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.
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)
Next topic covered on this blog: Strategy and roadmap for SAP SRM and S/4HANA
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