SAP S/4 HANA – FAQ Answered

Interested in getting to know

1. Why SAP introduced S/4 HANA?
2. What are the common features of the new offering?
3. What value it adds to the businesses?
4. How it can be acquired and utilized?
5. Where you can get more information? and
6. Who should learn the subject and earn its qualification?

I got answers to all of the above questions and in this blog, I’m sharing with you what I’ve learned.

Digital and Connected World

I am talking to you through a media, which in this case is an online collaboration platform, without which maybe I couldn’t even have known your name. We are living in a digital world and are connected. I’m “talking”, like many others, here and also at other forums. We can have business as well, no matter where we live on this planet, through the globalization of business networks.
It’s not only us who are connected but different devices & objects as well; the Internet of Things, in addition to the Big Data being produced by such networks, is another amazing revolution which has impacted our daily lives. Do you see how complex it is becoming day-by-day and how many solutions are now needed to solve the challenges we face? There are new business models which require Technology to support them.

Technological Developments

Remember the time when opening multiple files on a PC at one time was challenging? Or when opening a web page was like waiting for a bus which used to come on a stop after a long time?
Time changed and now with the latest technology, speed isn’t an issue anymore. Imagine how it’s on the machines used by the businesses. The advancement in this area, such as Big Memory, Larger Disk Space, and Multi-core Processors, has allowed the processing to be really fast. The latest hardware supports the businesses in dealing with challenges such as handling multiple tasks at one time and avoiding delays to get the required information in real time.

Business Applications

Staying competitive in the market requires a business to respond to its customers’ needs in a timely manner and it’s possible only if it has the right information available at a time when it’s needed, to decide and act to produce & deliver the required products/services.

The smart Applications support businesses with reading, analyzing, and predicting customer behaviors.

SAP has led the market for a long time, in this space, by providing the needed Solutions, leveraging the IT Trends AND underlying Technology of the specific era such as the mainframe, client/server, web-based, and now the cloud.
S/4HANA Solutions exploit the power of Technological Advances and support the latest Business Models to be able to serve the global customer base.

Core and LoB Solutions

The SAP S/4HANA splits its Solutions to meet different & varying requirements of individual businesses, the Enterprise Management to support the Core Business Processes, and Line of Business Solutions to extend and enhance the selected Business Functionalities.
It’s advantageous for many reasons including the usage according to the needs while still benefiting from the

1. underlying powerful in-memory data management and application platform, called HANA, and
2. advanced and flexible User Experience across devices through a design approach, called FIORI.

I’m impressed with such an offering; you pay only as much as you use. The Customers interested in the S/4HANA Solutions don’t need to buy the complete suite, instead, they can just start with the core and extend it as their businesses grow.

Key Characteristics

To support a business with maintaining transactions concurrently across its functions and to build & use analytical reports, previously OLTP and OLAP activities were performed separately, by SAP and other tools. The traditional way of having insights on the data, maintained in the SAP ERP and other Solutions, was to extract the data from the source systems and load it into the target BW system, to transform it into meaningful information.
The HANA powered SAP Solutions combine the Online Transaction AND Analytical Processing (OLTP and OLAP) which for business means having access to real-time information within a system.
It’s just ONE example of the powerful features of the S/4 HANA offering, another noticeable feature is unified & better User Experience across devices, provided through FIORI, turning “Complexity” to “Simplicity”.

Deployment Options

If you want to align your business with the standard practices, followed by many other organizations around the world, and want to avoid the hassle of maintaining the Data Center, Operations, and Technical Support of the best-run solutions, you can now take advantage of SAP offerings which runs on SaaS (Software as a Service) model. It’s based on subscription, allowing you to pay on usage. You can always upgrade/downgrade depending on your current business needs.
There are a variety of Solutions, to support different Lines of Business, which are provided according to the specific business needs, in-cloud as well as on-premise. The on-premise S/4 HANA solutions can also be managed by 3rd parties, thus allowing customers with the flexibility of customization, in addition to managed operations & support services. Such an option is known as HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud).

Starting Point

Exploring the features of best-practices Solutions was never as easy as it’s now. You’re an Enterprise, running a Professional Services Business, or in Marketing/Sales domain, SAP provides you with the options to try pre-configured Solutions with master & transactional data populated for such business models. Here’s the place where you can start your journey.

https://cal.sap.com/catalog
The trial is provided for 30 days and you can either get the solutions hosted in the cloud, downloaded and installed to your own hardware. If you think the Solutions meet your business requirements, you can proceed with getting these activated for your productive usage. Having such an option is particularly useful to explore the features before making investment decisions.

