SAP Grantor Management is now available in SAP S/4HANA 2022

Dear Readers,

Back in October 2022 SAP released the SAP S/4HANA 2022 (major release) and as part of this release you can find SAP Grantor Management. In this blog I will discuss the key features, benefits and roadmap of this solution.

First of all,  in case you are not familiar with SAP Grantor Management, here a series of great blogs published several years ago about the SAP Grantor Management solution based on CRM that explain the core functionalities that are still very relevant except some areas like Change Request and Web Request that are not available in the new S/4HANA 2022 Grantor Management solution:

Introduction to SAP Grantor Management – Part I | SAP Blogs

Introduction to SAP Grantor Management – Part II | SAP Blogs

Introduction to SAP Grantor Management – Part III | SAP Blogs

Introduction to SAP Grantor Management – Part IV | SAP Blogs

Now the rest of this blog will cover what the new S/4HANA Grantor Management on-premise solution has to offer; let’s start with the main features available in S/4HANA Grantor Management:

Key Features

• Grantor Programs*
• Grantor Applications
• Grantor Agreements
• Integration with AP/AR and PSCD
• Integration with Funds Management:
• Budget Control System (BCS)
• Budget Encumbrance (Earmarked Funds)

*Integration with Business Partners, Attachments, Notes are not ready on the first release – see roadmaps below

Deployment Scenarios

There are now three deployment options:

• Side-by-side: CRM-system connected via CRM middleware to a S/4HANA system (all releases). The S/4HANA system is only used as ECC system
• NEW – S/4 only: The E2E Grantor Management processes from Grantor Program, Applications up to invoicing and pay-out run in a single S/4HANA system
• NEW – Hybrid scenario*: Combination of side-by-side and S/4 only.

*For some Grantor Programs and the related Applications/Agreements, a separate CRM-system is used while for other Grantor Programs the S/4HANA system is used. Budget reservation and FI-processes all run in the same S/4HANA system, regardless in which system the Grantor Programs / Applications / Agreements are located.

New features:

• Enable Contract account (aka Business Agreement in CRM) on the UI for Agreement header and Agreement items
  • In CRM the Business agreement is available only on Header but not for items. If customers want to use different Contract Accounts on items in CRM, the Contract Account must be derived via a BAdI in ERP
• Billing Document Navigation
  • Navigation to PSCD and FI Billing Documents from Transaction History

•  Archiving
  • Billing Documents can only be archived if the related Agreement has been archived If a FI-AP/AR document or PSCD document has been archived, an error message is displayed on the UI for the related Agreement. It is not possible to edit the Agreement or Claim apart from setting the status to completed/can be archived. The above features are necessary, since the invoiced amounts of the Agreement are calculated from the related AP&AR / PSCD documents. The invoiced amounts will be wrong if AP&AR / PSCD documents are archived before the Agreement/Claim. Same applies to billing documents
  • ILM*-rules for Grantor Programs are only applied for the top program of a program hierarchy, e.g. the retention period is calculated for the top program*ILM-Information Lifecycle Management Archiving

Major Improvements

• CRM WebUI powered by Fiori 3
  • Visual harmonization (Belize theme), target mode to embed CRM applications into the Launchpad
• Reduce TCO
  • Simplification of the IT landscape; save hardware costs, operational costs, and time
• No more replication errors
  • No need to wait for replicated errors during the creation of follow-up documents or master data replication
• Synchronous creation of follow-up documents
  • e.g., Funded Program, Earmarked Funds Documents, Billing Documents
• Removal of Master Data Replication (Business Partner, Business Agreement)
  • No more Master Data Replication
• Errors in follow-up documents are visible to the end user as UI error messages
  • No need to look for IDocs/Queues to identify the source of the errors.
• Editing Grantor documents will not be blocked anymore
  • Follow-up documents are not distributed but created instantly
• Re-execution of successor processes can be initiated by the end user
  • If an error occur during the creation of a follow-up document (e.g., earmarked fund, billing), this execution can be triggered from UI once the “issue” has been solved
• Invoices and clearing Information is directly read from FI
  • No more notifications via report are required to inform Grantor Agreements about the creation of invoices or clearings.

Roadmap

If you are wondering what is coming on the next releases including S/4HANA FPS1 (February 2023) and S/4HANA 2023 (October 2023)  you can access our roadmap using the following link:

SAP Road Maps and search for “Grantor Management” as shown on the following screenshot:

Grantor Management Roadmap

Extensibility options for the Grantor objects

With the next release S/4HANA FPS1 the following options to add custom fields and tables will be available:

	S/4		CRM (Legacy)
	Field extensions	Table extensions	Field extensions	Table extensions
Program	Custom Fields and Logic Fiori app**	Not available	EEW and AET	Not available
Application	Custom Fields and Logic Fiori app**	AET	EEW and AET	AET
Agreement	Custom Fields and Logic Fiori app**	AET	〃	〃
Claim	Custom Fields and Logic Fiori app**	AET	〃	〃

*AET = Application Enhancement Toolset

** Custom Fields and Logic App Blog

For more information on SAP S/4HANA | 2022, check out the following links:

• Help Portal Product Page here
• Feature Scope Description here (page 655)

Until next blog!

Diego Gaudenzi, Grantor Management Product Owner