Have you already made the move to SAP S/4HANA and are now wondering where to next to keep up with the latest SAP S/4HANA innovations?
If you are currently on SAP S/4HANA and have read Let’s Talk SAP S/4HANA AnyPremise Upgrade, you will already know that there are many reasons to upgrade. There’s some official resources available already, and perhaps now you are looking for more lessons learned guidance from other customers to help you through.
Why consider upgrade now?
Maybe you have been on SAP S/4HANA 1610 for a while and just want to take advantage of the latest innovations in SAP S/4HANA 1909
Maybe you are on SAP S/4HANA 1511 and facing the end of maintenance date of 31st December 2020. Or on SAP S/4HANA 1610 and realizing 31st December 2021 might be closer than you like as well
And perhaps after listening to a few SAPPHIRENOW REIMAGINED replays you are all fired up for planning your upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 2020, SAP Fiori 3, lots more innovations and taking the next step towards your Intelligent Enterprise.
Or maybe you just want to drive more value out of your current SAP S/4HANA solution via Continuous Improvement Projects.
The good news is there is now a comprehensive guide especially for you:
This downloadable guide is based on the latest information available and many lessons learned from SAP customers – just like you – who have already successfully upgraded their SAP S/4HANA release.
The information has been gathered and collated worldwide by myself and other colleagues from SAP S/4HANA RIG, SAP Enterprise Support, SAP S/4HANA Customer Care Program, SAP MCC (Mission Control Center), SAP CoE (Centre of Excellence), and SAP Customer Success.
The good news is that so far most customers complete their upgrade in as little as 3-6 months, based on statistics from the SAP S/4HANA Customer Care Program. Those timeframes are readily achievable providing you do your due diligence beforehand.
So this guide covers a range of advice to assist you Before, During, and After your upgrade including:
Understanding key drivers for upgrading your SAP S/4HANA solution
Deciding on your target SAP S/4HANA release and Feature Package Stack
Key tipping points for deciding on Functional Upgrade vs. Technical Upgrade
Preparing for your project
Example project plans
Evaluating the delta between your current and target SAP S/4HANA release
Considerations in estimating effort to upgrade
Where to find the technical upgrade guide for your target SAP S/4HANA release
Managing and automating regression testing
Known issues
and last but not least FAQ
You will find listed all the latest and best tools to help you on your journey.
You can even find advice on potentially tricky questions such as what to do about your SAP Fiori architecture if:
You did not set up your SAP Fiori in your initial implementation of SAP S/4HANA
You have already seen brand new (never provided in SAP Business Suite) processes such as Demand-driven MRP, Group Reporting, and Central Procurement.
You have seen more and more industry solutions covered, more languages supported, more add-ons embedded.
You have seen flexible business model innovation made achievable, where running multiple industry solutions side-by-side has moved from impossible (with SAP Business Suite) to easy (with SAP S/4HANA).
The evolution of SAP S/4HANA releases 1511 to 1909
And there’s still lots more to come on the SAP S/4HANA journey.
So once you have upgraded your solution – and perhaps even before your next upgrade – you will want to drive more value out of your current SAP S/4HANA release.
So we have a whole chapter to get you started on running Continuous Improvement Projects – whether you want to introduce the latest and greatest innovation scenarios, or just want to introduce SAP Fiori to a new group of business users.
What’s are our best tips for getting started for your upgrade?
And don’t forget to capture your own lessons learned!
Remember the pace of innovation is gaining momentum.
So look to make a habit of upgrade and continuous improvement – that’s how you can keeping taking advantage of the latest and greatest in the SAP S/4HANA roadmap.
Signed up already for SAP Enterprise Support?
You can access additional learning content in the SAP Enterprise Support Value Map and watch out for some coming sessions in the SAP Enterprise Support Academy (Learning Hub – Enterprise Support Edition). Find out more in blog post Is it time for an SAP S/4HANA Upgrade? And is it really necessary?
In this global crisis every customer looking for optimization of their purchasing in a flexible and transparent way. Purchasing departments are looking for transparency in their Purchase requisition approval process. SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management offers out of the box Purchase Requisition Approval and Release process content, enable customers to
Flexibly manage purchase requisition approval and release process with multi step approvals at line item level.
