Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111

In this blog post I’d like to outline the innovations for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 in the area of Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management. These are the topics that are covered:

In case you are short of time, get a glimpse of the new features by watching my product highlights video:

Resource Demand with Direct Staffing in ‘Manage Project Demand’ Application  

With our business process Project Control – Procurement (scope item 4RF) that we have shipped with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, we have introduced the first integration between enterprise projects and procurement which helps you to plan, trigger, and monitor procurement of materials and services.

While we’ve been working on enhancements to strengthen this procurement integration during the last couple of months, we have now worked on a new demand type: Project procurement controllers can now plan and monitor human resource demands as part of the ‘Manage Project Demand’ application. In addition to the service and material demands, the need of a WBS element for a resource demand can be planned. This can be done either on high level, based on an activity type and planned effort, or it can be done more granularly by directly staffing resources to a specific demand.

By using the ‘Manage My Timesheet’ application, staffed resources are provided with a pre-filled task list which helps them to easily record time on the respective demand.

This allows project procurement controllers to keep track of the progress and planned vs. actual work can directly be compared – an innovation which helps different business users to manage their daily tasks.

Figure 1: As part of the ‘Manage Project Demand’ application you can plan and monitor human resource demands.
(back to top)

Project Planning Application Enhancements

Work Breakdown Structure Maintenance Using Drag and Drop

During the last couple of quarters, we’ve invested heavily into our ‘Project Planning’ SAP Fiori application in order to rebuild functionality that we’ve been offering as part of our ‘Project Builder’ application, and to allow for an easy and intuitive use across all applications.

As announced already with the last release, we have taken the final step towards the replacement of the ‘Project Builder’ application. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202, the ‘Project Builder’ application will finally be deprecated, and the ‘Project Planning’ application will be the single source of truth when it comes to the planning of enterprise projects.

To keep simplifying the use of the ‘Project Planning’ application, we’re adding new functionalities again in this quarter. Instead of only using the intend, outdent, move up, and move down buttons as part of the application, you can now simply drag and drop WBS elements to either change the sequence or the hierarchy of WBS elements. This can drastically reduce your manual efforts when maintain WBS elements.

Figure 2: Drag and drop functionalities allow for an easy maintenance of WBS elements.
(back to top)

Navigation to Project-Related Orders from ‘Project Planning’ Application

Another enhancement as part of the ‘Project Planning’ application is the navigation to project-related orders. Basically, we’re introducing three new columns as part of the application to display:

• Maintenance orders
• Purchase orders
• Sales orders

Having dedicated columns allows project financial controllers to get a better overview of complex projects with assigned orders. Not only will the columns indicate how many orders there are for a specific WBS element, but these orders can be checked out in detail directly from the ‘Project Planning’ application. The navigation to the corresponding apps allows for a quick and easy consumption of the assigned orders, and it ultimately leads to a better overview of projects.

Figure 3: With the navigation to project-related orders, project financial controllers to get a better overview of complex projects.
(back to top)

Project Type for Enterprise Projects

In order to further improve the overview of project financial controllers, we have enabled the project type for WBS elements.

When defining an enterprise project, you have to maintain some information such as name, ID, project profile etc. Here, you also have the possibility to assign any of the three project types:

1. Design
2. Investment
3. Research and Development

While this has been a best practice for some time already, we have enabled a new functionality after saving a project: When creating or updating enterprise projects, the project type will be inherited from project header to all lower level WBS elements.

This helps you to easily group similar projects and WBS elements. Via extensibility, project financial controllers can better analyze and filter reports, e.g. projects which belong to the same project type.

The following reports are currently supported:

1. P&L – Actuals
2. P&L – Plan/Actual
3. Projects – Actuals

Moreover, we’re adding the filter criteria Project Type to the ‘Project Cost Report’ and the ‘Project Budget Report’. Via these two reports you can then simply filter by project type.

Figure 4: When creating or updating enterprise projects the project type will be inherited from project header to all lower level WBS elements.
(back to top)

Support Actual Start and Finish Dates in Migration Cockpit

Another improvement we have made for project financial controllers is that we are supporting actual start and finish dates in the migration cockpit.

In the past, actual start and finish dates of projects and WBS elements could be maintained in several applications. As part of the migration report, these dates have not been included automatically.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111, we allow for project financial controllers when they maintain dates, for example via the ‘Project Control’ application, that these dates will automatically be included in the migration report. There is no additional step needed to maintain actual start and actual finish dates after projects or WBS elements have been migrated.

Fig. 5: Actual start and finish dates for both project headers and WBS elements are included in the migration cockpit.
(back to top)

Developer Extensibility for Enterprise Projects

I’d like to bring a topic to your attention which is not part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 release, but which has been delivered with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108.1: The Developer Extensibility for Enterprise projects.

As part of this continuous feature delivery, we have released enterprise-project-related CDS views for in-app developer extensibility. With that we allow you to create development projects on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. That means you can develop cloud-ready and upgrade-stable custom ABAP code on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Thereby, you can combine the benefits of the on-premise custom ABAP code with the required restrictions that we have for Cloud readiness and the SAP S/4HANA programming model to build SAP Fiori apps.

This allows you to flexibly develop, and at the same time you can take advantage of innovations much faster.

Fig. 6: Develop cloud-ready and upgrade-stable custom ABAP code on SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
(back to top)

Join the SAP Customer Influence Program for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

Last but not least, I’d like to make a call to action for all our customers and partners.

In mid-2021, we have established the SAP Customer Influence Program for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management.

Join this program if you’d like to submit improvement request, vote on requests, and if you’d like to take part in regular online sessions which are taking place every 4-6 weeks. During those sessions, the submitted requests as well as possible solutions will be discussed. Moreover, you will get insights into planned functionalities.

Don’t miss this chance to provide your feedback and influence the product.

Feel free to reach out to Nadia Razzaq ([email protected]) or Heike Wulf ([email protected]) if you’re interested to participate.

Please note that this program is dedicated to our Cloud development. If you have any requests for our on-premise solution, please provide them via our customer connection project by following this link.

Fig. 7: Join the SAP Customer Influence Program for SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management to influence the product.

Are you interested in more details as part of our latest innovations? Check out our brand-new Early Release Series Brochure!

Within this brochure, you will find a 45-minute replay as well as presentation and demos for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management as part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 Release. This online session was held with 16 other sessions on diverse topics like Manufacturing, Finance, Solution Order Management, Sales, Sourcing and Procurement, and much more. For more information on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Early Release Series, please check out this link.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
• Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 Release Blog
• The Link Collection for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management here
• Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management Community
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
• Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here
• Help Portal Product Page here
• Implementation Portal here

Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @CorinaReise and LinkedIn