SAP
S/4HANA and solutions of the SAP Suite: strategy and roadmap
https://blogs.sap.com/2015/07/15/sap-s4hana-and-other-sap-solutions-strategy-and-roadmap/
Hello,
I’d
like to share with your a few line on the questions we in SAP S/4HANA Outbound
Product Management get very often: what is the strategy and roadmap for SAP
solutions like SAP HR, SAP PLM, SAP SRM or SAP CRM. In this blog I will cover
all of those solutions one by one, so always watch for the latest update.
SAP S/4HANA and SAP
solutions: deployment roadmap (click to enlarge)
1.
Strategy and roadmap for SAP S/4HANA and SAP HR
What is available today for SAP S/4HANA and SAP HR, starting with
the latest SAP S/4HANA June shipment? (see my other blog on the cloud edition). Parvathy Sankar from SAP SE has provided me
with detailed information that we’d like to share with you.
The recent blog by David Ludlow gave a clear direction for SAP S/4HANA. We’d like
to mention the implementation options customers have today for HR. Today, we
have SuccessFactors Employee Central connected today to SAP S/4HANA cloud
edition. SAP is providing productized integration between the two applications.
For example, customer can send the cost centers from S/4HANA to the
SuccessFactors. We also send the employee data, organizational assignments,
cost center assignments and payroll postings to S/4HANA. As an example, project
and engagement management utilizes employee information Commencing with a
project and work package creation, staffing and assigning costs, procurement,
creation of sales order, billing and finally project accounting, this scenario
acts as a step-by-step project management solution As a part of project cost
tracking, employees can automatically have access and manage their activities
in timesheet that will be the basis for the billing and invoicing for projects.
What are the different implementation options SAP ERP HCM
customers have today?
If the customers are ready to move to the SuccessFactors, they can
start with a migration. For those customers who want to phase out the
transition, we have different scenarios available. For the customers running
SAP ERP together with on premise HCM on the same instance, they can move to
S/4HANA on premise together with the SAP HCM and continue to leverage HR data
in the rest of the modules of S/4HANA. Those customers who today run SAP HCM
separately from ERP can connect the SAP HCM to S/4HANA on premise. However, SAP
ERP HCM will not be simplified –HR started with user experience Renewal
earlier. These features will continue to be available including the FIORI
self-service applications for employees and managers.
Will the HR user experience be different for the SAP S/4HANA
customers?
SuccessFactors started the journey to harmonize user experience
and adopt Fiori design principles, and will continue this over the next
releases. As an example, it is planned to have Workqueue usability on Fiori /
SAP UI5 in the next 6 months. The Employee Profile in SuccessFactors already
has a FIORI like user experience since 2014.
What is planned with the SAP S/4HANA on premise release planned
for Q4 2015?
We will release a closer integration with the S/4HANA OnPremise to
enable HR data from SuccessFactors and SAP ERP HCM to be used in the new
functionality in November release of S/4HANA. We are very excited about this as
this enables the whole enterprise to take advantage of a strong consistent
foundation of HR data – information about people as well as organizational
view.
Find more details on the SuccessFactors roadmap check here.
2.
Strategy and roadmap for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Product Life cycle Management (SAP
PLM)
What capabilities are available today with the SAP S/4HANA cloud
edition 1506?
In the S/4HANA cloud edition, SAP Project System supports already
various project accounting scenarios. In SAP S/4HANA, cloud project services
edition for example, the new Release Billing Proposal Fiori app is available to
support resource related billing scenarios of customer projects in Professional
Service. In SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition, customers can leverage PLM
functionalities to create Work Breakdown structures for hierarchical project
financial control purposes, as required for internal product development
projects.
What is the intended PLM scope for SAP S/4HANA on premise planned
for Q4 2015?
First of all, SAP has made a huge investment in SAP PLM over the
last 24 months, and offers a rich portfolio of solution that helps customers
accelerate their PLM efforts. SAP answer to today’s market requirement is
called SAP Connected Products. SAP Connected products delivers a product
innovation platform that effectively manages, translates and integrates
customer-driven engineering innovations throughout the enterprise and into the
market by orchestrating all business functions and xBOM requirements. Just to
name a few innovations added recently with SAP Connecter Product for Engineeringm
Design or Project management: Visual Engineering, Product Lifecycle costing,
SAP Engineering Control Center, and SAP Portfolio and Project Management (SAP
PPM).
SAP’s
goal is to make the transition from the SAP Business Suite and the recent
innovations described above to SAP S/4HANA as simple as possible. SAP will
enable a smooth migration and ensure all business processes can be covered as
before. Second, SAP plans to transform the current on premise solution
step-by-step towards a FIORI User Experience and plans to allow customers to
follow that technology path step-wise.
