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Higher Education & Research in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402

RobJonkers
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎02-08-2024 4:12 PM

Welcome to the latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition release for Higher Education & Research! Once again, we're excited to bring you a range of new features and improvements aimed at enhancing your education, or research institution's operations. In this release (#2402), we're pleased to announce that our industry capabilities, such as Grants and Budget Management, have been further enhanced, and are now available in more countries beyond the US, with further expansion planned for our August release (#2408).

This 2402 release provides the opportunity to leverage your ERP strategy to new heights and move toward a future-ready,  AI-powered institution. This release introduces more innovation, and automation opportunities to streamline processes, boosting efficiency and effectiveness than ever before. Are you ready to GROW with SAP? 

 AI-Assistant SAP Joule

Notably, with SAP Joule, our natural-language AI assistant, embedded directly into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, we're launching an Early Adopter Care program for this release, which you can sign up for here! 

SAP Joule, embedded into S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is set to transform your interaction with the system, improving business process efficiency and user experience. You can express user-based, business needs in natural language and Joule will grant you quick and seamless access to relevant content by providing insights on business objects or guiding you to applications. SAP Joule will significantly transform how users will interact with the system!

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Figure: SAP Joule example

Some General Release Highlights 

Before diving into the core industry capabilities I want to highlight three other key areas of innovation and improvements delivered into S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and the 2402 release: 

  • Improved User Experience: The integration with Microsoft Teams has seen a substantial upgrade, facilitating direct collaboration (chat, call, video) through contact details accessed directly from the TO-DO bar. This advancement boosts efficiency and communication within SAP's Cloud ERP!
  • Environment, Health & Safety: Operational risk assessment enables the identification, analysis, and control of chemical hazards affecting employee health and safety. It addresses risks from chemical handling in the workplace, allowing for effective mitigation within the assessment framework.
  • Sustainability Insights: The latest version of SAP Analytics Cloud seamlessly integrates financial planning with CO2 insights, promoting alignment with economic sustainability goals. Providing a dual view of financial metrics and environmental impact empowers institutions to devise eco-conscious strategies while pinpointing related financial risks.

For more Release Highlights please check out the video from Bert Oliver Schulze:

Grants & Budget Management for New Countries

The 2402 release introduces the Global Public Sector Management (PSM) scope bundle, now accessible for Canada and Germany. This specific industry scope bundle, which is built, with and for Higher Education & Research, comprises five specific scope items tailored for higher education and research. These five higher education and research-specific scope items include the unique functionality required for the financial management of sponsored research, grants, and funds. Also, they are complemented by a range of Line of Business (LOB) scope items that bolster core finance operations.

You can use the SAP Process Navigator for further details, and to get a complete overview of which scope items are made available in this new global PSM scope bundle.

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Figure: PSM 2402 scope bundle details for Canada 

Enhancements in managing Grants and Budgets

Next to the further global rollout of the industry-specific features and functions, more innovations, and enhancements have been delivered into the 2402 release. Some examples: 

  • Management of expected revenues via earmarked funds
  • Improvements in Grant Overview and Budget Consumption dashboards
  • Enhanced overview page for monitoring grants
  • Ability to manually create original budget documents
  • Ability to create billing plans for grants
  • Enhanced integration with SAP Concur 

Let's shortly unpack these enhancements for you: 

Manage Earmarked Funds – Forecast of Revenue
Institutions of Higher Education & Research require the ability to effectively manage and consume approved budgets.  Allowable expenditures may be contingent on the receipt of certain revenues.  Previously released Earmarked Funds document types include Funds Reservations, Funds Pre-commitments, and Funds Commitments.  These Earmarked Funds documents allow for the reservation of expenditure budget in advance of expected procurement activity or direct expenses.  We have now delivered a new fourth document type – Forecast of Revenue. 

Benefits:

  • Ability to integrate the recording of predicted revenues and actual revenue
  • Visibility to and management of expected revenues
  • Improved cash flow planning
  • Support for strategic decision-making.  

Features: 

  • Create, copy, and edit Forecast of Revenue documents
  • Reference and reduce by customer invoices
  • Track changes
  • Flexible workflow approvals
  • Increase or liquidate as needed
  • Manage attachments

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Figure: earmarked funds with new document type ' Forecast of Revenue'. 

Grant Overview and Budget Consumption dashboards

We deliver so called 'Embedded Analytics' in SAP 's Cloud ERP that comes along with insights to support effective grant and budget management.  These embedded analytics contain multiple pages of comprehensive data with the ability to filter and sort.  These analytics allow grants and budget specialists immediate access to accurate information and trends related to their grants and budgets.t.

Benefits:

  • Delivers real-time information about budget allocation and consumption
  • Provides grant history that considers user statuses
  • Allows overview of grants by user status
  • Enables a budget situation based on workflow status

Features: 

  • The ability to filter budget data based on workflow status is now also available for the Budget Consumption Dashboard
  • Grants user status capabilities are now visualized on the Status page in the Grants Overview app
  • Principle of Prudence is now available on the Budget Consumption Dashboard by a new filter for the Budget page

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 Figure: embedded analytics/dashboard for Grants Budget Management

Enhanced overview page for monitoring grants

With the new release, we have improved the 'Monitor Grants' Fiori app to better visualize key grant monitoring data so that you can better perform efficient and reliable analysis of your research grants.

