SAP S/4HANA Cookbook: What is SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA Cookbook

Getting Started with SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA,the next generation business suite designed to help you run simple in the digital economy.

This new suite is built on our advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA, and offers a personalized user experience with SAP Fiori.

Deployable in the cloud or on-premise, SAP S/4HANA is built to drive instant value across lines of business and industries with the ultimate in sophistication: simplicity.

Overview Presentation

Product Roadmap

> Product road maps > Cross Topics > SAP S/4HANA ('S-User' is required)

Frequently Asked Questions

Explore SAP S/4HANA along selected use cases

This series of blogs explains the possibilities of SAP S/4HANA along 'typical' use cases - tackled from both a business and a technical angle.

• Next Generation Logistics (biz / tech)
• Next Generation Inventory Management (biz / tech)
• Marketing to a Segment of One (biz / tech)
• Increase Financial Business Performance (biz / tech)
• Engage Talent Across the Organization (biz / tech)

openSAP course on SAP S/4HANA use cases

SAP Simple Finance, On-Premise Edition 1503

The current on-premise edition in detail

'SAP Simple Finance, on-premise edition' marks the first step in the SAP S/4HANA on-premise roadmap for customers. The current version was released in March 2015 (15=year, 03=month).

Since this release is at high demand in our customer base, we offer a separate page with detailed implementation information around it.

You will find a substantial list of assets on the 'Read on' page on the right.

Note: The name 'SAP S/4HANA Finance' has been introduced in September 2015 and will replace the former name 'SAP Simple Finance'. They both denote the same product, however, the 1503 product version is still called SAP Simple Finance 1503. Higher versions will follow the SAP S/4HANA Finance name schema.

SAP Simple Finance, On-Premise Edition 1503: Implementation Information

Try it out for yourself:

There is a 30-day trial hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that lets you create a dedicated on-premise instance of SAP S/4HANA Finance 1503 and explore the trial system with administrator rights.

The SAP license is waived for this period, AWS hosting fees apply.

On-Premise Edition: SAP S/4HANA 30-day trial

SAP S/4HANA, Cloud Edition 1506

The current cloud editions in detail

The current cloud edition of S/4HANA was released in June 2015 (15=year, 06=month) and comprises three different sub-editions:

1. SAP S/4HANA, cloud marketing edition
2. SAP S/4HANA, cloud project services edition
3. SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition

1 & 2 focus on line-of-business scenarios (marketing, professional services), 3 offers a more generic ERP scope with enterprise-wide scenarios. All cloud editions are hosted by SAP.

Scope overview (blog):
SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition 1506

Scope details (Help Portal):
SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition 1506

Try it out for yourself:

In the free trial of SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition 1506, you can experience SAP S/4HANA in a guided tour at your own pace. It covers both line-of-business and generic enterprise scenarios.

Cloud Edition: SAP S/4HANA Free Trial

SAP S/4HANA Finance capabilities

SAP S/4HANA Finance, on-premise edition comprises SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA and SAP Cash Management powered by SAP HANA. In addition, it brings necessary technical components for SAP Integrated Business Planning for Finance and SAP Central Finance.

There is a separate page in this cookbook that shows the details of SAP Simple Finance (see above for the note on the naming of SAP Simple Finance / SAP S/4HANA Finance).

SAP Simple Finance, On-Premise Edition 1503: Implementation Information

Further capabilities & scenarios within SAP S/4HANA

As part of the planned SAP S/4HANA 1511 delivery, the following key innovations and business scenarios are on the roadmap:

• Material Requirements Planning: Fast MRP run, and new working model for MRP controllers based on decision support.
• Inventory Management: Simplified data model  resulting in increased throughput, flexible analytics at the most granular level
• Material Valuation: Elimination of locking, increased throughput for standard price utilizing Material Ledger, that way customers can use multi-currencies, valuation methods per different accounting laws like GAAP.
• Available-To-Promise & Back order processing: New ATP Algorithm based on HANA embedded in mass component check in production
• Capacity Planning: PP/DS side-by-side with SAP S/4HANA
• Order Management & Billing: end-2-end monitoring & exception handlung for order-to-cash process; data model simplification; support for the most recent versions of FSCM Credit Management, GTS Foreign Trade, SFIN Revenue Accounting; new analytical capabilities
• Procurement: Increased efficiency in the Procure-to-Pay processes, new Analytical Apps & Spend KPI’s, Ariba Network Integration for PO Order and IV.