Transformation Journey

Depending on your particular circumstances, you can choose the

1. new implementation, if you are ready to re-engineer your existing business processes around S/4 HANA best-practices,
2. conversion, if you want to leverage the capabilities of the new solutions without interrupting your current processes, or
3. landscape transformation, scenario if you are consolidating your existing systems to a single Solution.

Whatever journey customers choose to have, SAP provides step-by-step guidelines as well as the required resources to help them with migrating to the new environment as smoothly as possible.
The SAP Activate, combining the best-practices, guided configuration, and methodology, help customers with implementation and support, which is often referred as “build smart and run simple”.

Know How to Learn and Use SAP Activate?

Major Activities

The customer journey to S/4 HANA Solutions is made very simple by SAP. It not only provides the tools and best-practices for Data Migration, which is considered the most complex activity on such projects but also on Custom Code Management, to allow customers to analyze the existing code & align it with the new Solutions.
In addition to the Technical work, it also assists businesses with ensuring User Readiness, an activity which is required to prepare the ground, by providing the necessary guidelines & content.
Those of you who have worked on earlier Solution Implementation Projects may see the value of such offering. With the step-by-step guides available for each of the aforementioned and additional activities, the customers can now have a quicker time to value.

Additional Resources

If you are already familiar with SAP Business Suite or ERP Solutions and want to learn about the S/4 HANA, the S4H01 is the course which provides the necessary information on the new Solutions. And if you want to learn in detail what I’ve explained in a summarized form, the S4H100 is the right course.
These courses are good for Project Managers, Solution Architects, and Consultants, and are available for consumption within the SAP Learning Hub.

Qualification > Experience > Skills

The SAP S/4HANA Implementation Tools and Methodology Learning Journey provides the details on how to earn the C_S4IMP and C_ACTIVATE qualifications through which you can help businesses with implementing the latest SAP Solutions. The summary I’ve provided above can

1. set you up with understanding the core concepts, taught within the SAP Business Suite to SAP S/4HANA Delta and SAP S/4HANA Implementation Scenarios, and
2. help you with learning them in detail when you explore both the courses.

I’ve also created a short video to describe the basic concepts for those who are new to the subject which can be seen here:

Those of you who are, or going to be, engaged on S/4 HANA Projects, may find the above coursework very useful. I’ve gone through it, have learned the skills, earned the qualifications (as can be seen here and here) and find myself ready to support such transitions, and I recommend the same to YOU as well.
If you’ve any questions or suggestions, please leave your comments.


Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/20/sap-s4-hana-faq-answered/?

Reconcile S/4HANA Credit Management with SD Credit Management on a System Conversion

When doing a system conversion to S/4HANA you may notice that Credit Management (FI-AR-CR) is not available anymore. This functionality is replaced by SAP Credit Management (FIN-FSCM-CR). Note 2270544 will give you all the information about the business impact for this simplification item.
So now you will have to set up SAP Credit Management in S/4HANA to fulfill the business needs that where contented by the previous Credit Management functionality. This usually means that customers require similar functionality and process as they where using on ECC before the conversion. This is where we get to the crux of the matter. Trying to reconcile open value for SD Documents between these two functionalities is not an easy task.
After the conversion all the structures that belonged to the old SD Credit Management functionality will be empty, the master data transaction would be not accessible, and all the credit information on credit exposure will be again calculated by FSCM.
In FSCM you can run the reports as UKM_COMMITMENTS to display all the information by Credit Exposure Category. For FI Documents, these reports can be relatively easily compared to reports such as FBL5N and FBL5H after conversion to check if the credit exposure was successfully updated.

Credit Exposure Categoy	Name	Report FSCM	Report to compare
200	Open Items from FI	UKM_COMMITMENTS	FBL5N, FBL5H
300	Special Credit Exposure	UKM_COMMITMENTS	FBL5N, FBL5H

But for sales documents, there is no report that can easily compare Credit Exposure. As mentioned before, structures where this credit exposure is updated, are empty after the conversion. And even before the conversion, these structures (S066 and S067) will have an accumulation, and no detail by document.
Note 377165 describes how the open values are updated in the old Credit Management functionality, and the structures where it is stored. If you want to do a comparison, these values must be listed and keep before the conversion.