Create new Purchase Requisition Approval Process variants by Procurement experts in a low-code no-code approach.
Validation of line items using Business Rules before approval and release.
Gain real time transparency on Purchase Requisition Approval and Release process with key performance indicators.
Out of the box integration between SAP ECC and SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management.
SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management provides Digitalization of Workflows, Managing Decisions, Gain Visibility on end to end processes, enabling line of business users with FIORI based user interfaces and Line of Business Experts to configure net new Process variants in a low-code no-code approach.
SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management provides Live Process Content enable customers to consume out of the box and line of business experts could flexibily create new variants of a process in a low-code no-code approach. One of the new Live Process content package is Purchase Requisition Approval and Release in SAP ECC.
As a customer, you can import the content package together with the integration content, configure, deploy and run your Purchase requisition approval process in SAP Cloud Platform. Please refer the setup, configuration and user guide provided in SAP API Business Hub. The content offers out of the box integration content with SAP ECC and SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management.
Process Flexibility
A procurement expert is enabled with a single cockpit provides all process variants, decisions and visibility scenarios deployed and activated.
A procurement expert could create a new variant of a purchase requisition approval process and configure decisions like Agent Determination Policy, Approver Determination, Validation of attributes and Process variants to be used based on various conditions. The process variant editor enable procurement expert to drag and drop process steps to create a new process variant. Each step can be configured by updating the properties. Saving and activating the process variant will generate a workflow definition and deploy to SAP Cloud Platform.
Manage Decisions
Manage Decisions and policies to gain flexibility in business process including validation of a purchase request line item. Decisions and Policies are implemented using various attributes like document type, material group, purchasing group, purchasing organization, cost, currency and request date. Customers could enhance decisions according to their procurement policies.
Customers can configure approvers in a decision table or use an external system based on their Approver Determination Strategy. The Live Process Content package provide standard implementation as a decision table.
Process Visibility
Gain transparency and real time visibility into Purchase Request Approval and Release process including key process performance indicators. SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management offers out of the box visibility on Purchase Request Approval and Release process. Customers can create new process performance indicators to get transparency on their key performance indicators.
Please note that this is “Part 3” of my blog series. I strongly recommend that you read “Part 1” and “Part 2” first, before you continue with this blog, because they show some basics about SAP Analytics Cloud and the live connection to SAP BW itself. In addition it shows already a few great features you should see and know.
Note: I have included several videos. You can run them directly in the blog and maximize if needed. Please note as well, that there is no sound in the videos. The content speaks for itself 🙂
SAP Analytics Cloud’s innovative technology supports all levels of decision making. Built for the cloud / Built for business / Built for You!
With SAP’s unique live access – e.g. to SAP BW/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP HANA, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud – you can access your corporate data seamlessly and easily by leveraging many great features provided by SAP Analytics Cloud.
Just a short reminder – as shown in the previous blogs, one of the main reasons customers select SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) on SAP BW is the fact, that they can consume 1:1 the SAP BW queries with all their elements (e.g. structures, hierarchies, variables, variants, global key figures) including the underlying authorizations & roles. There is no need to change the SAP BW queries for special reporting purposes as we can leave them as is. This helps IT & Business Departments to consume all existing SAP BW content without changes – no data extraction, no data silos, just plug & play.
In Part 1 and Part 2 I have presented some great features and the feedback was indeed great. Now it’s time that I will present some more features.
Please note that I have also updated the full demo with a new design and some new features, so it makes sense to show some of the already presented features again. I hope you will like it 🙂
Custom Hierarchies/Groups for SAP BW Live and what about “Others”?
In the last blog I have presented the option to build “custom groups”. Just a short wrap-up. Story designers want to organize members of different dimension groups. When working on a story, you can define custom hierarchies on BW dimensions. These hierarchies can be used in charts, tables, input controls, and filters. You saw how this works if you followed the last blogs. But there is another interesting case for using this feature. Imagine that you know your Top products and you put them in a known structure. But some products needs to be combined in a separate folder which you want to call “others”. And this is possible by using the custom grouping feature.
