This is the second part of my two-part blog post Innovation: Sourcing and Procurement in SAP’s Cloud ERP World - Part 1. If you haven't read the first-part, you can check it out here.
In the first part, we summarised the release highlights from 1905 and then took a deeper dive into the latest innovations from SAP S/4HANA Cloud’s 1908 release in the areas of: Operational Procurement and Sourcing and Contract Management. Now, we’ll take a look at the developments in the areas of Central Procurement, Procurement Analytics and Invoice and Payables Management, and how the latest innovations from 1908 help tackle the common pain points experienced by procuring organisations.
Central Procurement
Pain Point: Manual effort, Managing the sourcing of requirements, Difficulties saving
1908 Innovation: Reduce manual effort by initiating sourcing events for purchase requisitions from Manage Purchase Re...
Process purchase requisitions across different connected SAP software systems, using Manage Purchase Requisitions Centrally app
Collect central supplier quotations for purchase requisitions that originated from multiple back-end systems
Award appropriate central supplier quotations from collected quotations
Create central contract for distribution to the connected systems by creating purchase orders/central contracts
Create purchase orders in systems from which the purchase requisitions originated so that requests can be fulfilled
Pain Point: Lack of efficiency, Field control not enabled, Ineffective use of data
S4HC Innovation: Increase process efficiency by providing flexible field control in central purchase contracts
Enable user with BAdI MM_PUR_S4_CCTR_FLDCTRL_SIMPLE
Control field properties of standard fields
Use data in a central contract to dynamically control field properties at runtime
Pain Point: Poor focus on worklist, Central control not enabled
S4HC Innovation: Reduced manual efforts through the ability to resubmit and close purchase requisitions in the Manage...
Close Purchase Requisitions – Follow-on activity is stopped
Defer Purchase Requisitions – User able to set timelines to start showing purchase requisitions automatically after a set time
Pain Point: Check/Change Data inconsistency, Lack of custom validations/values
1908 Innovation: Increase data consistency by implementing “check” and “change” business add-ins (BAdIs) in central p...
“Check” BAdI - Check consistency of business object data before saving central contract and perform custom validations for header, item, item conditions, and distribution data of central contract
“Change” BAdI - Change business object data before saving central contract and determine custom values for header, header distribution, item, and item distribution data of central contract
Pain Point: No single place to monitor/view/access errors, Lack of ability to further investigate
1908 Innovation: Improvisations Centralized business and technical monitoring in SAP S/4HANA for central procurement
Holistic view of procurement document transfers that resulted in errors
View of extractions of purchase requisition and purchase order data that resulted in errors
Access to errors that occurred during data transfers/job extractions
Pain Point: No single point of access
1908 Innovation: Increase process transparency by providing central invoice monitoring in S/4HANA for Central Procure...
Central worklist provided for supplier invoices that originate in connected SAP ERP, SAP S/4HANA, or SAP S/4HANA Cloud software systems
Supports SAP ERP application, as of SAP ERP Central Component 6.0 enhancement package 6, and SAP S/4HANA, as of version 1709
Displays only the object page for supplier invoices along with the option to navigate to invoice display transactions in connected systems
Procurement Analytics
Pain Point: Lack of transparency, Need for improved real-time analytics
1908 Innovation: Increase real-time visibility into analytics for sourcing in SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Real-time analytics about sourcing events
Compare different sourcing events such as: Internal sourcing requests, external sourcing requests, external pricing request
Invoice and Payables Management
Pain Point: Lack of flexibility in area of taxes
1908 Innovation: Improve tax invoicing efficiency by enabling time-dependent taxes
Ability to maintain use of a tax code, even if it varies over time
Maintenance of new tax rates in a single location once a tax rate is adapted, versus having to adapt tax codes in many different configuration UIs
In supplier invoice processing, time-dependent taxes allow user to define one tax code for several periods with individual tax rates
One tax code for different tax rates
Important Links:
Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Help Portal
SAP Innovation Discovery
Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1908 Release Blog
1908 Feature Scope Description
What’s New 1908
Transform Procurement with SAP Solutions
This concludes the list of innovations from SAP S/4HANA Cloud’s 1908 release for Sourcing and Procurement. Happy Procuring in the Cloud!
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