Category: Technical Corner

In release 1708 the Recipient Determination to “Reporting Line Manager” in Opportunity is available: However for Account application, there are only six available determination rules available in standard. Suppose we need to support the following scenario: Max is Jerry’s manager. When Jerry has changed a given kind of Account in system, Max will get an email notification triggered by workflow. The general idea to fulfill this requirement is to introduce a logic which could automatically make Max as one member in Account Team table in Account TI by a small development in Cloud Application Studio, so that the existing functionality provided by Workflow framework could be leveraged to send notification. Here below is the solution. 1. Create a new custom Party Role Code and define it as Recipient determination in Workflow rule edit UI by following this blog Custom recipient determination in workflow rule done on Account BO. Of course you can also use standard role code. 2. Create a beforeSave script file on Root node of Customer Business Object: import ABSL; import AP.PC.IdentityManagement.Global; var managerExists = this.CurrentEmployeeResponsible.Where(x=>x.PartyRoleCode.Contains(“ZJE”)); if( managerExists.Count() http://bit.ly/2gEPeOZ #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have been a feature of business since SAP launched the first solution in 1973.

Essentially, they are a model of a well-run organization. Tracking inputs and outputs, goods, inventory, materials, work in progress, invoices, purchase orders, payments received and made — ERP solutions connect all aspects of an organization’s operations.

This large range of touch points, combined with the enablement of reporting and decision making, both strategic and statutory, means ERP solutions are fundamental to the smooth running of many businesses. In the absence of an alternative model, many organizations chose to keep implementation and customization in their own hands.

This led to a focus on building processes, even the most simple and fundamental to a business, from scratch. This basis for this entirely rational decision is being challenged by the emergence of cloud ERP. This is because, the resources required to execute this initial on-premise implementation are significant. This approach also demands significant testing, user training, all of which delay time-to-value.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP is the leader in intelligent cloud ERP

But more importantly, as new innovations, capabilities and updates become available, all the customizations made to the ERP solution act as a disincentive to upgrading. What was once a “safe option” to run, maintain and protect on-premise databases and server infrastructure, becomes an increasing liability and technological advances gather speed. As competitors carve out competitive advantages thanks to new possibilities in analytics, collaboration, accessibility and more, many organizations find they customized their ERP to death.

What Is Cloud ERP?

Cloud ERP is the alternative approach. As well as the fundamental benefits cloud deployment delivers; data and application accessed via a web browser, multiple updates every year, better security, etc, cloud ERP plugs the vendor’s core business experience into the heart of your business.

Forget building hundreds, or even thousands, of processes from scratch. Instead organizations can leverage best practices developed over decades of industry exposure and expertise.

What Is Intelligent Cloud ERP?

While first-generation cloud ERP was focused on speed of adoption, the new generation of cloud ERP is intelliget and provides superior technology. Through artificial intelligence (AI), it learns, anticipates, and is one step ahead, offering next-generation agility in business operations and instant business value. SAP is the leader in intelligent cloud ERP through significant investment in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Intelligent cloud ERP harnesses actionable insights via in-memory and predictive analytics, next-gen AI-driven automation and digital assistants to deliver a digital edge for your business. It combines the scalability and security you expect from the cloud, with a rapid update cycle that continuously adds capabilities and improves the user experience to drive productivity.

Intelligent cloud ERP represents a significant shift in the way enterprises utilize their ERP systems, deploy their resources, and achieve nonlinear returns on their investment. Industries are in the process of being changed forever as they move from legacy technology to the most modern digital platforms, including intelligent cloud ERP.

What Are the Key Benefits to My Organization?

The key benefits organizations can enjoy from an intelligent cloud ERP come from replacing the complexity of an over-customized ERP, with the simplicity of off-the-shelf, best practices. This unlocks the ability to singularly focus on business outcome and customer satisfaction, not firefighting and battling inefficient processes. Businesses enjoy continuous impact by adapting and innovating confidently, staying competitive and truly leading their industries. Capex costs are shifted to opex, so IT’s focus shifts from keeping the lights on to enabling enterprise scale digital transformation.