Credit Exposure Categoy	Name	Report FSCM	Value before conversion
100	Open Orders	UKM_COMMITMENTS	S066-OEIKW
400	Delivery Value	UKM_COMMITMENTS	S067-OLIKW
500	Billing Document Value	UKM_COMMITMENTS	S067-OFAKW

If there are update errors, it would be a good idea to run report RVKRED77 to reorganize credit data before getting the values from the structures mentioned before.
Still, the structures will have an accumulated value by period, and no information on the specific documents that are affecting the open value. Unfortunately, there is no standard report to get this information.


If it is imperative to get this detailed information, again note 377165 will give more information on how to get this information.
Sales Order Open Value
Open Sales Order Value is calculated from the open schedule line quantity (VBEPD-OLFMNG) multiplied with the item credit price (VBAP-CMPRE). Consider that the material availability date will define the period in which the open sales order value is updated. Only items with confirmed quantity (VBEP-BMENG) will update an Open Sales Order Value, so this logic must be considered to correctly calculate the Credit Exposure for a Document. Some exceptions to these rules are explained in the note mentioned before.
Let’s see an example: Sales order 5523 has a net value of 1.000,00 BRL. If the item data is checked, the credit price is 126,73 BRL, this is the net value plus tax value. This document has one schedule line with confirmed quantity, so the open schedule line quantity (confirmed minus delivered) will be the base for the open value calculation, and updated for September 2018, adding a total of 1.267,28 BRL.






Fortunately, this is the only sales order for this customer on this period, so the value on structure S066 match the calculation performed.


Open Delivery Value
For Open Delivery Value, the value updated in structure S067 is not separated in time periods. This means you will get one value per credit control area and credit customer. The value is again calculated from the credit price and the open delivered quantity. Delivered quantity may be fetched from the document flow table VBFA. Consider that this open quantity is affected even from credit blocked deliveries, so you will have to check delivered quantities not yet billed.

Open Billing Documents
Same as Open Delivery Value, the Open Billing documents only consider credit control area and credit customer, not time periods. Same as before, you will have to fetch the billed quantity not yet posted to accounting and multiply to the credit price. Billed Quantity may be fetched again from the document flow table.

As you may get the feeling by now, the Open Value Calculation at sales document level is not an easy task, and different logic that must be considered to perform a correct calculation. You may consider create a custom report to be executed before and after the system conversion to properly compare credit exposure between SD credit Management and FSCM in S/4HANA.

Thanks,

S/4HANA RIG


Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/21/reconcile-s4hana-credit-management-with-sd-credit-management-on-a-system-conversion/

S/4HANA Subcontracting with MRP Area

In subcontracting, the vendor is provided with materials (components), which he uses to produce the finished product. From the point of view of materials planning, subcontracting is initiated by the special procurement key Subcontracting.
The special procurement key is allocated to the finished product or the assembly in the material master ( MRP 2 view).
In order to plan specific material requirements for each individual subcontractor, you can use MRP areas. You can thereby create an individual MRP area for every subcontractor

Main differences between S/4HANA and ECC.

ECC – with vendor segment

S/4HANA – without vendor segment

If you do not use MRP areas for components to be provided to the subcontractor, there is no separation of provision stocks and subcontracting requirements. The system displays the provision stocks and requirements to be provided as usual stocks and requirements in the net requirements segment of the plant. The provision stock that is already available for a subcontractor (supplier) will be considered as unrestricted-use stock in the plant. The system uses this stock to cover all requirements inside the net requirements segment, not only the requirements for components to be provided to the subcontractor (supplier).

S/4HANA subcontracting process redefined with flexible functionality. In SAP S/4HANA MRP uses default planning parameters if MRP-area-specific material master records do not exist. You only have to create an MRP area for every subcontractor. Of course, it is still possible to create MRP area/supplier-specific material master data if required.

This simplification has the following advantages:

• Separate planning of every subcontractor is possible without having to create an MRP-area-specific material master record.
• The planning logic is simplified. There are two rather than three different ways to plan parts to be provided to a subcontractor.