Let’s have a look into how this would look like and please note that this is again a nice features which shows what you can do on top of SAP BW with SAC without “touching & changing” the SAP BW Query.
YoY Performance Analysis based on SAP BW Query live content in SAC
There are different ways to create a YoY performance chart based on SAP BW data. One possible way would be to create a SAP BW query with 2 structures. As usual you can create your characteristic structure with the time restrictions and then you can also make use of the cell editor for some special requests like cumulations or whatever you want to achieve. There are lots of possibilities to do great stuff without programming.
Here you can see an example how the cell editor in the SAP BW Query would look like.
And this can be easily consumed 1:1 by SAP Analytics Cloud.
So far so good. But is there another way? And what about the possibility to compare different years? Well, there are different options (on SAP BW side and SAC side). You can create your restricted Measures in SAC, again without touching the SAP BW query. But there is a really easy way you can use as well. Or you can check if the SAP BW characteristic 0CALMONTH2 is part of your data provider. In most cases it is available as time characteristic. But what is the difference to the characteristic 0CALMONTH? That’s easy – just look at the examples:
Calendar Year/Month – 0CALMONTH – 200702 { February 200 }
Calendar month – 0CALMONTH2 – 02
So 0CALMONTH2 is just the “month” value (or description). Just add it to your SAP BW query in the free characteristics area and you are ready:
In SAP Analytics Cloud it will become available in your model (you remember we have a live connection so the model is getting anything automatically from SAP BW). And now you can just add your measures in the columns and the month dimension (based on 0CALMONTH2 from the SAP BW Query) in the rows. In addition you add the calendar year to the color and that’s it. We have our YoY comparison and you can compare whatever you want 🙂
Let’s see how this would look like in SAP Analytics Cloud. You will first see the example with 0CALMONTH in the rows and I will also show shortly the result I mentioned above with the SAP BW Query using 2 structures.
User-defined hierarchies with custom shape files in the geo choropleth layer
There are several possibilities to visualize data based on a SAP BW query live connection in SAP Analytics Cloud. And is was already possible to use Geo maps in SAC based on SAP BW Query data. For further details please check the SAP Analytics Cloud help or the following SAP Wiki page: https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BI/BW+Live+-+Geo+Map
With Q2.2020 you can now consume user-defined hierarchies with custom shape files in the geo choropleth layer. It allows you to drill down to a specific level. For example, you can access level two with one click.
Let’s see how this would look like in SAP Analytics Cloud.
What about Version mapping (e.g. with value type from SAP BW)
From SAC planning models you know, that there are different categories — money you actually made (Actual), money you’re going to make (Forecast), and money you are going to spend (Budget). SAP Analytics Cloud allows you to choose the granularity of each of these categories. And exactly this is also possible if you have the version or the value type in your SAP BW query. You can manually map the characteristic values coming from the SAP BW query – e.g. from the value type to the corresponding dimension values in SAP. This is one of the tasks you can perform directly in the SAP Analytics Cloud model.
This will open the door for some nice features you can use within SAP Analytics Cloud – e.g. Actual vs Budget comparisons, Variances incl IBCS.
Just try this on your own and look what else can be done with the version when accessing a SAP BW Query live with SAP Analytics Cloud.
Using a hyperlink to jump to a source – e.g. to a SAP S/4HANA transaction
This is now something which is not depended from a live connectivity. But as its a cool feature I think you need to see and know this. Imagine you have a report based on SAP BW or SAP S/4HANA. You see your sales orders with the relevant KPI’s. Now it would be really cool, if you can jump to the transaction with the relevant details. An exactly this can be achieved.
In SAP Analytics Cloud you can create hyperlinks easily via the context menu and can jump from one story to another or to another tab – including filters. But this is also working with external links which can be generic if you add dynamically dimension values to the link by leveraging the embedded API. This is a powerful feature (like many other cool SAP Analytics Cloud features 🙂 ) and will make your end users lucky.
