Sourcing & Procurement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302

Check out the following innovations to increase your business’s profitability while obtaining goods and services with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302. Kudos go to our developers

Please watch the summary video covering my top highlights – & read the text for more details. For other releases please see here.

Operational Procurement

Invoice Management and Central Invoice Management

Procurement Analytics

Central Procurement

Enterprise Contract Management

• Parallel Workflow Steps***

Procurement Planning

• Multi-currency support***

Operational Procurement

Carbon footprint in Source of Supply Allocation*

Allocating sources of supply to Purchase Requisitions is currently merely supported by providing price-related information. Sustainability is one of the key strategic parameters for companies and procurement has a major impact on a firm’s sustainability performance. Hence, including sustainability-related information (e.g., carbon data) in the operational process to support buyers to assign the most sustainable sources of supply adds a lot of value on end-user side.

SAP Product Footprint Management is a cloud application running on SAP Business Technology Platform, enabling calculation of product footprints periodically and at scale across the entire product lifecycle.

Carbon Footprint Source Of Supply

*Additional license required: SAP Product Footprint Management (8011422)

Self-service procurement ‚My Purchase Requisition (new)‘-app

With 2302, we offer employees or casual users a consolidated one-stop solution that provides a quick, intuitive, and efficient shopping experience with the ‘My Purchase Requisitions – New‘ – app. The well laid out sections in the app provide a seamless experience with reduced clicks and navigation. The reduction in redundancy and improved usability makes this new app an effective replacement to the existing ’Create Purchase Requisition’ and ’My Purchase Requisitions’ app. Employees can create and manage the purchase requisitions using a single application with all necessary details available. Check out those improved capabilities:

• Employees can create and manage the purchase requisitions using a single application. It is now easier and more convenient for the employees to create, edit, copy, and delete items in a purchase requisition as all the necessary details are available within the same application
• Employees can create multiple drafts and work on them at a later point in time. They can also navigate into the purchase requisition header and item page in a split screen view to allow easy navigation between screens
• Employees can personalize the item list, purchase requisition list, and account assignment list view, and save these preferences as variants

This is now also available in SAP Central Procurement to manage central purchase requisitions. Please watch the demo video to get a better understanding of the new app.

Display of purchase order status in a self-service purchase requisition

Following the topic above, the app ‚My Purchase Requisitions – New‘ offers employees or casual users a better transparency of the follow-on process by being able to view the approval and release status of the purchase order within the status details of a purchase requisition item.

PO Status Details in SSPR

Enablement of attachments on purchase requisition header level

Purchasers can add Generic Object Services (GOS) attachments at the header level of a purchase requisition. They can view the attachments section at the header level of a purchase requisition and can upload attachments or add links in the attachments section. This increases efficiency and reduces turn around time through the availability of more related information at the header level like for example a material specification document.

PR header attachment

Dunning Reminders for Purchase Order

Long awaited and finally also available in public cloud: With Dunning Reminder for Purchase Order, a purchaser can create and send goods or services delivery reminders to the business partners to remind them of overdue delivery dates. The purchaser can print or email the dunning or urging letters with unfulfilled quantities and overdue dates. This will definitely improve the interaction between buyers and suppliers to ensure timely goods delivery or timely fulfillment of services. In addition, it minimizes the manual workload of analyzing and reminding open purchase orders. There are multiple steps to do in order to make use of dunning reminder, I highly recommend watching the demo below and read the documentation here. As a prerequisite an admin needs to configure the output parameter determination using the new template MM_PUR_PO_DUNNING_REMINDER and the SSCUI is configured by the business configuration expert.

Dunning Reminders for Order Acknowledgement

Similar to dunning reminder on overdue purchase order, the same function comes for order confirmation. So in case of missing order confirmations purchasers can send out a reminder to the supplier in an automated way by running a program in the background via a dedicated application job: Schedule Order Acknowledgement Output. Also here, make sure to have the output parameter determination configured upfront and the SSCUI being configured by the business configuration expert.

Steps to use Dunning Reminder for Order Acknowledgement

Carbon footprint data at material level in value help PO*

SAP Product Footprint Management is a cloud application running on SAP Business Technology Platform, enabling calculation of product footprints periodically and at scale across the entire product lifecycle. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition we can access this information and bring it into the procurement process wherever applicable. With 2302 we add it to the value help on material level in the purchase order. So when a purchaser creates a purchase order, while deciding which material he or she shall select, the carbon footprint data for the respective materials are listed. This provides an indicator for a sustainable decision.