Intelligent cloud ERP gives businesses the tools to know everything that is going on in their business in real-time, offering not only live insights but the flexibility and agility to act on that information and truly drive change.

How Quickly can the Benefits of Intelligent Cloud ERP be Realized?

Unlike traditional deployment – where CIOs are responsible for tremendous overhead in provisioning, application management, middleware, and maintaining IT support systems, not to mention ongoing security – for intelligent cloud ERP, you need only two things: a browser and your company’s data. No servers, no front-end rollout, no monolithic change management.

With strong executive support, communication and training, value can be delivered almost instantly. This new model speeds time to value. SAP S/4HANA Cloud averages 100 days from order to full implementation, and we plan to get our pace down to 70 days with further automation. Quarterly updates continuously expand the innovative potential of intelligent cloud ERP.

How Is Intelligent Cloud ERP Updated?

On-premise ERP solutions are installed locally and require internal – or expensive external – IT resources to update and redeploy across all your organization’s devices.

Intelligent cloud ERP solutions are upgraded regularly – usually several times a year – and are carried out by the provider. The user decides which new features and functions to turn on. This little-and-often approach ensures adoption of latest innovations, updates and best practices at cloud speed.

Sal Laher is global chief operating officer for SAP S/4HANA Cloud http://bit.ly/2gDN1mH #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

Lean Go-Live: Realize, Deploy and Run

This third post will cover the final phases of the S/4HANA Cloud implementation and some additional useful considerations:

Realize

The tasks expected for this phase are:

In this phase, you define the different sprints with the packages you will incrementally configure, develop and test using your detailed Backlog. This methodology is SCRUM based, so it is recommended to execute the sprints following the agile methodology:

* Plan each sprint
* Execute its activities
* Monitor the activities with the daily stand-up meetings
* Prepare the internal and external tests for validation
* Do the sprint review afterwards

From a project management perspective, use the accelerator ‘Backlog including Delta Requirements and Gaps.xlsx’ included in the Explore phase (if you haven’t used it yet). You just need to fill your Backlog activities into the file and you will have all the sprint planning and sprint burndown graphs already set up:

If every process defined fits into SAP’s standard, activating and configuring the different scope items is a fast and painless job. Once you finish, you can easily automate the testing using the “Test your processes tool” (see the first post).

I would divide the Realize phase into three main blocks:

* Iteration of the different tasks within the scope
* Completion of the migration in Q
* User management

At this point you have also to ask for the P system provision. Once you have the system ready, each scope item tested and validated can be transported to production. It is recommended to keep both systems regularly synced.  There is only a single Transport order each time, therefore, at each transport everything done in Q will be updated in P. Be careful to not transport developments not meant to be in P yet! The accelerator ‘Q to P Transport Process.pdf’ explains the details.

My advice: Do not move to the next phase if you haven’t finished the whole migration in Q. Be aware that there is no ‘OBR1’- like app to reset transactional data and start again. I recommend using a dummy field in Q to keep track of the different iterations when migrating until all the data is loaded OK. If the data volume is big, I also recommend splitting the data into different excel templates. It is slower but you have more control of what is being loaded.

The last important activity during this phase is preparing the cutover plan. Consider customer’s financial and operational constraints and SAP’s release cycles (please see below ‘Last considerations’ for more info).

My takeaway: SAP provides a template to formally close each phase. It is important to formally sign-off and distribute this document to the involved stakeholders to align positions and get the formal approval to each step of the project. Once this phase is approved, all tasks from previous phases not considered, or changes in the scope should be managed as a change request in Change management.

Deploy

The tasks expected in this phase are:

In this phase, you must finish all the minor items you could have left and complete all the training.  As you have already migrated all the data in Q you should have all the templates ready. You just need to load the data again in P. In case you load the wrong data, you can raise a ticket and ask for a reset, but that is not the normal procedure, so make sure you load the data correctly in P the first time around!