Just add a hyperlink in SAC where you need it via right click or context menu, prepare your link and copy it in the relevant place in SAC, select a dimension at the right point to parametrize the target application (e.g. to send the Sales Order ID to the S/4HANA system) and now you can make use of it. SAP Analytics Cloud will now allow you to jump from any part of the chart to the “jump” target of your link (e.g. a SAP S/4HANA transaction).
Now let’s have a look into a short video how this will look like.
Use Bookmarks to save the state of your story
Using bookmarks in SAP Analytics Cloud allows you easy and quick access to frequently used scenarios. And they work also with content which is based on a live connectivity. With this feature, you can save the state of prompts, input controls, tables and tables and revert to them when needed. In SAP Analytics Cloud you can to switch between multiple scenarios with easily by letting you create multiple bookmarks
Using In-Cell Charts on characteristic structures (if you have a SAP BW query with 2 structures)
You can have numeric values and embed bar charts within table cells. That feature was available already in SAP Analytics Cloud. Initially that was only working with measures. So if you have used a SAP BW Query as source, you were able to activate In-Cell charts for your measures (key figure structure members) in SAP Analytics Cloud. Even if you have used a SAP BW Query with 2 structures as source for your SAP Analytics Cloud model, it was only available for the Key Figure structure.
Many SAP BW customers requested to have this feature for their characteristic structure as well, if they use a SAP BW Query with 2 structures as source for their SAP Analytics Cloud model. And as wave Q2.2020 we delivered this and put thresholds on top for characteristic structures 🙂
Lets have a look into a video.
Using SAP Analytics Cloud Search to Insight with your SAP BW live data
Search to Insight is a natural language query interface used to query data.
While working with indexed models based on acquired and SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP BW live data, you can query Search to Insight to get quick answers to questions and incorporate these insights into a story.
You can ask questions such as:
Sales for a specified year or quarter.
Sales for a region or two regions by priority.
Compare Actuals versus Forecasted values for a specified measure in a specific time period.
The Search to Insight interface can identify and auto-complete intended dimension names, dimension values, and measure names with assisted recognition to display accurate results.
In an SAC live model you need to create an index before you can use this model in Seaech to Insights. This function can be found in the model preferences.
As I have received some questions about this topic in my last blog, I decided to show you the indexing process in the model and how it look like in SAP Analytics Cloud if you search for information.
You can also query models based on live data (SAP HANA, SAP BW, SAP S/4 HANA) when working with Search to Insight on iPhone. Yes – now you can enjoy the benefits of our conversational artificial intelligence to visualize and analyze live data on your iPhone.
Now let’s have a look into the video. You will first see the indexing process in the model and then I will switch to the SAP Analytics Cloud demo you already know from the different videos to see how this will work.
SAP Analytics Cloud – Live Access to BW4HANA in 2020 – Special Demo with many features from Blog Part 1 to 3 🙂
As a special I have created a video, where you can see all the great features from the 3 blogs in ONE video. Some of the content looks a little bit different because I have changed some visualizations. Have fun watching it.
– SAP Analytics Cloud Home Screen
– SAP Analytics Cloud Catalog
– BW Query access with variable popup
– Linked Analysis
– Dimension & Measure Input Controls with SAP BW BW Characteristics & Key Figures
– Time Series Forecasting on live SAP BW Query data
– Gauges with R on selected BW Query Key Figures
– Geo Map with custom shape and drill down to regions – based on SAP BW Query data
– Images based on SAP BW XXL attributes
– Working with SAP BW Hierarchies with drill down
– Live data blending of two SAP BW queries
– SAP BW Queries with 2 structures – Plug & Play
– Custom Sorting
– Custom Grouping
– Slice & Dice on your SAP BW Query data – Live without a SAC model in the Data Analyzer
– PowerPoint Export
– Publishing & Scheduling
And finally one important note. SAP Analytics Cloud & SAP Data Warehouse Cloud are the perfect match. You should see both solutions in action 😉
I hope you enjoyed part 3 of the blog series. I have some ideas which will be part of “Part 4” 😉
As technical architect, I am often asked about the latest news in the technical area of SAP S/4HANA. In these 3 blog posts I would like to review the main changes and innovations that SAP have introduced in the last years to explain the evolution SAP Netweaver platform towards the new ABAP platform from a technical perspective.
