What does SAP SD look like in SAP S/4 HANA? – Changes and
simplifications
https://eursap.eu/2017/03/08/sap-sd-in-saps4hana/
What does SAP SD look like in SAP S/4 HANA?
In this blog, I shall begin exploring
the SAP S/4HANA Line of Business (LoB) that contains what was formerly “Sales
& Distribution” and see what this looks like in the new world of S/4HANA.
I will explore:
1) Master data changes
2) Functionality changes
3) Data model simplifications
SAP S/4HANA is formed of 3 key areas:
a) SAP S/4HANA Finance
b) SAP S/4HANA HCM
c) SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management Logistics, which covers what was ECC 6.x
Logistics
1) Master Data Changes
The customer/vendor master will cease to exist in its
current form and will be replaced by Business Partner functionality (BuPa). SAP
is also planning to remove many of the standard transactions like XD01, XD02,
XD03, VD01 etc…This raises a lot of questions:
? What happens to the existing data?
? How do we migrate to the new data structure?
? What other implications does this have?
It is essential to carefully plan your approach when
moving to S/4HANA:
The preparation phase is the all-important phase. This is
where the organization needs to spend time & analyse what business value
SAP S/4HANA would bring, how the organization should move towards S/4HANA and
clearly define their strategy & planning.
The side car or a phased approach is suitable for those
that are on ECC6 EHP1 and above. If a client is on version 4.7c or below, it
makes more sense to re-implement with S/4HANA. The side car approach is
implementing part by part, for example moving just the database to S/4HANA or
implementing S/4HANA Finance first and then moving other functional SAP areas to
S/4HANA in phases.
While I focus specifically on SD here, there are wider
changes in the suite that apply to all modules for example Master data.
Business Partner will be used for centrally managing
Master data for business partners, customers, and vendors. With current
development, BP is the single point of entry to create, edit, and display
Master data for business partners, customers, and vendors.
During the system conversion existing SAP customers have
to migrate Supplier and Customer data into the Business Partner using the
Customer Vendor Integration.
The SAP simplification list describes the steps to move
onto the SAP business partner objects in 4 steps:
? Preparation: Implement pre-checks as per conversion guide &
check/clean-up based on the errors this tool gives out
? Synchronization: data load is done via a cockpit and use the standard report
given by SAP to check and rectify errors
? Conversion Process must be triggered according to the S/4HANA Conversion
guide.
? Post-processing: After the conversion, activate the customer/vendor post
processing by referring to the guide
Business Rationale:
There are certain limitations with the current Customer Vendor Master data, not
all necessarily apply to all industries/ businesses: Only one single address, No
relation between a vendor and a customer for the same real world entity(no role
concept), No persons( B2C), No time-dependency.
With Business partner: general data shared across
different roles, BP: Roles:: 1: N ( Customer, Vendor, HR personnel etc.), one
BP can have multiple addresses, time-dependent object attributes &
relationships. CVI Integration component ensures the sync between BP object and
customer/vendor objects.
Impact:
? The existing data structures, tcodes will be phased out and all of the Business
Partner data can be found in tables: BUT000, BUT020, BUT* etc.
? DEBMAS/CREMAS etc. Idocs are still supported
? Migration needs to be planned based on notes in the simplification list.
? User training is required on the new transactions and how to use them for the
business.
? New role based Fiori apps and required authorizations need to be covered.
2) Functionality Changes
Broad level changes affecting SD are:
a. Foreign Trade: Currently, there are 2 options to implement International trades: Foreign trade
and GTS (Global Trade Services). In the S/4HANA world, SD-FT will be phased out
and businesses must use the GTS functionality.
Business rationale: GTS in general has more features for Compliance, Customs and
Risk management and some of the limitations with SD-FT/MM-FT are addressed in
GTS.
Compliance Management: Sanctioned party list screening, Export & Import
legal control
Customs Management: Customs processing, Transit procedures, Trade document
printing , Customs communications
Risk Management: Restitution handling & Preference processing
Impact: There is an option to integrate GTS natively in SAP S/4HANA Core or it can be
as a separate application / instance. All existing foreign trade business
practice/processes/settings need to be analyzed and mapped to GTS.
For Intrastat, businesses can leverage functionality
within SAP S/4HANA. For the
Letter of Credit–Legal Control and Preference Management the functionalities
based on SAP Global Trade Services (GTS) can be used. SAP GTS can be natively
integrated with S/4HANA. Additional functionalities for Import- and Export
Management are available with SAP GTS.
b. Credit Management: The traditional FI/SD Credit Management will be phased out in
S/4HANA, and we will need to use FSCM.
Business Rationale: The FSCM credit management provides enhanced functionality to
improve cash flow through the new FSCM functionalities- Collections management,
disputes management, Credit Management. FSCM-CM brings in better control over
customers credit scoring with features like managing credit scoring internally,
and/or storing credit rating of External Rating companies, Interfacing with
Credit Rating Agencies etc. and works in unison with BuPa.
Impact: The business processes have to reconsidered, if the business would like to have
business rules + payment history of the customer to define their own scores and
credit risk categorization. However, if an organization doesn’t want to
re-structure or re-define their existing Credit Management processes- the
FSCM-CR can be mapped accordingly.
You need to carry out a migration from FI-AR-CR to FIN-FSCM-CR.
This migration has several elements: configuration data, master data, credit
exposure data, credit decision dataàSAP provides tools for support.
c. Rebate Management: is replaced by Settlement management in S4H. Exception: CRM TPM.
CRM TPM customers can still use SD Rebate Processing for their business
process, but have to adapt to a SAP S/4HANA optimized solution.