My advice: Before loading into P, triple check (again) that everything is consistent. For example, if you have defined an internal numbering for some master data like Vendors, check that the assigned codes match with the new data created in P. That is, invoices referencing Vendors can have a different Vendor code from the Vendors created in P. Remember, you have only one shot! (or you will need to raise a ticket to SAP to reset the system)

If everything went OK, we are all set! Once we have the formal approval of the customer we can move to the Run phase.

 Run

Strictly speaking, once the project is closed, there is no project anymore. The run phase is more like an ‘Ongoing Phase’, where we can plan further trainings or extend the scope by adding new scope items if needed.  Hence, once you moved to the run phase, you have done it!

According to the project’s plan, a small team can support for a period of time to consolidate the system and help the key users with some additional training.

Final considerations:

Cloud quarterly releases:

The cloud has quarterly releases (versus the On Premise version that has yearly Innovation Cycles). It is very important to take this into account to schedule when to start or go live, as you don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a release! In addition, if a functionality is still not met, you can check if it is going to be available in the next release in the official SAP portals.

You can sign up for any of the two release waves available (two different dates) to be upgraded. The release is first installed in Q and you have two weeks to test the system before P is upgraded too. You won’t be able to transport anything from Q to P within this two-week window. As a best practice, I recommend defining all the processes that will need to be tested in advance using the Test your Processes, so in each new release, all the testing to make sure that everything is still working OK, can be automated.

Check the scheduled downtimes and let the customer know in advance before deciding, so that it doesn’t affect the company’s operations.

Fiori:

The cloud still has some apps that are old-school Sap Guis. And yes, those apps don’t have the best UX in the browser. In each release, new apps substitute the old ones. Yet, bear in mind that Fiori apps are not just a face wash, most of them are role- based. That means that we have specific apps for each role instead of one app for all.  Do not expect to have the same apps with an updated UX. Some transactions will be split into different apps or integrated into a different one.

Integration options:

Almost 100% of SAP products (SAP Central Finance, SAP ERP, BPC, Hybris, Concur, Employee Central, Business Object Cloud, Ariba, Fieldglass…) have built-in and pre-delivered integration content (or will have it soon in subsequent releases). However, SAP S/4HANA Cloud also offers customer-driven integrations based on SAP-delivered APIs that allow more flexibility to suit specific customer needs. Before starting the project check the integration possibilities that may affect the project’s scope in the Roadmap viewer.

If you have a complex landscape, consider the best architecture option, that is, a point to point connectivity approach or include a middleware like SAP Cloud Platform Integration or SAP Process Orchestration.

Additional Information and useful links:

With the SAP activate Roadmap and SAP Best Practices Explorer you have more than enough to manage a project successfully. All the information is there and it is updated to each release. However, there are some additional links that can be useful to complement your S/4HANA Cloud knowledge:

Business scenario recommendations

S/4HANA Journey Map

SAP Help Portal

S/4HANA Cookbook

SAP Learning Hub

Consider also following @SDenecken and  @janmusil to stay up to date on the latest news regarding S/4HANA Cloud and PM methodologies. Here you can find a couple of useful links:

SAP Activate Enables Adoption of SAP #S4HANA Cloud

SAP Activate – what is the methodology story?

Finally, if your project has complex data scenarios, with big data loads or different legacy systems, it is recommended defining a migration project within the whole S/4HANA implementation scope, to prepare and cleanse the data before using SAP’s Migration tools. Tools like SAP Advanced Data Migration by BackOffice Associates can make your life much easier and move your data securely and in an organized way. You can find more details in SAP’s Marketplace:

SAP Advanced Data Migration by BackOffice Associates

This brings ‘Lean Go-Live – Realize, Deploy and Run’ and the 3 Part series to an end! Thanks again for reading these blogs, which I hope you found informative. I would appreciate your feedback and I am always happy to answer your questions!

  http://bit.ly/2yhAbES #SAP #SAPCloud #AI