Let’s explore with me the following innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition to enhance your business’s profitability when procuring goods and services. Kudos to our SAP developers 😊

Please keep in mind that while this blog showcases select innovations, it may not encompass the full spectrum of new features and functions.

 

Product Sourcing

• Product sourcing overview page
• Initiation of negotiations or awarding scenarios directly from the quotation-comparison application
• Collecting and managing carbon footprint data from suppliers during direct material sourcing process
• Mass management of sourcing-project line items using a standard Microsoft Excel template
• Inclusion of notes and attachments in the awarding scenario
• Situation-based notification of submitted supplier quotations

Central Procurement

• Central purchasing: in-context collaboration, intelligent recommendations, and inquiries in central approval workflows
• Central purchase contracts: guided simulation, change document display, and consumption bar
• Enablement of attachments in centrally managed purchase requisitions

Supplier Evaluation

• Support for the factory calendar in supplier evaluations

Service Purchasing And Recording

• Mass creation of model product specifications

Operational Procurement

• Holistic service procurement for reduced costs
• Self-service requisitioning: improved status tracking, storage location, and ability to copy accounting details
• Requirements processing: modernized requisition processing, delivery address search, and ad hoc approvers

Product Sourcing Overview Page

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The latest innovations of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition aim to assist sourcing managers in coordinating and managing multiple sourcing projects.

The new features allow sourcing managers to collaborate with stakeholders throughout the sourcing process. They can now easily track and review various sourcing projects and associated quotations.

• The overview screen provides a comprehensive view of the sourcing projects, including their status, manufacturing plant, and procurement projects.
• Additionally, the system displays information such as the
  • Total target amount of sourcing projects by material group
  • Supplier quotations by status
  • Quotations by supplier and material group
  • Pending quotations
  • Sourcing projects by submission deadline and target amount
  • Planned spend by material group

These enhancements streamline the sourcing process and provide sourcing managers with valuable insights to make informed decisions.

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Initiation of Negotiations or Awarding Scenarios Directly from The Quotation-Comparison Application

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In the latest version of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, there is a new feature that allows sourcing managers to initiate negotiations or awarding scenarios directly from the quotation comparison screen.

This feature enables sourcing managers:

• Review and compare multiple supplier-submitted quotations and take relevant follow-on actions.
• Initiate price or quantity negotiations with the suppliers of the compared quotations.
• Initiate awarding scenarios for the compared supplier quotations.

The benefit of this feature is that it allows users to intuitively initiate follow-on actions for compared quotations, ultimately reducing the time needed to initiate these actions.

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Collecting and Managing Carbon Footprint Data from Suppliers During Direct Material Sourcing Process

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This feature will allow users:

• Create and manage cost breakdown data collection templates.
• Mark materials in the sourcing project as cost breakdown-relevant.
• Enable suppliers to share cost breakdown information for the quoted material while submitting their bids.
• Enable sourcing manager to compare cost breakdown information in the quotation comparison application to determine the best supplier bid.

The benefits of this innovation include gaining additional insights into the cost drivers of the material being sourced, enabling fact-based negotiation with suppliers, and building trust with suppliers. Users can make more informed decisions and establish stronger relationships with their suppliers.

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Mass Management of Sourcing-project Line Items Using A Standard Microsoft Excel Template

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This feature empowers sourcing managers to efficiently create, change, or delete a large number of items in a sourcing project using a standard Microsoft Excel template, streamlining the entire process. System validations ensure transparency, showing the modified or created items after the Excel upload, giving users the flexibility to save changes or discard drafts.

The process involves:

• Downloading the standard MS Excel template with existing line items.
• Modifying or adding new line items in the Excel template.
• Seamlessly reviewing and managing the changes in the UI.

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Inclusion of Notes and Attachments in The Awarding Scenario

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This latest innovation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition enables:

• Users can add notes and attachments to awarding scenarios, making it easier to share information with colleagues.
• Sourcing managers can now add notes and attachments while creating awarding scenarios.
• Approvers can review these notes and attachments to better understand the benefits of awarding the quotations associated with the awarding scenario.

The benefits of this feature include intuitively sharing additional information with the approver, improving compliance in the awarding process, and expediting the award-approval process.

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Situation-based Notification of Submitted Supplier Quotations

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SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition introduces a situation framework that enables the creation of situations directly within specific sourcing projects.

