.xu‘s blog post  and watch his video to find out more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_4rpryiie

Figure 12: Credit checks for solution orders support you to perform credit checks against the payer of solution orders when you release the solution orders.

Sales

In sales, we offer harmonized document management for attachments in billing process documents​, which lets you switch the default attachment handling framework used by billing process documents (such as billing documents, preliminary billing documents, and billing document requests) from generic object services (GOS) to harmonized document management (HDM). ​You will benefit from a more automated and configurable attachment handling that spans from billing document request to final invoice. This increases the flexibility of attachment handling across the entire billing process, saves time and reduces manual effort by predefining output behavior for specific attachments of billing documents and preliminary billing documents​. Additionally, it provides easy differentiation between internal attachments that support your employees and external attachments intended for your customers, processing each attachment type as needed​.

Read christian.vogler2’s blog post and watch his video for further information.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_uez131qz

Figure 13: With harmonized document management for attachments in billing process documents, you will benefit from amore automated and configurable attachment handling.

Asset Management

With the 2308 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, the integration of safety instructions in SAP Environment, Health, and Safety Management (SAP EHS Management) with maintenance processes for reactive maintenance, proactive maintenance, operation and overhead maintenance, and improvement maintenance is available. This means: You can add safety instruction documents to a task list or to a maintenance order. Workers can access safety instruction documents, which describe the health and safety measures that they need to follow during a maintenance activity.

The business benefits are obvious: Increased visibility of operational risks and improved safety of the maintenance workforce.

Learn more in this blog post and this video by gerhard.welker.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_ikmwt66x

Figure 14: With the integration of safety instructions in SAP Environment, Health, and Safety Management, you can add safety instruction documents to a task list or to a maintenance order.

Sourcing and Procurement

Collecting and managing carbon-footprint data from suppliers during sourcing processes enables a sourcing manager to collect carbon footprint information from the supplier via the supplier quotation. They will be able to compare the carbon footprint of the items in the multiple suppliers' submitted quotations. This information helps not only to select a good supplier based on the price and quantity commitment, but also to choose the supplier whose items have less carbon footprint. With this, you get early insights into the carbon footprint associated with the items sourced from the suppliers and gain better control over scope 3 emissions. This process helps organizations to achieve their net zero goals faster.

Check out zaubers8’s blog post and his video for more information about this feature.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_61qg523p

Figure 15: This innovation enables you to early insights into the carbon footprint associated with the items sourced from the suppliers and gain better control over scope 3 emissions.

Sustainability

We continue to invest in a sustainable enterprise. Therefore, we ship CONAI ERP report for Italy form 6.2 import of filled packaging. CONAI (Consorzio Nazionale Imballaggi) represents a non-profit private consortium based in Italy dedicated to facilitating compliance with European Union legislation concerning the recycling and recovery of packaging materials for packaging producers. The consortium's primary mission is to assist these producers in meeting the specified targets outlined in the relevant EU regulations. This comprehensive system offers several key features to enhance businesses' sustainability practices. First, users can generate and view reports, facilitating access to crucial data for making informed decisions. Second, the platform empowers businesses to gather vital information about fees, enabling them to align their practices with sustainability goals effectively. Lastly, the system provides diverse analytical options to examine data generated in reports, specifically pertaining to plastics sustainability. Through these capabilities, businesses can optimize their sustainable strategies and contribute to a greener future.

Read the blog post by syedtalalhussain and watch his video to find out more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_ihrkb9kg

Figure 16: CONAI ERP report for Italy form 6.2 import of filled packaging optimizes sustainable strategies and contributes to a greener future.

Product Compliance

Support for due diligence acts by processing of corporate-wide compliance disclosures supports you in ensuring compliance with requirements related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and in particular to due diligence acts, such as the German Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG), with relevance to purchased products and suppliers. With the ‘Process Compliance Disclosures – For Suppliers’ (F7370) app, you can streamline the collection and consolidation of incoming compliance data for your suppliers based on corporate-wide compliance disclosures, collect and consolidate ESG disclosures of suppliers and customers, determine product risk for a risk-based approach along the product structure, and more.

Check out this blog post by christian.vogler2 and watch his video to learn more.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_v890p2zx

Figure 17: Support for due diligence acts by processing of corporate-wide compliance disclosures supports you in ensuring compliance with requirements related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and in particular to due diligence acts.

Environment, Health, and Safety

Here, we ship a single overview page with workplace safety insights. With this SAP Fiori app, you can get an overview of active incidents and incident-related tasks at your organization. When you specify your location in the ‘Set My Location’ app, the overview includes data from your selected location and its sublocations. You can see the most recent items that require attention and navigate to due tasks. Additionally, you can analyze statistical data presented in a variety of chart formats. ​This enables industrial hygienists to manage their daily operations using integration cards, part of the overview page​ and allows personalization of the home page for SAP Fiori launchpad with workplace safety insights.

Read more about this innovation in this blog post and video by christian.vogler2.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_cimjlhhx

Figure 18: Manage your daily operations with the help of this single overview page with workplace safety insights.

Two-Tier ERP

With this release, subsidiaries running on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can perform equipment calibration at the headquarters on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and SAP S/4HANA.