Business Benefit:
? Transparency of all documents involved where a contract condition was
determined and where accruals were posted, which enables a detailed view on
complex settlement scenarios, and an overview of all settlement documents and
their financial (FI) status
? Accruals will be cleared at settlement run, Changes of settlement-related
conditions will not influence the accruals – Accrual conditions and settlement
conditions are different
? Sales related rebates(standard), scan back rebates, Customer funds & some
additional processes can be customized
Impact:
? Existing agreements have to be processed by the end of the validity of the
agreement & closed by a new settlement.
? Rebate Index Table VBOX will be phased out.
? Authorizations need to be re-done & training has to be provided on the
new transaction codes/process.
d. Revenue Recognition: SD-Revenue recognition is not available within S/4HANA. The new
functionality SAP Revenue accounting and reporting functionality has to be used
instead.
Business Benefit: This functionality supports the new revenue accounting standard as outlined in
IFRS & adapted by local GAAPs. Migration to the new solution is required
irrespective of whether a business moves to S/4HANA or not.
Implications: Prior to the Conversion to S/4HANA, you need to migrate all sales order and
contracts processed by “SD Revenue Recognition” to “SAP Revenue Accounting and
Reporting” that are: not fully delivered and invoiced, have deferred revenue
still to be realized & for which you expect follow-on activities like
increase quantity, create credit memo or cancel invoice. A thorough evaluation
is needed to determine if the current SD-revenue recognition can be managed by
SAP Revenue accounting and Reporting and that’s a pre-requisite for S/4HANA
migration.
e. ATP Check:
Database table simplifications: VBBS containing aggregates has been phased out
& code optimized
Advanced ATP replaces ATP: new Back Order Processing functionality and much
interactive delivery scheduling.
Business Benefit:
? Production allocation: supports the business decision on which order should
be confirmed and decision is based on every attribute of underlying sales
order, SKU or customer
? New BOP functionality and new concept for “Winner-Gainer-Loser” based on
prioritization.
? New Release for Delivery app: to enable timely actions on short term supply
& demand changes
Impact:
? Minimal impact expected. Businesses have to understand the new features and
start using them
? Underlying code already adjusted
f. Computer Aided Sales Activities: SD-CAS is not available within S/4HANA, SAP CRM has to be used
for any Sales Activities. SAP recommends using SAP CRM or C4C.
Business Benefit:
CRM/C4C offers much more comprehensive functionality for managing customer
service activities.
Impact: Any SD-CAS config/processes need re-mapping and re-implementation in CRM/C4C.
g. Sales Analysis:
? Simplification in SD Analytics: Core Data Services (CDS) basic views
represent the core entities in SD: Sales Orders, contracts, quotations,
deliveries and Invoices.
? New persistent fields in the database to avoid complex calculations on the
fly, for example, sales order open delivery quantity and amount : To make
effective use of the SAP S/4HANA capabilities for SD Analytics, there are new
persistent fields in the Database (which, in the past, were only calculated on
the fly):
– Sales Order Open Delivery Quantity and Amount (on schedule line level – VBEP)
– Sales Order Requested Quantity in Base Unit (on item level – VBAP)
? We will still be able to access LIS/SIS and extract data into BW systems only
until version 1511.
? Instead of prebuilt aggregates and/or redundant data for analytical purposes,
the SAP S/4HANA Analytics approach is based on ODATA and Open CDS (aka ABAP
managed CDS = Core Data Services) directly on top of the original database.
Corresponding analytics content will be provided within SAP S/4HANA. This
content will grow over time.
h. Output Management: Traditional approach is NACE and table: NAST, which is going to
be replaced by BRF+( Business Rules Framework Plus). In SAP S/4HANA, the target
architecture is based on Adobe Document Server and Adobe Forms only.
Business Benefit: This new approach includes cloud qualities such as extensibility enablement ( =
scalability), multi tenancy enablement(= parallel processing of multiple apps),
and modification free configuration(= rule based decision table maintenance,
for ex.).
Impact: Only Old billing documents that will be migrated and have been processed on
NAST can use this technique. For all new billing documents, new output
management has to be used. The BRF+ supports only: PRINT, EMAIL, XML and IDOC,
others not available by default.
3) Data Model changes/Simplification
i. Status tables VBUK/UP moved to respective documents:
VBAK/VBAP for sales order, LIKP/LIPS for deliveries, VBRK/VBRP for billing
documents
ii. Document flow table VBFA simplified- new user interface combining doc flow
and status
iii. Document index tables: VAKPA, VAPMA, VLKPA, VLPMA, VRKPA, VRPMA eliminated
and replaced by equivalent compatibility CDS views with same performance
iv. Rebate index table VBOX eliminated
v. VBTYP field length extended to 4 character
vi. NAST table phased out and a new Business Rules Framework based output
control. The old documents created in SAP ERP will continue to have entries in
NAST
vii. Change of Pricing result persistency enhancements: Some fields are being
extended- DZAEHK, KOLNR . KONV replaced by new table: PRCD_ELEMENTS
Expected Benefit:
? Reduced memory footprint
? Insert/update operations on Index tables have been dropped
? Data access with CDS views on HANA show similar performance as are shown by
index tables
SAP provides PPDS/aATP/GTS as part of the digital core
& CDS views: SMBs who can’t afford separate APO or GTS or BI servers have
full advantage of these features with S/4HANA.
Please note that this blog is not an exhaustive list, I
haven’t talked about the functionalities like GTS, Settlement Management etc.
in detail. We will be taking a closer look at some of the other functionalities
in this Blog later this year, so please bookmark Eursap’s Blog pageand check back for more soon!. We will also take a look at some
of the latest changes in theSAP
S/4HANA 1610version.