One notable application of this framework is the situation-based notification system for submitted supplier quotations. With this feature, sourcing managers are promptly notified when a supplier submits a quotation, allowing them to expedite the review process.

Additionally, the system provides the ability for sourcing managers to acknowledge these system-generated situations.

Benefits:

• Proactive notifications to the sourcing manager
• Faster review of submitted supplier quotations

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Central Purchasing: In-context Collaboration, Intelligent Recommendations, and Inquiries in Central Approval Workflows

These new features and enhancements will enhance the functionality and usability of the system, providing a more streamlined and efficient experience for users. Here are some of the key highlights:

Inquiries in central approval workflows:

– Configure inquiry steps within the approval workflow for centrally managed purchase orders, allowing rework tasks to be sent to central purchasers.

Intelligent Recommendation:

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– Get proposals of recommended material groups with confidence scores based on a machine learning algorithm that analyzes previous purchase orders.

In-context Collaboration:

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– Assign a purchaser as a responsible processor for one or multiple purchase requisition line items in the SAP Fiori app “Process Purchase Requisitions Centrally”.

– Add comments to a purchase requisition line item in the worklist of the SAP Fiori app “Process Purchase Requisitions Centrally”.

Mass change of centrally managed purchase requisitions in online mode:

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– Mass change standard fields of centrally managed purchase requisitions using a dedicated SAP Fiori app in online mode.

Extension of the central supplier confirmation with confirmed price and PO updates:

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– Capture each vendor’s confirmed net price of a purchase order line item within a central supplier confirmation.

– Update the purchase order line item in the connected system with the confirmed price after successful approval of the central confirmation.

– Compare the next anticipated scheduling line date and quantity against central supplier confirmations using additional columns in the Monitor Purchase Order Items Centrally app.

– Use a dedicated XML-based inbound interface to receive and process supplier confirmations electronically in a central system.

Payment status in document flow of centrally managed purchase orders:

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– Display the payment status of invoices from the connected system within the document flow of a centrally managed purchase order.

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Central Purchase Contracts: Guided Simulation, Change Document Display and Consumption Bar

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Here are the key highlights:

• Provisioning of copy actions for duplicating header distribution lines and contract line items within the central contract’s object page.
• Guided simulation overview replacing the display of simulation results in an application log, including a visual overview of warning and error messages for respective documents, result set display of passed and failed documents, and the option to skip errors or warning messages during follow-on update runs.
• Coloring of the Microsoft Excel header row for offline mass change of central purchase contracts.
• Reuse functionality for displaying changes to documents in the object page of the central purchasing contract, even if version management is not active for the contract.
• Display of the overall, aggregated contract consumption of all distributed contracts as a consumption bar within the list page of the Manage Central Purchase Contracts app.
• Tight integration of the central purchase contract object page directly into the My Inbox app.

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Enablement of Attachments in Centrally Managed Purchase Requisitions

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This feature extends the display of backend attachments from OnPrem connected systems to centrally managed purchase requisitions. It enhances transparency by showing line-item attachments without replicating files into the central hub system. However, it is currently limited to backend attachments in an OnPrem or Private Cloud context.

The capability allows:

• Seamless integration of attachments linked to purchase requisitions.
• Inclusion of the backend attachment’s metadata in the centrally managed purchase requisition’s object page.
• Display the Overall Limit and Expected Value fields on the purchase order’s object page.
• Online retrieval of original files from the connected system’s content server when the user clicks on a selected attachment.
• The mapping of backend document types to the hub system’s local types ensures clear differentiation of attachments for internal and external use.
• Preview the purchase order output message for the “print” channel directly from the purchase order’s object page.

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Support for The Factory Calendar in Supplier Evaluations

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The ability to maintain a factory calendar on the plant level, allowing users to define working and nonworking days. With this update, nonworking days will no longer be considered for supplier evaluation.

Furthermore, customers will have the flexibility to configure the consideration of the factory calendar for the calculation of supplier evaluation scores. This means that users can choose whether to include the factory calendar in the calculation or not. For each enabled configuration, nonworking days will be eliminated from the calculation, resulting in more accurate supplier evaluation scores.

This enhancement increases the accuracy of calculating supplier evaluation scores for time variance. Time variance refers to the deviation between the statistical delivery date and the actual goods receipt date. By eliminating nonworking days from the calculation, we can provide more precise evaluation scores, helping businesses make better-informed decisions regarding their suppliers.