Consider a two-tier ERP business use case where the subsidiary is running on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and wants to calibrate their equipment which is rented in on a lease basis from the headquarter. The headquarter owns the equipment and is responsible for end-to-end maintenance and calibration activities. The maintenance planner at the subsidiary can create a time-based maintenance plan. Based on the schedule, a notification event can be replicated from subsidiary to headquarters for the due calibration task. The headquarter then creates the calibration order, generates the inspection lot, and carries out result recording and usage decision. Subsequently, it is possible to generate the calibration label and inspection report at the headquarter which can be sent to the subsidiary.

Read this blog post by swati.balani and watch her video for further details.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_4prhhpbw

Figure 19: Subsidiaries running on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can perform equipment calibration at the headquarters on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and SAP S/4HANA.

Discrete Industries

The PLM system integration enables you to integrate your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system with an external Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system.​

​This provides all necessary information for the subsequent logistic processes​, improves master-data quality by driving business process integration with semantic information, and increases transparency across different domains by sharing information between the engineering department and the extended supply chain​.

Find out more about this topic in this blog post and the video by m.oertelt.

Figure 20: The PLM system integration enables you to integrate your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system with an external Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system.​

Localization

I am happy to announce that we have new local versions for Israel, Peru, Serbia, and Ukraine and an addition of new features in SAP-delivered local versions. This helps you to steer business operations globally using SAP-delivered localizations, to address an increasing number of legal changes and compliance requirements on time, and to leverage standard processes and automation to address regulatory requirements worldwide, such as taxes, e-invoicing, statutory reporting, and payments.

Find more details in katrin.deissner‘s blog post.

Figure 21: Steer business operations globally using SAP-delivered localizations.

Release Assessment and Scope Dependency 2.0

The RASD 2.0 tool for self-learning was introduced in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2208. Based on your feedback, we have equipped it with new features:

1. Display changes related to user experience – any changes linked to the solution capability “SAP Fiori UX Technology” 


2. Email subscription – Customers will be able to sign up for RASD email alerts and receive a summary of the changes that affect them when a new version or update is released


3. And a “Where – Used” list for CDS views

Additionally, the RASD is now available in 7 languages.

You can find more information in this blog post by farooqkoppal and this blog post by prasanthpadmanabhan.menon.

https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_7q8d90nc

Figure 22: We have equipped the RASD 2.0 tool with new features to make it more user friendly.

SAP Activate

I’m happy to announce the availability of SAP Activate methodology content for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition in Korean. This adds to the existing versions in English, Chinese, and Japanese. You can access the translated content in the ‘SAP Activate Roadmap Viewer’ by changing your language selection in preferences.

In addition, we heard you and worked hard to simplify the SAP Activate content, especially for provisioning, fit-to-standard, configuration, and testing.

Check out this blog post by jan.musil for more information.

Figure 23: Easily consume our SAP Activate methodology content in Korean by changing the language settings.

SAP Build Process Automation

We continuously invest into automating your processes and facilitating your workflows. Therefore, we release bot templates that are compatible with our newer bot environment, SAP Build Process Automation 2.0, where we can build bots directly in the SaaS application with the Cloud Studio following SAP's low-code no-code approach. These pre-delivered bot templates help you to get started quickly and on the most on-demand use cases in SAP S/4HANA. They can be further extended with workflow elements such as business rules or approval forms in order to flexibly automate larger, more complex business processes and involve more stakeholders beyond individual use cases. Check out our SAP Build Content Catalog to find out how these bots can help you to meet your automation goal.

Check out this blog post and this video by yannick.peterschmitt as well as this blog post by har1234 to find out more.

Figure 24: Choose your favourite bot template in our SAP Build Content Catalog to meet your automation goal.

Watch the Replays of Our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2308 Early Release Series!

This July, we hosted a series of compelling live sessions from the heart of the SAP S/4HANA Engineering organization. Missed the live sessions? Watch our replays on demand!

Here, you can find 20 replays and presentations as well as system demos for the topics listed in this blog post and many more as part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308 release. For more information on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Early Release Series and how to sign up for it, check out this blog post.

Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast

As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA”. This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address objects of interest by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we share all ingredients with you to get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA project a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.

openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA

Our openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA offer an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearnings that have generated over 20,000 views since then. Today we cover multiple lines of business such as finance, manufacturing, and supply chain, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, extensibility, SAP User Experience, and upgrade management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to the SAP S/4HANA channel, so make sure you check them out.

Your Voice Matters!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition community–now fully integrated with SAP Community. The community brings together customers, partners, and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition community ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your journey to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

Other SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA Enablement Assets

SAP S/4HANA is the foundation of the intelligent enterprise and is an innovative, robust, and scalable ERP. We at Cloud ERP Product Success and Cloud Co-Innovation offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our Enablement team has created for you below:

More Information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release info here


• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release blog posts here and previous release highlights here


• Product videos for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA


• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here


• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Early Release Series here


• SAP S/4HANA Cloud for User Experience and Cross Topics, Public Edition Continuous Influence Session here


• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here


• openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA here


• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition here


• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition community: here


• Feature Scope Description here


• What’s New here


• Help Portal Product Page here

Feel free to ask your questions on SAP Community here. Follow the SAP S/4HANA Cloud tag and the PSCC_Enablement tag to stay up to date with the latest blog posts.

Follow us on @SAP and #S4HANA, and myself on bert.schulze, LinkedIn and Twitter.