SAP S/4HANA 1809- All You Need to Know

SAP S/4HANA was launched in 2015, and it is continuously offering its customers the latest invention. SAP S/4HANA 1809 is the latest release of SAP S/4HANA launched in September 2018. SAP S/4HANA wants to help organizations to begin their path with the digital transformation. SAP S/4HANA allows organizations to digitize their enterprise and accomplishes the digital conversion. In SAP S/4HANA there were four on-premise releases they are 1511, 1610, 1709 and now 1809 and these innovations are increasing quickly. In September 2017, there were around 966 innovations associated with SAP S/4HANA, 646 user experience innovations, and 314 innovations related to the digital transformation. In September 2018, there are nearly 1500 innovations, and features were added to the SAP S/4HANA on-premise and on-cloud. There were around 2389 innovations related to SAP S/4HANA, 1048 user experience innovations, and approximately 552 innovations in digital transformation. The latest release that is 1809 carries numerous modifications and features. Thus, it is suggested to have a look at the simplification list, innovation discovery, and the roadmaps portal. A lot many modifications have been done in Line of Business, changes on essential elements, and some changes are done to industry-specific releases. However, these industries were previously available in the prior version, but the 1809 release has introduced new features in it.

Now, let us have a look at the essential innovations provided in 1809 release. The below list shows the most popular innovation of 1809 release.

Supply Chain: This involves

• AATP, i.e., advanced available to promise: alternative based confirmation and other one is product allocation: calculate non-reserving availability.

Industry to the Core- Utilities: This includes

• Analytical insight and exception resolution in billing and invoicing
• Meter reading analysis

Embedded Transportation: This includes

• Mixed pallet building, and load optimization
• Carrier invoicing through SAP Logistics Business Network

Industry to the Core- Utilities: This innovation covers

• Analytical insight and exclusion resolution related to billing and invoicing
• Meter reading analysis

Industry to the Core- Retail, and Fashion: This innovation mainly involves

• Merchandise management: Clears in warehouse management integration
• Improved season management

Customer Management:

• Entrenched service management with removed middle-ware, consistent data models

Digital Manufacturing:

• Demand-driven perceptibility and interactive planning
• Capability evaluation and MRP controller’s adjustment

Finance:

• Central finance: it delivers a finance data hub for real-time consolidation
• Intercompany reconciliation report

Sourcing and Procurement:

• Consolidated purchase requests through hub and central contract management hub
• Incorporation of SAP Ariba buying with SAP S/4HANA

Asset Management: It contains

• Overview page for the planner
• Technical object damage analysis
• Task list and operations

Sales and Distribution: This covers

• Streamlined sales order creation
• Perform split analysis in sales billing and invoicing
• Approval workflow for acclaim memo requests

Extended Warehouse Management: This innovation includes

• Item’s new identification
• Innovative report to categorize products based on history warehouse tasks

R&D Engineering:  This innovation involves

• Alternative configuration, multilevel, CPQ, classification
• Product marketability and chemical agreement

Inventory Management:

• Predictive analytics and machine learning for decision support
• Placing the goods receipt for the production order

Migration Cockpit: This particular innovation involves:

• Transfer data by staging tables
• Adjust the migration objects which are utilized with the Object Modeler

Quality Management: This innovation involves:

• Quality inspection, recording results
• Complaint management recording and monitoring
• Examine KPI’s regarding quality management data

Well, the SAP customers who are using the SAP S/4HANA for the previous months or years, might know that there are various approaches to move towards the S/4HANA. The SAP customers can take any option depending on the type of business objective of moving to the S/4HANA.

Checkout the Article- Users Should Know About: SAP S/4HANA Sourcing & Procurement

New Implementation: This is referred as the Greenfield project. The customer can choose this particular option either on-premise or on-cloud utilizing the Migration cockpit to move the data from ECC to S/4HANA. The companies are considering this as one of the best approaches, using this approach they can review their procedures and re-arrange the system, becomes free from customization and drive for simplification.

System Conversion:  This conversion option will be more appropriate to those organizations which have the objective of moving faster towards the S/4HANA, and also the company is not concerned about reviewing the current processes and get free from the developments.