The default way of planning parts to be provided to subcontractors is based on MRP areas. A subcontracting MRP area should be created for every subcontractor. It is not required to create an MRP-area-specific material master record for every part to be provided to the subcontractor, but of course, it is possible if you want to overrule the default planning parameters.

If you have several subcontractors requiring the same component materials and if you do not yet use MRP areas to plan the required components then proceed as follows:

• Create MRP areas for every subcontractor (can be done before or after upgrade)
• Run regenerative MRP after the upgrade

Subcontractor MRP area configuration

You can follow SAP navigation path or transaction code OMIZ directly to configure MRP areas.
Click on New Entries and create MRP area as below.

After maintenance of MRP area click on double click on Subcontractor (one entry per MRP area) and maintain the vendor details as below.

Components Planning with Subcontracting Process

Master Data MRP Area

MRP area called SUB_001 available to plan separately associated components. SAP suggested maintaining the MRP area parameters to all components which are planned under the MRP area in MRP 1 view (Material R-100-101).

Click on MRP areas and maintain the MRP parameters as like plant parameters.

It is important to maintain MRP 2 special procurement to 45 – Stock transfer from plant to MRP area.

Make a note that you need to adopt data while entering MRP area parameters and save material.

Subcontracting Process Execution

Demand Flow

Forecast updated for subcontracting header material called F-100-101.

MRP Live

After forecast updated runs MRP live.

Based on MRP live log total of 4 materials planned 1 material with classic MRP and another 3 with MRP on HANA.

Analyzing MRP results

After MRP run completed purchase requisitions created for header article based on planning horizon.

Now go to component R-100-101 and analyze the result at a plant level and MRP area level.
Plant level – Stock transfer reservations from the plant to the provision stock of the subcontractor.

MRP area level – Procure the components that you provide to a subcontractor for the production of an assembly, by transferring stock from a plant to the MRP area of the subcontractor.

Mass maintenance

Mass processing reports RMMDDIBE and RMMDDIBE02 can be used for maintenance of MRP areas.

Additional references:

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2586059
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2227532
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2268044
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2516504
https://help.sap.com/viewer/fe39e10a9a864a8f8dc9537704f0fa13/1709%20000/en-US/60adce5314894208e10000000a174cb4.html
https://blogs.sap.com/2017/10/19/5-reasons-to-use-subcontracting-mrp-areas-in-s4hana./
Best Regards,
Lingaiah

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/19/s4hana-subcontracting-with-mrp-area/

SAP S/4HANA Coding block and extension to Fiori

Hello all,
I am writing this blog about coding block in S/4HANA Finance and how we can extend it to Fiori and other reporting tool provided by standard SAP.
What is coding block
SAP allows to have additional dimensions to be captured for the financial posting. This will allow business to add reporting dimensions needed which cannot be catered by say existing fields ( e.g. profit center , text , assignment etc.).
Example can be Depot number for a downstream O&G business or Maturity date for a trading business.
Capturing this data as level of journal allows Finance team to perform analysis and downstream activities ( consolidation etc.)
How do we set it up
Enabling Coding block is not changed ( in term of configuration node) from SAP ECC,
The node is present in Customer fields and under edit coding block.

Once created the field is updated in ACDOCA & BSEG along with COBL structure which is referenced by multiple views ( reporting) and structures & tables ( e.g. MSEG)
I will not go deep in the steps as it is pretty much the same as it was years ago.
Enabling for Fiori reporting ( for Coding block fields)
This is part which is quite interesting as you can use standard features provided by SAP and enable reporting on the coding block fields.
SAP provides an extensibility feature ( read this below blog from Ulrike -https://blogs.sap.com/2017/01/20/sap-s4hana-extensibility-tutorial/).
This can be used for coding block too and then enable reporting tiles
e.g. G/L Line item reporting view:-

Or Trial balance tile:-


Steps to be followed
The below items assumes that the coding block field is defined and field is available in ACDOCA.
Steps 1- Run SCFD_EUI to enable fields for custom fields and logic.In this step you can select the field and enable it.

Once you execute the program you can select the field and enable the field.

Enabling for one structure will enable the coding block field for other structures
2) Enable the field in Fiori tiles- You will need Fiori basis role for below task.
The two key tiles needed are shown below:-


2.1) Register field for transport- As shown below, you will have a transport linked to your coding block field.