Benefits:
By accessing the app by default the dashboard displays the visualizations of all your grants. You also can apply Grant, Grant Type, Status, and Sponsor filters and view the visualizations on the dashboard, based on your personal preferences. Cards can also be added to your Homepage. 

Features: 
The following cards are delivered with the 'Monitor Grants' app:

  • Budget Consumption by Grant
  • Grants in Approval by Status
  • Grants by Grant Type, Billing Details, Status, Revenue
  • Top Sponsors

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Figure: Monitor Grants apps with the available cards

Manage Budget Documents – Original Budget

Budget Documents support the management of funds at your institution where revenues and expenditures are budgeted according to specific criteria, such as area of responsibility, program/function, and source of funds. Institution expenditures are authorized by an approved budget. The financial transactions are validated against these criteria to ensure compliance with the distributed budget.

Benefits: 

  • Improve the ability to manage the approved budget throughout the fiscal year
  • Original budget documents now can be manually created as well.
  • Increase flexibility in the budget process

Features:

  • Immediate control of expenses and analytics visibility
  • Create, copy, and edit original budget documents
  • Manage text and attachments
  • Flexible workflow approvals

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Figure: Manage Budget Documents 

Ability to create billing plans for grants
One of the pivotal functions in Grants Management revolves around acquiring revenues from your sponsors. Typically, grants operate on a reimbursement model. As expenses accrue, they are billed to the sponsors accordingly. S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition facilitates this through both manual billing and automated processes, including resource-related billing derived from expenses and payments, billing plans, and periodic billing cycles.

Benefits:

  • Automatically create billing documents using flexible rules to determine billing dates and amounts
  • Simplify and optimize the grants management billing process

Features:

  • New Manage Grants Billing Plan app for easy billing plan maintenance.
  • Define billing items with flexible dates and amounts.
  • Generate periodic billing plans with customizable parameters.
  • Copy billing items and adjust dates and amounts as required.
  • Grant total billing amount, Valid From Date, and Valid To Date automatically transferred to billing plan upon entry.

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Figure: Manage your Billing Plan. 

Enhanced Integration with Concur

Travel expenses, a significant part of research budgets, are managed seamlessly by SAP Concur in conjunction with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition for Higher Education & Research. This integration ensures budget compliance and means that planned or realized expenses are visible in Commitment and Actual reporting. The budget control checks and updates are triggered by Concur document workflows.

 Benefits: 

  • Facilitate seamless integration of SAP Concur travel expenses with budgetary and grant accounting workflows.
  • Ensure compliance of travel expense accounting with budgetary, fund, and grant regulations.
  • Streamline the integration of commitment and actual recording processes.
  • Prevent budget overruns by proactively reserving budgets.

Features: 

  • Introducing a new value type for expense report obligations in funds and grants management commitments, updated pre-posting.
  • Optional budget reservation for expected expenses like travel.
  • Automatic deduction of predecessor commitments by successor documents.
  • Enabling active budget control for commitments and actual expenses, with updates to the budgetary ledger.

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Figure: Integration overview between Grants & Budget Management and SAP Concur. 

New Higher Education & Research Learning Journeys
In late October 2023, three new learning journeys were released on Learnings.sap.com. These journeys provide access close to 500 pages of educational content, with ongoing digital content updates. Seize the chance to enhance your comprehension of the solution through these comprehensive courses covering Budget Management, Grants Management, and Fund Accounting (US specific)!

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Figure: example of a Learning Journey for Higher Education & Research.

More info on the Grant and Budget management functionalities can be found via the Product Documentation and Help webpage: SAP.Help.com 

For more information on what is coming into the next release for S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition,  'US PSM scope' please scroll through the SAP Roadmap Explorer.

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RobJonkers_0-1707405823455.png Watch Our Live Sessions

In January 2024, we hosted a series of 19 compelling live sessions to highlight the exciting innovations shipped with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Missed the live sessions? No problem! Take advantage of the entire series or pick and choose the sessions most relevant to you on demand.

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There is no customer success without project success and product success! Leverage the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA Cloud experts, partners, and customers, sharing their SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementation project best practices and lessons learned – anywhere, anytime. In this podcast, we give you all ingredients to get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA Cloud project a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge!

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Our openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 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. Today, we cover multiple lines of business such as finance, manufacturing, and supply chain management, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, extensibility, SAP User Experience, and upgrade management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to our channel, so make sure you check them out.

RobJonkers_3-1707405823467.png️ Your Voice Matters

You want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud topics? We have just the right place for you! Join our interactive community where we bring together customers, partners, and SAP experts with a clear mission: To engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore the ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and to connect with experts who will guide you through your journey to the intelligent, sustainable enterprise.

RobJonkers_4-1707405823480.pngFind All of Our Assets

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the foundation of the intelligent, sustainable 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 team has created for you below: 

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RobJonkers_5-1707406134986.pngWhere to Find More Information:

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Thank you! 

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, etc! 

Rob Jonkers - SAP Higher Education & Research 

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