Details coming soon

SAP PLM, SAP HR, SAP CRM

Finance and logistics are the first major areas that are addressed within SAP S/4HANA.
Other products areas of the SAP portfolio will move into SAP S/4HANA going forward or can be closely integrated with it.The linked blog gives an overview and further information on roadmap and strategy for the products mentioned in the headline at the current point in time (this might be changed in the future without prior notice).

SAP S/4HANA and solutions of the SAP Suite: strategy and roadmap

Hybrid scenarios and SaaS integration capabilities

Both the on-premise and cloud editions of SAP S/4HANA offer integration capabilities with other cloud-based SaaS products. This can be SAP solutions such as Ariba, SuccessFactors, Fieldglass, Concur, Hybris, SAP Cloud for Costumer, SAP Financial Services Network, or other third-party solutions depending on the detailed interfaces to those.

The read-on documents list the cloud integration capabilities by line-of-business (integration into SAP S/4HANA for Ariba, FSN, SuccessFactors (latter on-premise) are available, other products to follow) and provide some generic information on integration scenarios.

Cloud integration capabilities by line-of-business (New, Nov 3rd)

Technical information on cloud integration (Blog / White Paper)

Your transition options in a nutshell

SAP S/4HANA can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud, offering customers a choice what fits best for them.

Besides the decision what target infrastructure fits best, also the starting point of a project may vary.

There are basically three different implementation scenarios how a customer can move to SAP S/4HANA (you might even find combinations of those within the same customer):

1. System Conversion : Existing SAP customers who want to move a complete SAP Business Suite system to SAP S/4HANA
2. Landscape Transformation: Existing SAP customers who want to optimize their system landscape and move to SAP S/4HANA
3. New Implementation: Customers who want to move from non-SAP legacy systems to SAP S/4HANA (new and existing SAP customers)

The linked documents explain the possible roads to SAP S/4HANA along typical customer scenarios, and give an overview how to technically deploy SAP S/4HANA and move data into the new infrastructure.

The blog focuses on the on-premise edition of SAP S/4HANA for existing customers (i.e. 1. in the list above).

The white paper takes a more comprehensive look on all three scenarios above for both on-premise and cloud deployments.

White Paper:
The Road to SAP S/4HANA

Blog:
The road to SAP S/4HANA on-premise edition for existing customers

Extending SAP S/4HANA (side-by-side or in-app)

Extensibility covers a broad spectrum of topics that allows customers and partners to adapt standard business software to their business needs. It ranges from business configuration; layout adaptation of user interface (UI), forms, and reports; custom fields and logic; integration; and custom terminology and translation to customer-specific applications.

Extensibility in the SAP® S/4HANA suite can be categorized into two main parts: side-by-side extensibility through SAP HANA® Cloud Platform, and in-app extensibility through built-in capabilities.

Overview blog about extending SAP S/4HANA

White Paper: Extensibility for Customers and Partners

Custom Code Assessment & Adaptation

As an existing SAP customer, you may have developed ABAP custom code in your source system.

When converting your system to SAP S/4HANA, you need to assess and possibly adapt this custom code. This activity is mainly valid for on-premise transitions, since custom code can not be carried over that way into a cloud infrastructure.

Many of the steps for custom code assessment and adaptation are similar compared to moving to SAP HANA in general. Specific steps for SAP S/4HANA will be detailed out as SAP S/4HANA evolves.

Converting an existing SAP system to SAP S/4HANA: What you need to consider for your custom code(Update, Nov. 6th)

SAP Education Offerings

openSAP is SAP’s learning platform for Enterprise MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Register for free and get access to learning materials about SAP S/4HANA and other SAP software.

openSAP course: SAP S/4HANA in a Nutshell

openSAP course: SAP S/4HANA - Deep Dive

openSAP course on SAP S/4HANA use cases

SAP Learning Hub provides immediate, cloud-based access to a vast selection of SAP learning content – and to our interactive learning rooms (subscription fee applies).

SAP Learning Hub

Search for S/4HANA

Classroom trainings for SAP S/4HANA from SAP Education (training fee applies)

SAP S/4HANA Training & Certification Curriculum

SAP Service Offerings

Service offerings for SAP S/4HANA are evolving along the shipment cadence of the product. The blog gives you a first glimpse what services you can expect when walking on the path to SAP S/4HANA.

Blog: SAP S/4HANA Service & Support Offerings