A letter to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition users

Dear SAP ERP public cloud users

The year 2023 is coming to an end. Looking back on this year, we have witnessed the changes in the market, the evolution of technology, and various challenges together. What else do you want to know and pay attention to on the SAP system? At the end of this year, let SAP and Acloudear review several key points and change instructions in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (SAP ERP Public Cloud) for you. We will focus on summarizing the technical updates and optimization practices in multiple key business areas such as finance, sales, procurement, manufacturing, quality, and sustainability, providing more references for your business operations and decision-making.

  1  

Transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Event based production cost posting 3F0

Since the SAP ERP Public Cloud 2105 version, 3F0 has been the scope project for default activation of production cost posting in newly implemented customers. Only under rare, effective, and reasonable business reasons will SAP approve the request to activate the optional scope project BEI for newly implemented customers.

Now, SAP has announced the abandonment of the period based production cost posting solution (BEI). This means that customers who went online before 2021 and those who went online after 2021 and simultaneously activated BEI need to develop a plan in advance to switch to 3F0 before BEI is completely discontinued.

Why abandon BEI?

-BEI is incompatible with the mandatory default activation of general parallel accounting on public clouds, which poses a potential risk of currency imbalance, especially when dealing with main ledgers with different currency types.

-Due to parallel accounting requirements or incorrect price maintenance, BEI is unable to handle different prices in different ledgers, which may result in unintended set prices.

-BEI has old technical limitations that cannot solve the inconsistency between cost accounting and financial accounting due to currency conversion in work in progress calculations, as well as performance issues in calculating work order variances.

-Due to the technical limitations of Web GUI, BEI is not as user-friendly as 3F0 in terms of navigation and drill down functionality.

The BEI abandonment process is divided into three stages:

 

1. Communication phase (from now on):

-SAP is notifying all customers who are still using BEI of the abandonment plan

-SAP provides detailed instructions and transition guidelines to BEI customers

-New customers can only activate BEI for special business reasons, such as the missing peer-to-peer function in 3F0

-Expect customers to use the supported features of 3F0 and provide feedback to SAP

 

2. Preparation for abandonment stage (no later than the end of 2024):

-SAP will complete the development of equivalent functionality between 3F0 and BEI, based on customer feedback and roadmap

-The application and best practice content of BEI will be marked as deprecated

-No longer approve new customer activation for BEI

-Expect customers to settle and close existing traditional orders, and enable event based result analysis codes as soon as possible, switching order types to event based.

 

3. Formal decommissioning phase (no later than the end of 2025):

-SAP will remove BEI application from SAP Fiori quick launch board

-BEI best practices content will be marked as discontinued

-Prevent the use of traditional result analysis codes MBMF01 and MBMF03 to create orders and display error messages

-The customer expects to use only 3F0 for production without exception

In the future, 3F0 will provide real-time logistics based event posting, while also providing customers with more flexible manual selection methods to meet the needs of customers with the following production characteristics:

-Short production cycle, no need to view capitalized work in progress in each logistics posting.

-After the production of the order is completed (DLV/TECO status), a large amount of additional posting is required, such as supplementing missing components and reopening the order, which may involve the prediction of a large number of additional settlement vouchers and reversal vouchers.

3F0 is a continuously developed enhanced solution for SAP’s strategic investment, which means that WCR or CIP requests for new features will only be implemented in 3F0 and will not continue to be developed in BEI. So, please prepare for the transition in advance to maintain the stability and performance of the system.

Regarding how to transition to 3FO, please refer to the following help document:

https://help.sap.com/docs/sap_s4hana_cloud/4032610758dc437089f0c28320eec93f/dc03840949434574ad04aaa599ba9498.html?locale=zh -CN

  2  

Traditional Inter company Dumping – Project Scope 1P9

In traditional enterprises, inter company inventory transfer business is considered a crucial link in the value chain. It is not only a medium for the flow of products from manufacturing to end-users, but also a key component for enterprises to achieve outstanding performance. Through inter company transfers, enterprises can gain various values:

-Supply chain optimization: Mobilizing goods between different warehouses to minimize inventory backlog and improve the flexibility and responsiveness of the supply chain.

 

-Cost control: Effectively manage inter company transfers, reduce logistics costs, inventory holding costs, achieve optimal cost allocation throughout the production and distribution process, enhance competitiveness and profitability.

 

-Improvement of customer service level: The efficient operation of inter company transfers directly affects the level of customer service. Ensure timely delivery of products to target locations, improve customer satisfaction, establish brand loyalty, and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

 

-Inventory management: Accurately grasp inventory levels, avoid excessive or insufficient inventory, achieve maximum asset utilization, and improve return on capital.