In order to move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, earlier people had to follow an extended path to run on complete SAP S/4HANA suite.

Source: blogs.sap.com

But, with the system conversion option now it is possible to move directly from ECC 6.0 to 1809 on HANA 2 database without moving to the suite on HANA. Irrespective of the on-cloud or on-premise, now it has become a single-step process to migrate towards the complete suite S/4HANA on HANA 2 DB without any intermediate steps.

Source: blogs.sap.com

Whether, the company can go  with on-premise, public cloud or private cloud depending on the factors like IT approach, invention cycles, acceptance, TCO, Commercial models, business functionality, or regulatory requirements, etc.

With the help of SAP S/4HANA, the data model is streamlined and presented a modern user-experience. They are reliable for both on-cloud and on-premise versions, and either on-cloud or on-premise were created for in-memory database and IT landscape simplification.

SAP CoPilot: It is the digital associate which enables customers to establish their daily activity, arrange their tasks at one central point. In 1809 release this feature is enhanced by including natural language. Using the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, the user can have the same experience as they have in Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri associates. The customers can ask questions like searching for consequences of sales report in a particular area. The CiPilot utilizes the machine learning skills to enhance the outcomes and do much superior as the customers qualify it.

Machine Learning: SAP S/4HANA is the beginning to take your organization to the next stage of ERP. When you enhance your ERP, it offers various features such as, provides the basis to connect your data, automate essential functions, and continuously strengthen products and services. SAP S/4HANA has Machine learning abilities entrenched, which makes the ERP smarter, tasks more dynamic and analytical, and also it is possible to automate the daily task. Machine learning abilities are already introduced in SAP S/4HANA in the 1709 release, but SAP S/4HANA 1809 release has a lot more features in Machine learning, let us have a look at them.

1. Sourcing and Procurement: It includes exception handling. It has enhanced invoice automation with Machine Learning and effective invoice monitoring. It provides an option for materials deprived of source of supply through machine learning. It also suggests a material group for the free-text item in acquisition request.

2. Security of Product: It has product compliance. From machine learning models, it includes facilities for finding and classifying the hazardous goods as well as a substance group assignment. It involves service integration into SAP S/4HANA for product obedience.

3. Inventory Management: It contains the goods receipt process. With the help of SAP S/4HANA predictive analytics, it is possible to find patterns automatically for defining existing behaviors based on past data and the application of the patterns to new data. It allows developments in the current app. It also checks the presence of the expected delivery date into developments of stock transport orders.

4. Sales and Distribution: With this feature, it is possible to define the quotation conversion possibility using predictive analytics and machine learning. Also, it allows observing your delivery performance using predictive analytics in SAP S/4HANA.

5. Goods Management: Machine learning global data synchronization integration allows access from global data synchronization incoming processes to SAP Leonardo Machine Learning.

Along with these features, SAP is working hard to implement more machine learning elements and create the ERP extra intelligent in it’s each release.

Checkout the Article- SAP HANA, S/4HANA, and S/4HANA Finance in a Nutshell

Well, Master Data Management is another concern for those customers moving towards SAP S/4HANA. Thus, SAP provided significant modifications and enhancements to Master data management in the latest 1809 release. Here are some of the features:

• Mass Maintenance
• Central Governance
• Data Quality
• Migration Cockpit
• Key Finance innovations: It involves financial planning, central finance
• Consolidation
• Reporting
• Cash Management
• Integration
• Parallel valuation and revenue accounting
• Treasury and Risk Management
• SAP Cloud Platform
• Revenue Recognition

Conclusion: SAP S/4HANA is an enterprise application that is developed for a business that wishes to get success in the digital economy. The digital core of S/4HANA allows the organization to perform its business processes with the new digital economy by utilizing the popularization of applications, data models, and user interface. Also, with the help of the technical design of SAP S/4HANA, businesses can connect to the outside world quickly and easily. The SAP S/4HANA 1809 release provides a lot many features to the SAP customers that help the organization to move further in their journey of digital transformation.