There have been some interesting enhancements, evolutions, and enabled innovations across SAP’s Public Sector solution portfolio, some of which were delivered in the last quarter of 2023, with the remainder planned for delivery throughout 2024.
SAP never disappoints, with the continuous focus on further refining the solution portfolio for greater business impact and ultimately enabling Public Sector customers to run at their best.
So - what’s new!? The key highlights are described below (in a non-exhaustive list).
As always - context is key, so the latest solution portfolio innovations and functionalities have been summarized across core Public Sector business and technology topics. See the diagram.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is the defining technology for the years to come and SAP continues to further evolve AI capabilities across the Public Sector solution portfolio.
In Q4 2023 - access to large language models (LLM’s) was enabled to complement SAP’s capabilities that deliver simplified tools for AI use-case exploration. With security being “top of mind”, tailored compliant and secure access to LLM’s for SAP landscapes was also delivered. Further details.
- For 2024, SAP has planned several further Public Sector AI innovations, including navigational and context support for Public Finance Management, communication assistance for digital citizen services, advanced budget forecasting methods, and AI-driven help for complex financial operations. Furthermore, the existing AI investments will be complemented with a Software Development Kit (SDK) for large language models to improve extensibility, simplify the developer experience, facilitate advanced LLM processes, and to boost efficiency when working with various LLM models. Further details.
Public Sector Management (PSM): Budgeting in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition
In Q4 2023 - several Public Sector Budgeting functionalities were delivered, including:
- Integration of travel expenses from SAP Concur with budgetary and grant accounting processes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, to facilitate travel-expense accounting that is compliant with budgetary, fund, and grant accounting regulations. Further details.
- Profit center data derivation for the budgetary ledger during budget and control system (BCM) transactions. The profit centre is now an element of budgetary ledger reporting for BCM documents and the organizational element for the profit center is now supported in many apps and core data services (CDS) views in lieu of the business area. Further details.
- The Integration of Earmarked Funds documents into Public Sector Funds and Grants management. Earmarked funds documents can thus be created and managed using an SAP Fiori app to reserve budgets for expected expenditures outside of procurement. Further details.
Check out Mary Ramsrud’s blog that provides additional information regarding the delivered Public Sector Budgeting functionality.
In 2024, Budgeting functionality will be further extended to include the addition of the profit center to the Manage Funds Centers app, and this will allow for the display and maintenance of the profit center. Furthermore, and specifically for the United States, the ability to display and maintain U.S. federal-specific fields in the SAP Fiori app "Manage Earmarked Funds" will be enabled. Further details.
PSM: Grants Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition
In Q4 2023, functionality extension for Grants Management included:
- Ad hoc billing for grantor management processes was delivered and this enables the definition of alternatives to periodic payments as well as billing dates and values for Grants Management Further details.
- Enhance processing efficiencies with new actions and processing activity configuration for Grantor applications and Grantor claims. Further details.
- Grantor management change requests, financial document display for claims, attachments and notes for business partners, workflow templates for processing and multiple funding. Further details.
In 2024, we are likely to see the delivery of functionality that will increase visibility on grantor programs, applications, agreements, and claims with SAP Fiori apps (further details), and a virtual data model for Grantor management that will enable access to Grantor-management data from embedded as well as external analytical tools for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition (further details).
Financial Operations: Contract Accounting in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition
The industry specific version of the Contract Accounting solution (Public Sector Collections and Disbursement) supports the processes of receivables and payables for large scale, citizen focused activities. This includes capabilities such as billing, invoicing through to payment management and debt collection.
Specific functionalities delivered in Q4 2023 will enable better citizen experiences, i.e. a link and QR code is positioned in printouts of correspondence to enable customer-initiated payments using digital payment capabilities (further details). Similar functionality has also been delivered for dunning correspondence to simplify payment possibilities (further details).
Functionality extension plans for 2024 include:
- Localization of contract accounting functionality for specific countries. The scope will extend across compliance with electronic document regulations, consistent user experiences, simplified implementation of new local requirements, process automation, and platform extensibility. Further details.
- Support for gross and net amounts for credits and debits, to improve and extend flexibility in either entering gross or net amounts and creating resulting billable items of source transaction type credit or debit. Further details.
Sourcing and Procurement: Spend Management
In Q4 2023, public tendering functionality was extended with supplier discovery enhancement, award optimization, expanding the support for e-Forms notifications and integration with additional public procurement country portals for the European Union (EU). Further details.
Contract compliance functionality was also extended and SAP’s Public Sector customers that use the Icertis contract management platform with the SAP Ariba Contracts solution workspace can now create contracts and terms using compliance capabilities in the SAP Ariba Buyer mobile app. Further details.
Extensions to supplier invoice collaboration functionality included:
- Enablement of intelligent invoice conversion with machine learning (ML) and template-based annotation rules, to automate invoice information extraction, by using the SAP Business Network. PDF invoices can then be manually loaded and/or sent via e-mail/s. Further details.
- Supplier ability to create a single invoice for more than one purchase order. Further details.
Additionally, a new solution, i.e. SAP Ariba Category Management has been released that helps Public Sector organizations to prepare public tenders and to improve public spend management. Further details.
In 2024, further functionality extensions will span across Category Management, with generative AI-powered content recommendations, supplier profile integration and analytics dashboards for goals and initiatives. Further details. Furthermore, enhanced functionality to search artifacts, documents and events in planned for Strategic Sourcing – further details.
Human Resources
For Human Resources, functionality extensions delivered in Q4 2023, include:
- The display of workforce master data with associated complete primary cost allocations (including funds and grants)in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition timesheets and the Worker Overview app.
- Enabling the WBS element as a standard field (in SuccessFactors Employee Central) to expose the cost element across employee and position cost assignments and pay components.
The employee cost assignment is now distributed to public sector cost objects and thus delivers a more comprehensive view of funds and grants management costs (i.e. cost allocation data accuracy is enhanced by additional cost objects in workforce master data).
The delivery of additional functionality to enhance Payroll and Position management is planned for 2024:
- For Payroll Management: Enabling financing of employees (in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition) with their corresponding funding sources (funds, grants, or functional areas) will allow for monitoring and control of budget consumption. Furthermore, the creation of personnel encumbrances (in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition) via the earmarked documents (commitments), as well as a Budget availability checks (to be executed when financing a new employee) based on employee theoretical costs is also planned. Further details.
Enhancements to SuccessFactors Employee Central in 2024 will span across an improved user experience to provide a complete view of the entire end-to-end payroll, enhanced visibility into payroll and enhanced flexibility with the ability to add customer tasks that do not trigger system activities. Further details.
Integration for contingent workers between SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll will also be enabled. Further details.
- Position Management: A new position budgeting control workbench is planned for 2024, to perform and access employee financing related activities and thus optimize the view of employee financial status and to monitor and execute commitment runs more efficiently. Further details.
So, in summary – 2024 looks to be an exciting year for further enhancement of SAP’s Public Sector solution portfolio capabilities. 1, 463 roadmap items are planned for delivery across the year, across multiple business and technology topics, as well as across many of the solutions within the SAP product portfolio.
We plan to keep you updated on the progress of the delivery of relevant high priority and high impact roadmap items, and we trust that this blog has been an enjoyable and informative read.
A big thank you to my co-authors – Mattias Hoffman, Kate Ivanova, Sally Kurtz, Paul O'Sullivan and Minesh Ladwa!
Looking forward to further communications!
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