*Additional license required: SAP Product Footprint Management (8011422)

Value help for material selection in Purchase Order

Partner Functions in Manage Purchase Orders

Partner functions enable to manage the relationships of different suppliers. Certain partner functions can be maintained in the business partner (supplier), which can be copied to the procurement documents under each respective Purchasing Organization. With this innovation, purchasers can select and maintain partner functions for a purchase order in the ‘Manage Purchase Orders‘-app. A partner function can be for example BA = Ordering Address, LF = Supplier and/or RS = Invoicing Party. In order to use the new tab, business configuration experts need to activate it once in the configuration environment of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

New tab Partner in the Purchase Order app

Maintenance of Address ID in Manage Purchase Orders

With 2302, purchasers can select the delivery address for a purchase order via an address ID that is already existing in the system in the ‘Manage Purchase Orders‘-app. Users can use the F4 value help to find the address ID via filters. This reduces the probability of errors in the delivery address as the address is already maintained in the system. In case a delivery address is already filled by plant address or the storage location address this will be overwritten once a address ID is entered.

Address reference and value help

Release of OData V4 API for Purchase Order and Supplier Confirmation

With 2302, the new OData V4 APIs can be consumed by external applications for Purchase Order and the new business object Supplier Confirmation. Create and update purchase orders or supplier confirmations using the new supplier confirmation business object with the OData APIs synchronously. In case of invalid data, the system returns an appropriate error message. Check out the API Business Hub for more information.

Supplier Confirmation business object OData V4 API

Invoice Management and Central Invoice Management

Distribution of unplanned delivery costs

So far unplanned delivery costs were distributed automatically to all invoice items. With this new feature it is possible to configure to which item types the delivery costs should be distributed, for example the delivery costs should be only assigned to purchase order related items but not to direct G/L items. By that, more fine granular configuration for the distribution of unplanned delivery costs is possible. The definition of distribution rules needs to be maintained upfront.

Supplier Invoice unplanned delivery cost

Handling of unplanned costs for Transportation Management

Transportation Management (TM) supports transportation planning and execution in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Now, if you create an invoice that refers to a freight order with unplanned freight costs against a charge type which is not part of your freight order, the unplanned freight cost is posted as an unplanned G/L account item for which the transportation management fields Charge Type and Freight Order are filled accordingly. Unplanned costs, in this case can be detention charges, waiting charges, toll charges due to the detour, etc. could be received in addition to the planned costs and could come up earlier during the execution.

The system receives TM items with the InvoiceRequest_In interface that have no representation in a purchase order item. However, the connected TM logic will detect this and convert those unplanned lines into a direct G/L account posting. The accounts payable accountant can open the ‘Create Supplier Invoice – Advanced‘-app to display, edit and/or create items with TM reference with an enhanced G/L account screen.

G/L Account view showing TM reference

Enabling alternative payee in the Manage Supplier Down Payment Requests app

Accounts payable accountants now have the ability to enable an alternative payee in the ‘Manage Supplier Down Payment Requests‘-app. This allows them to provide additional data related to business partners, banking, tax and SEPA. The address and bank data page is displayed once you click on alternative payee on the supplier down payment request.

Alternative payee in Manage Supplier Down Payment Requests

Supplier Invoice File Extraction from Email and Upload via Robotic Process Automation in SAP Central Invoice Management***

Many companies receive invoices from suppliers as attachments to emails in various file formats such as PDF, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. The accounts payable accountant processes these emails manually and then uploads the supplier invoices to SAP Central Invoice Management. The “Supplier Invoice File Extraction from Email and Upload to SAP Central Invoice Management” template bot is used to automate the upload of supplier invoices, which buyers receive as an email attachment, to SAP Central Invoice Management. How does it work:

The bot scans the Outlook Inbox for the unread emails received from the suppliers and extracts the invoice attachments from the emails. If multiple attachments are added to one email, they are treated as separate invoices. The bot validates the file format and performs the API calls to upload the invoices into SAP Central Invoice Management. The bot moves the processed and unprocessed emails in the respective sub-folders within the Inbox folder. Then an email notification is sent with the output logs to the responsible recipients.