 

-Production planning and adjustment: Provide enterprises with more flexible production planning and adjustment mechanisms to adapt to market demand fluctuations, better meet market demand by adjusting inventory between different business units, and achieve agile production and supply.

The value of traditional inter company transfer business to enterprises is not only reflected in optimizing logistics operations, but also in building efficient, flexible, and competitive production and supply chain systems. A deep understanding of the value of this business can help enterprises fully utilize SAP ERP public cloud and achieve maximum management and optimization of inter company staging processes.

In the public cloud version of SAP ERP, Best Practice 1P9 is an effective assistant for successfully implementing this business, aimed at optimizing your inter company staging process, improving efficiency, and maximizing potential value.

  3  

Spot sales including assessed in transit inventory – Project scope 5MQ

SAP Cloud ERP Public Cloud Latest Business Practice Scenario 5MQ solves the matching problem between sales costs and revenue in different periods. In actual business, due to the cross month nature of shipping and invoicing, some customers adopt a cost deferred confirmation scheme. However, this results in the difference between standard cost and actual cost remaining in the issued goods account during month end settlement, making it impossible for the material ledger to obtain the actual cost of each product.

Now, 5MQ supports spot sales with assessed in transit inventory to meet the actual business needs of customers.

  4  

Alternative sales order profit center solution

The profit center of sales orders in SAP ERP public cloud will default to the value of the profit center in the product master data. Many customers need to manually change it according to business needs, which increases daily workload. Now, alternative solutions can be configured to solve this pain point.

  5  

RASD

Release Assessment and Scope Dependency Tool (RASD) is a simple self-learning tool that provides a customized change list for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, including deleted, deprecated, new, and changed objects. This list is filtered based on the customer’s usage and activation scope, helping them quickly understand the changes related to it without having to view the entire What’s New list.

In SAP ERP Public Cloud 2308 version, RASD (2.0) supports multiple languages other than English, including English, German, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, French, and Spanish. Users can switch system languages based on browser language settings.

RASD ranks each “What’s New” project in the card, using a star to indicate the importance of the change to the customer. Ranking is based on user system usage, which helps users quickly determine the priority for handling change information.

  6  

Carbon emission accounting in sustainable footprint management

In SAP ERP Public Cloud 2308 version, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management (SFM) has been launched as a comprehensive solution for accurately calculating and managing greenhouse gas emissions at the enterprise, value chain, and product levels. In the current environment, sustainability has become one of the top priorities for executives.

Although carbon emission accounting still relies mainly on spreadsheets and semi automated tools, SAP is launching reliable future solutions aimed at achieving more accurate and detailed tracking of emissions in business operations and supply chains:

-SAP Sustainability Footprint Management: A solution integrated into SAP S/4HANA for calculating and managing the carbon flow of GHG Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, achieving accurate and efficient emission calculations.

 

-SAP Sustainability Data Exchange: An application that securely exchanges standardized sustainability data across the value chain using the Carbon Transparency Partnership (PACT) standard.

 

-Green General Ledger: Integrating financial and environmental data into RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP in SAP S/4HANA Cloud to support better decision-making and insight.

*The implementation of plans varies in different countries and regions

  7  

Improvement in user experience

SAP has always attached great importance to the system interface, which is the user experience. In SAP ERP Public Cloud 2308 version, we have brought the following expected enhancements:

1. Users can quickly adjust the space displayed on the menu bar

Users can now manage the space display in the navigation bar more flexibly. After enabling space mode, you can cancel spaces that you do not want to be displayed by default and adjust their display order by dragging.

2. Favorite apps can now be grouped

In order to better organize your favorite apps, the new version has added a grouping function. You can easily create groups in your favorites and organize related applications into corresponding groups.

3. My homepage now has menus for each section

We have further improved the usability of the homepage by adding independent menu functions for each section. By clicking on the titles of each section, you can easily access the corresponding menu operations, making homepage management more convenient.

Acloudear has been deeply involved in the SAP ERP public cloud market for many years, committed to providing advanced SAP cloud solutions for growing enterprises, continuously supporting their rapid development, and empowering sustainable growth.

In the new year, we look forward to working together with you to tackle future challenges and achieve outstanding business performance. If you have any doubts or expectations, please visit our official website to contact us, and we are always willing to provide support and answers.

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud

Material source: SAP China Research Institute with slight modifications

This article "A letter to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition users" by AcloudEAR. We focus on business applications such as cloud ERP.

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