SAP is releasing the latest version of the S/4HANA Cloud, introducing new innovations and features across line-of-business editions.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 brings more integration into the fold. Sourcing and procurement customers can realize better contract management from integration of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with the SAP Ariba Contracts solution.
“We are delivering tighter integration so we’re now able to have a direct integration on the bin level,” said Oliver Betz, global head product management, SAP S/4HANA.
Users can perform strategic sourcing activities and integrate prices from SAP Ariba Contracts into SAP S/4HANA Cloud for improved contract development, management, tracking, and administration.
Another valuable integration is between product compliance and sales contract. Users can view the statuses of compliance checks to assure compliant transport and prevent noncompliant sales orders. They can also provide dangerous goods information on the sales contract.
Another goal for this initial release in 2020 was to broaden the capabilities of SAP S/4HANA Cloud across more industries.
To achieve this, SAP added one or more new customer-centric features to: finance; sourcing and procurement; manufacturing and supply chain; sales; product compliance; environment, health, and safety; professional services; service; enterprise portfolio and project management; asset management; security; and identity and access management.
SAP is casting a wide net around experience and including this year’s addition of SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, a complete automation suite where intelligent bots handle the tedious tasks of manual clicks and make suggestions to humans about repeatable business processes. This time-saving feature has the potential to automate many standard, repetitive tasks.
Another area with improved experience is around onboarding to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Among the 2002 improvements, SAP Activate — our methodology for deploying, upgrading, or migrating to SAP S/4HANA — has been further polished and refined. A new questionnaire and additional instructions offer the support and information that customers need for faster and easier implementations.
SAP will continue to broaden and enhance its platforms, according to Betz. The biggest area the company is focusing on is facilitating more integrations.
“We are a big believer in a suite, a cloud suite, where we see a big benefit to integration out of the box,” Betz said.
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