2.2) Custom field and logic- In this tile select the field and enable for different Fiori apps.
As shown below, you will see the list of the available coding block fields and you have option to publish the field.

Once you publish you will also have option to enable the field for the reporting tile.
So as shown below we have option to enable the coding block field on the Fiori tile e.g. Clear Gl account etc.

This way you can help your client and business counterpart to use the additional dimensions provided in SAP and avoid performing any custom developments or reports.
This also helps use the existing Fiori tiles in optimal manner and ease the reporting needs.
I would like to thank Adam Gilbert who showed us how the above steps are done.
I hope you find this blog useful and help your clients in optimizing their financial system on S/4HANA.
Regards
Rishab Bucha


Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/17/sap-s4hana-coding-block-and-extension-to-fiori/?

Creating a draft enabled Sales Order Fiori App using the new ABAP Programming Model – Part 1: Overview

Blog series overview

During this blog series I’ll walk you through creating a real transactional sales order Fiori app with draft handling using Fiori Elements and the new ABAP Progamming Model. The final result will be a working proof-of-concept, this will not be a finished product. (although with some additional work it could be)
The end result can very easily be adapted to fit your own requirements. The principles explained throughout the blog series can be applied to other legacy objects as well.
What we’ll cover during these blog series:

• Identifying minimal set of fields required in the actual classic transaction
• Building the virtual data model using ABAP CDS
• Building the consumption layer using ABAP CDS and Metadata Extensions
• Exposing the consumption layer as an oData Service
• Generating a Fiori Elements App
• Adding custom determinations
• Implementing create, change and delete functionality
• Implementing durable locking

Prerequisites

To follow this guide you’ll need:

• Access to a backend system
• A working Eclipse setup for ABAP Development
• Access to a trial (or productive) SAP Web IDE using a SAP Cloud Platform Account
• A working SAP Cloud Connector setup
• A destination configured to connect to your backend

Interesting documents

If you should run into issues during this blog series, be sure to check out following documents. These are the ones I used to prepare this proof-of-concept.

• Official ABAP Programming Model documentation
• Transactional Apps with Draft Capabilities using standard tables (blog)
• Locking in S4HANA via the Durable Locks & CDS View ObjectModel.Lifecycle annotation
• Navigating the BOPF: Part 1 – Getting Started (blog)
• Navigating the BOPF: Part 2 – Business Object Overview (blog)
• Navigating the BOPF: Part 3 – Working with the BOPF API (blog)
• Navigating the BOPF: Part 4 – Advanced BOPF API Features (blog)
• Navigating the BOPF: Part 5 – Enhancement Techniques (blog)
• Navigating the BOPF: Part 6 – Testing & UI Integration (blog)

Identifying the minimal set of fields

To determine which fields we’ll use for our Sales Order App, we’ll go through the standard order creation transaction VA01. This example is based on a best practice system. Based on customizing in your system minimal fields for entering a sales order might differ from this example.
In the first screen we can identify some important fields:

• Order type
• Sales organization
• Distribution channel
• Division
• Sales office (optional)
• Sales group (optional)

In the actual order entry screen we can identify following important header fields:

• Sold-to party
• Ship-to party
• Customer reference
• Net value
• Currency

On item level following fields are important:

• Item number
• Material
• Item description
• Order quantity
• Sales unit of measure
• Net value
• Currency

Throughout this blog series we’ll add some more informative fields like:

• Created by
• Created on
• Created at
• Changed on

Desired end result

Our final application will consist out of a list report / object page from which we’ll be able to:

• Search for existing / draft Sales Orders
• Display, change and delete existing Sales Orders
• Create new Sales Orders

List report with sales order search, create and delete functionality:

Detail screen for display, change and create functionality (object page layout):

Same detail screen in change / create mode (with draft handling):

Item detail screen:

Now that we’ve run through the minimal requirements and know how our app should look like, we can continue with the next part of this blog series and build the virtual data model.

Quick navigation

• Part 1: Overview
• Part 2: Virtual Data Model & Consumption views
• Part 3: Defining the UI & Creating the Fiori Elements App
• Part 4: Implementing locking & delete functionality
• Part 5: Adding determinations
• Part 6: Converting the draft instance into an active instance & wrap-up

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/11/creating-a-draft-enabled-sales-order-fiori-app-using-the-new-abap-programming-model-part-1-overview/