ABAP Platform – Part 3 – what’s new for the basis administrators
PART 1 – Evolution from SAP Netweaver platform
The SAP kernel is the core component of any SAP system. It consists of the executable files that run on the server to handle connections to the system and execute the SAP programs.
The development of the SAP kernel started in 1988, although SAP R/3 was officially launched in 1992. The SAP kernel has been the foundation for almost all SAP products in the last 30 years.
Over the years, the kernel and the basis layer evolved. Adding support for more databases and operating systems but also adding more functionality.
One of the first important changes were done in 2002 with SAP R/3 4.7 and the inclusion of the SAP Web Application Server. It was the .COM era and SAP Kernel was extended with the Internet Communication Manager (ICM) and Internet Transaction Server (ITS) to be able to manage HTTP connections and provide support for XML, BSP and JAVA.
SAP NetWeaver was released in 2004 as a technology stack that allowed organizations to integrate data, business processes, elements and more from a variety of sources into unified SAP environments using a common technology platform. For the last 16 years, SAP NetWeaver has been the technical foundation for the SAP applications.
Evolution of the SAP Basis and SAP Netweaver
In 2008, SAP released the SAP Business ByDesign, the first SaaS product developed by SAP. After 20 years, a major renovation was needed as the SAP R/3 Kernel code was huge and complex, so a new kernel was developed, new ideas and improvements were implemented. Internally at SAP this new kernel was called Kernel 8.x and the project was called NGAP Next Generation Platform.
Obviously, SAP HANA deserves a special mention in the evolution and modernization of the SAP products. Although SAP HANA was officially launched in 2011, the first SAP ERP 6.0 version compatible with SAP HANA was launched in 2014 based on SAP Netweaver 7.40 SP02. Many new ideas and improvements implemented in the SAP Kernel 8.x were down ported to the SAP kernel 7.x line together with all the HANA and FIORI specific innovations.
SAP offers “innovation without disruption”, so the idea has been always to introduce new functionality but maintain as much as possible the backward compatibility to let customers adopt the technical (and business) innovations at their own pace.
If you have a look at the architecture of the SAP Business Suite and the underlying SAP Netweaver platform, you can see a perfect example of this “innovation without disruption” approach that makes SAP technology a solid platform to run complex business software. For more than 15 years, the evolution of the SAP Netweaver platform offered a solid foundation to adopt new technical innovations to our SAP Business Suite customers:
SAP Netweaver – Kernels
As you know, support for SAP Business Suite will end in 2030. SAP offers SAP S/4HANA as the evolution of the SAP Business Suite products and customers need a new technology platform to run their business.
Although SAP S/4HANA 1511, 1610 and 1709 were S/4HANA systems, these 3 versions were developed on top of the existing SAP Netweaver platform, the same SAP Netweaver that was the foundation for the SAP Business Suite since 2004.
SAP Netweaver version 7.50, 7.51 and 7.52 can be considered as a transition platform. These 3 SAP Netweaver versions are still compatible with the “old” SAP Business Suite products but also are the technical foundation of the first S/4HANA Releases:
Evolution of SAP Netweaver towards ABAP Platform
SAP Netweaver 7.52 is the last version of SAP Netweaver, currently SAP has no plans to deliver additional SAP Netweaver versions although the existing Netweaver platform will be maintained until the end of 2030 as part of the SAP Business Suite end of maintenance policy.
Don’t get me wrong, the SAP Netweaver versions used as the foundation for S/4HANA 1511, 1610 and 1709 had many technical innovations and there has been also modernization of key components like the new Enqueue Server (ENSA2), support for HTTP/2 protocol and many internal changes to keep SAP as a modern platform to run your business. But the idea was to keep the compatibly as much as possible and allow a gradual transition for our customers:
Evolution of SAP Netweaver towards ABAP Platform – Full stack view
With SAP S/4HANA 1809 there is a big change, S/4HANA 1809 runs on top of the new ABAP Platform and it’s based in a new Kernel line (Kernel 7.7x) breaking the compatibility with the old SAP Netweaver systems.
