Controlling with SAP S/4HANA: Business User Guide

Janet Salmon, Stefan Walz

• Publisher: SAP PRESS
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493220991
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Informatik Allgemein

1 Introduction to SAP S/4HANA

Before we deal with the functionalities and application areas of controlling, let’s take a look at SAP S/4HANA. SAP S/4HANA provides its users with a completely new look and feel and has made groundbreaking innovations possible for controlling, for which we are giving an initial introduction.

The aim of this introduction is to explain the major changes with SAP S/4HANA to both readers coming from SAP ERP and those who are new to the SAP world. The goal is to give you direction and guiding principles now before we go into detail later.

We introduce SAP S/4HANA from the user’s perspective, explaining the deployment models and the new financials architecture based on the Universal Journal. This architecture enables simplifications, new features, and improved reporting capabilities compared to SAP Business Suite. This chapter ends by showing the new user interface experience with SAP Fiori.

1.1 Deployment Models in SAP S/4HANA

SAP offers its SAP S/4HANA solutions with different options, which can be operated in different ways, and different license models given by different providers. Because it isn’t always easy to distinguish these options, we want to give you some orientation in this chapter.

The on-premise or cloud deployment model defines the responsibilities between the customer and the service provider. There are multiple criteria to consider; for example, the option to enable customer-specific development is only available in an on-premise scenario.

All members of the SAP S/4HANA product family are based on the same program code. Therefore, a combination (in the sense of parallel operation) of both versions, and their combination with other cloud solutions (SAP and third party), is possible: this is a hybrid model.

In the following sections, we’ll take a closer look at each of these three possible solutions.

1.1.1 On-Premise

This has been the most common deployment model for SAP software. With the on-premise edition, you can operate SAP S/4HANA in your own data center and in your own system landscape. The customer is then responsible for purchasing the hardware, installing and administering the software, and maintaining the software by importing software changes, especially legal changes.

Because the on-premise edition is always operated either by the customer or by a provider on behalf of the customer, this solution also offers a certain degree of flexibility for a customer’s individual process setup, customer-specific developments, and the rhythm of applying the SAP release updates.

Many industry-specific solutions are available here, which can also be activated to cover extensive customer requirements. Extensive localization is also available.

Note

With the on-premise edition, SAP follows an annual innovation cycle. As of the time of writing, the latest release is 2020, which is what will be covered in this book.

1.1.2 Cloud

Based on the on-premise code line and its extensive solution offerings, there is a private cloud edition available. You can run on-premise SAP S/4HANA in a private cloud within your own data center or hosted by a vendor. The system and IT infrastructure management you can outsource to a service provider. As with the on-premise version, the system is flexible with regard to a customer-specific process setup.

SAP S/4HANA as a public cloud offering is a totally different story. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is operated and maintained by SAP itself. You access SAP S/4HANA Cloud via a browser from multiple devices via the internet and with a unique, customer-specific URL. There is no need to worry about system and infrastructure management on the customer side.

With this, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is dramatically reduced—and the total cost of implementation (TCI), too. After you’ve selected a business scope, based on several scope items, the best practice content of the scope items is deployed, and the selected business scenarios are available out of the box. Thus, the ...