What
is planned beyond this for PLM?
SAP is planning to deliver an optimized and simplified version of
SAP Portfolio and Project Management for SAP S/4HANA. One of the objectives in
the Roadmap is to unify our portfolio of project management solutions. The SAP
Business Suite currently contains SAP ERP Project System, SAP Portfolio and
Project Management and SAP Commercial Project Management. SAP is taking efforts
to find out how a unified and simplified project and portfolio management
solution could be offered – both for on premise and cloud deployments.
Find more details on the SAP S/4HANA roadmap
for SAP PLM (slide 13)
3. Strategy and roadmap for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Customer
Relationship Management
What
is the CRM strategy for SAP S/4HANA? Oliver Frick from SAP SE, who is in charge
of Product Management for SAP CRM. shared strategic and technical insights with
us.
S/4HANA
does not come with full CRM functionality for sales, service and marketing, but
integrates with existing CRM solutions from SAP, both on-premise as well as in
the cloud. The recommended CRM solution for the SAP S/4HANA On-Premise Edition
is SAP
CRM 7,
and SAP Cloud for
Customer for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition. Other combinations are
also supported, e.g. C4C to SAP S/4HANA On-premise. SAP hybris Marketing is the
S/4HANA marketing solution for both Editions, On-Premise and Cloud.
What
are the S/4HANA innovations in CRM?
SAP hybris Marketing is the S/4HANA ?simplification“ for SAP CRM
Marketing. SAP hybris Marketing is fully HANA optimized with a simplified data
model for Contacts and Prospects, and comes with a full new HTML5 UI. It
directly shares data with S/4HANA and SAP CRM 7 if deployed on the same HANA
system and/or same NW system, with no need for replication or data integration.
SAP hybris Marketing also comes in a cloud option, the SAP S/4HANA, cloud
marketing edition.
What
is the UX strategy for SAP CRM with S/4HANA?
There
are a number of Fiori apps in SAP CRM in for the Sales Representative, and more
and more Fiori apps will come over time. However the CRM WebUI will continue to
be the default UI technology for SAP CRM, particularly for all areas in CRM
whereno Fiori apps will be available. But even CRM WebUI based applications can
be visually harmonized with the Fiori apps across the business suite
applications: a new “Firoi” skin will be available for CRM WebUI that will
harmonize color, fonts and graphics of all CRM WebUI based applications with
Fiori, and UI simplifications can already be achieved in CRM WebUI through
configuration and personalization already today.
What happens to my SAP CRM or SAP Cloud for Customer systems when
I migrate my ERP to SAP S/4HANA On-Premise Edition?
Migrating an SAP ERP to S/4HANA On-Premise Edition will not break
integrations to existing SAP CRM 7 installations or to SAP Cloud for Customer.
Integrations and CRM systems will continue to work as before.
How can I simplify my CRM – ERP landscape with S/4HANA?
The new HANA Multi Database Container (MDC) feature that came with
HANA SPS09 allows to share one HANA database system among multiple
applications, including S/4HANA, SAP CRM, SAP BW, and SAP hybris Marketing.
Upgrading the SAP CRM system to CRM on HANA allows to put SAP CRM and S/4HANA
on the same HANA DB, providing fast data sharing and a simplified landscape.
I have a SAP CRM and want to go for the S/4HANA On-Premise
Edition. What is a best practice for my SAP CRM?
SAP CRM 7 customers that adopt S/4HANA On-Premise Edition should:
Stick to a
side-by-side deployment of their existing CRM system: all existing CRM 7
systems are compatible with SAP S/4HANA on-Premise Edition in a
side-by-side deployment
Upgrade SAP CRM
to CRM on HANA
Upgrade to CRM 7
EhP3 (EhP4 once available) and HANA database
Leverage HANA
optimizations in CRM (performance optimizations, ad-hoc reporting, …)
Leverage CRM on
HANA as the platform for SAP hybris Marketing (share customer data on database
level)
Potentially
share a HANA DB with S/4HANA through the HANA MDC feature
Visually
harmonize SAP CRM with the “Fiori” (blue crystal) skin for CRM WebUI
Adopt SAP hybris
Marketing as the “S/4HANA Exchange Innovation” for CRM 7 Marketing:
New simplified
marketing processes, integrated into CRM 7 (campaigns, target groups, …)
New simplified
HTML5 UI
Fully HANA
optimized for high speed and high volume, sharing existing mass data (BP,
contacts, activities, …) with CRM 7
Incremental
adoption possible (marketing process by process)
Next update: Strategy
for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Supplier Relationship Management.
Looking
for concrete use cases to understand the value for business and IT : follow the Use
Case series on SCN.
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me @ypeterschmitt