SAP S/4 HANA Simple Finance Interview Questions

1. What is SAP S/4 HANA?

SAP S/4HANA, short for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, is SAP’s next-generation business suite. It is a new product fully built on the most advanced in-memory platform today–SAP HANA–and modern design principles with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX). SAP S/4HANA delivers massive simplifications (customer adoption, data model, user experience, decision making, business processes, and models) and innovations (Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks, and mobile-first) to help businesses run simple in a digital and networked economy.

2. What are the deployment options offered? 

SAP currently plans to offer on-premise, cloud (public and managed), and hybrid deployments to give real choice to customers. SAP S/4HANA also gives customers the option to fully leverage the new HANA multi-tenancy functionality as provided by the SAP HANA platform (currently support package 9) for the cloud.

3. How does SAP S/4HANA relate to SAP Simple Finance powered by SAP HANA?

The SAP Simple Finance solution marked the first step in our SAP S/4 HANA road map for customers. The solution has demonstrated the value of simplification (for example, no indexes, no aggregates, and no redundancies) and instant insight in Finance. SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition leverages the full scope of SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA included in SAP Simple Finance. SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition is intended to leverage the same scope. SAP S/4HANA, public cloud edition is planned to focus on a selected scope of SAP Simple Finance in alignment with the key requirements in finance.

4. What is the benefit to the data model for using an in-memory platform?

SAP S/4HANA delivers high-volume transaction processing (OLTP) and high volume real-time analytical processes (OLAP) based on a unified data model without the redundant data layers typically required by traditional RDBMS based systems. This reduces TCO while providing new opportunities to increase business value from existing investments. Examples for redundant data layers are custom-built layers based on database tuning efforts such as secondary indexes, or application built-in performance accelerators such as aggregate tables or multiple general ledger versions for different managerial reporting needs.

The massive simplifications of the data model and the data processing layers enable business and technological innovations on a broad scale across all lines-of-business and industry solutions. The new application architecture simplifies system landscape architectures and accelerates cloud deployments on an economical scale.

5. Do SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite share the same data semantic?

With SAP S/4HANA, SAP has developed a new product that leverages basic data structures and elements of the SAP Business Suite for maximum compatibility, non-disruptive migration and hybrid scenarios.

However, SAP S/4HANA provides new business functionality on top of these data structures natively built on the SAP HANA platform and designed with the SAP Fiori UX principles. SAP Business Suite on-premise customers on the latest enhancement package can easily move to this new product simply by migrating to the SAP HANA database and applying the exchange innovation (new code)to their current SAP Business Suite environment.

6. In simple finance, can I have a new field based on business need which can link with logistics? For example, a team field which will drive from sales Oder which will flow to GL posting? 

You can add a field to the universal journal easily but you will have to create derivation logic of some kind to fill it and as with any derivation the more complex you make the logic to fill it, the more you’ll impact performance during posting.

7. What is a “system-driven” implementation?

We want to radically simplify the implementation of SAP S/4HANA so that customers enjoy rapid success and payback. This is particularly relevant in the cloud, of course, where customers expect to deploy a pre-configured system. SAP therefore provides ready-to-run business processes based on best practices that can be activated. During the activation, the system configures itself. The SAP S/4HANA Guided Configuration facilitates customers to personalize the processes delivered by SAP. Within the app “Manage your solution” easy SAP Fiori UI´s can be used to maintain e.g. the organizational structure, approval thresholds or other individual settings.