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Mass Creation of Model Product Specifications

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This new app allows users to import model product specifications using spreadsheets, easily create or modify model product specifications, including up to five levels of item hierarchies that can include products, services, and free text.

The main benefit of this feature is the ability to perform mass creation or modification of model product specifications, streamlining the process and saving time for users.

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Holistic Service Procurement for Reduced Costs

Users will have the ability to procure both lean services and more complex services in the source-to-pay process. Additionally, there will be a hierarchical structure that allows for the mixing of services and products.

The main benefit of these enhancements is improved process efficiency, as well as increased flexibility to integrate with line-of-business products. Users will have the freedom to procure services and products as needed, providing a more streamlined and customizable procurement experience.

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Self-service Requisitioning: Improved Status Tracking, Storage Location, and Ability to Copy Accounting Details

The latest innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition include several enhancements to the self-service purchase requisition process:

• The Copy to Other Items action in the new SAP Fiori app “My Purchase Requisitions” has been expanded to include the copying of account assignment details. Users can now easily copy line-item details, such as general data, delivery address, and source of supply, GL account, goods recipient, or unloading point from one requisition item to another

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• The Storage Location field and its corresponding value can now be integrated into the requisition, allowing for better tracking and management. Additionally, the delivery address of a purchase requisition line item can be automatically determined based on the selected storage location.
• The purchase order information in both self-service and central requisitions has been enriched with additional details.
• Users can now view the current approval status and the approver responsible for pending purchase order approvals. The current purchase order output status is also displayed.
• The landing page for self-service requisitioning has been extended to support the creation and tracking of central purchase requisitions.
• Users can now edit a limited set of purchase requisition fields in the My Purchase Requisitions app, even if follow-on purchase documents have already been created.
• Several fields, including unloading point and goods recipient, have been included in the user attribute defaults for self-service requisitioning. This allows users to have these fields pre-filled when creating a requisition.
• The central purchase requisition replication to the connected backend has been enhanced with additional fields. Users can now replicate goods receipt indicators, invoice receipt indicators, requestor, and author of the requisition. The technical key of the Web service is also included in the replication process.

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Requirements Processing: Modernized Requisition Processing, Delivery Address Search, and Ad-hoc Approvers

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Key features are:

• The ability to add attachments to the header of a purchase requisition using the “attachment reuse” facet.
• The existing OData API for purchase requisitions has been extended to allow the updating of requisitions with rejected approval statuses and requisitions that have follow-on documents.
• The self-service purchase requisition app now includes the “Copy to Other Items” action, which can be used in the Edit and Approve Purchase Requisition app. This allows users to copy line-item details from one requisition item to another, including general data, delivery address, and source of supply.
• Users can now manually add ad hoc approvers to the list of existing ones for a given purchase requisition in the “My Inbox” and “Manage Purchase Requisitions – Professional apps”. Additionally, there is a new workflow step that navigates the user to the regular workflow definition app.
• The Process Purchase Requisitions app has been modernized to include hierarchical product line items. The item hierarchy number is displayed in the worklist, and a fixed supplier can be assigned to either the root node or individual item sets, with the supplier information inherited downward to the functional item level. The app also allows for the creation of follow-on purchase orders, including the transfer of the item hierarchy structure.
• The app now provides direct navigation into the respective follow-on document’s object page, allowing users to make changes to purchase orders before saving them and to put purchase orders on hold before releasing them. The reuse facet is supported for displaying change documents in the purchase requisition fact sheets app, and there is direct access to the change document display from within the approval process in the My Inbox app.
• The “Manage Purchase Requisitions – Professional” app now includes search help functionality for delivery addresses.
• The purchase requisition V4 OData API has been extended to include additional fields such as the header note, customer address reference, and supplier address reference.

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Other SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA Enablement Assets

SAP S/4HANA is the foundation of the intelligent enterprise and is an innovative, robust, and scalable ERP. We at Cloud ERP Product Success and Cloud Co-Innovation offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our Enablement team has created for you below:

Further Information:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release info here
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release blog posts here and previous release highlights here
• Product videos for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Early Release Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition community: here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here
• Help Portal Product Page here

Feel free to ask your questions on SAP Community here. Follow the SAP S/4HANA Cloud tag and the PSCC_Enablement tag to stay up to date with the latest blog posts.

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