Further information can be found here: SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation Store (ondemand.com)

Manage Supplier Invoices Centrally – Filtered for email origin

Procurement Analytics

Factory calendar in supplier evaluation

The supplier evaluation capabilities in SAP S/4HANA Cloud analyze the performance of the suppliers regarding accuracy of delivery, price and quality. Purchase orders with respective goods receipts are considered to calculate the variance. For time variance, the statistical delivery date in the purchase order item is compared with the actual goods receipt date. To increase accuracy of the time variance calculation, it is now possible to consider factory calendars which are maintained on a plant level to exclude non-working days in the calculation. Business configuration experts need to enable the functionality. After activation, the old/original delivery and goods receipt dates can be shown on the document view of the ‘Supplier Evaluation by Time‘-app. Check out the demo below. For a quick learning on supplier evaluation, see this microlearning.

Analytical Integration Cards on Fiori Launchpad

The ‘Procurement Overview‘-app provides analytical and transactional cards to monitor business critical situations. Selected cards have been enabled to appear directly in the home section of the Fiori Launchpad for increased visibility. The appearance of the integration cards can be configured. If additional cards should be available on home screen, the business user can decide individually on the card itself.

Launchpad with analytical cards

Product sourcing overview page

SAP Product Sourcing is a native solution on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. A sourcing manager needs transparency into business critical issues related to sourcing projects and quotations. The product sourcing overview page provides these insights with navigation option to the transactional Fiori apps for sourcing projects and supplier quotations. The analytical content can be filtered according to responsibilities (e.g. material group) and saved as individual variants. This makes the whole sourcing process more transparent.

Product Sourcing Overview

SAP Central Procurement

Extension of the requestor-centric landing page to central purchase requisitions***

The new self-service procurement app ‘My Purchase Requisition – New’ is also available for central requisitioning with SAP Central Procurement. Please see the section here for more information.

Intelligent recommendation of material groups for centrally managed demands***

Customers will be able to have their central purchasers proactively receive intelligent proposals for incorrectly assigned material groups within their centrally managed purchase requisitions. Requisitions created in any of the central procurement hub’s satellite backends are automatically scanned by a machine learning algorithm, whether matches with a higher probability could be found. The purchaser gets alerted to any mismatches and can increase his data quality with a click of his mouse adjusting the incorrect material group in his backend requisition. Here are some capabilities:

• Highlight material group recommendations to purchasers in their central cockpit for extracted backend requisition lines with a higher intelligent match than the currently assigned material group
• Provide proposals of recommended material groups with confidence scores based on a machine learning algorithm analyzing matching demands in previous backend purchase orders
• Make a one-click change to the material group in the connected system based on the selection carried out by the central purchaser from the list of proposed recommendations

This boost purchasers’ efficiency through artificial intelligence and by guiding them to proactive recommendations towards more consistent requisition data. For more info, watch the demo below:

Assignment of processors to centrally managed purchase requisitions***

Customers will be able to assign named processors to one or multiple centrally managed purchase requisitions in the SAP Fiori app ‘Process Purchase Requisitions Centrally‘ and filter a central purchaser’s workload based on this assigned processor. This does not only largely increase the transparency on a purchaser’s list of assigned purchase requisitions, but it also helps the purchasers in distributing and balancing their workload among themselves. Each purchaser can individually (un-)assign requisitions to and from his worklist and filter out just those requisitions, which he himself is responsible for.

Assign processor and filter

Inquiry step in the workflow for centrally managed purchase orders***

Customers will be able to include so-called inquiry steps in their approval workflows for centrally managed purchase orders, which would let an approver inquire a certain action from the responsible central purchaser. The purchaser is then alerted to the requested rework, could carry out any required changes to the purchase order and inform the approver of the result of his actions. Here some details. First, the inquiry step needs to be configured in the ‘Manage Workflows for Centrally Managed Purchase Orders‘-app. Once the workflow is triggered, a rework task is send to one or multiple identified central purchasers. The identification of the recipient of the rework request can be defined via user assignment, responsibility management or agent determination through a BAdI. The notification of the rework is visible via the ‘My Inbox’-app and/or highlighted in the work list within ‘Manage Purchase Orders Centrally’. This innovation boosts efficiency in back-and-forth interactions between approvers and purchasers and at the same time enhances data quality.

Request for rework

SAP S/4HANA for Enterprise Contract Management

Parallel Workflow Steps***

Enterprise Contract Management provides a suite of applications designed for the creation and management of legal contracts in enterprises that can be integrated into all core business processes. As workflows are generally time consuming and require multiple steps before a process reaches its final status. Enterprise Contract Management has developed a feature where users can easily select the steps that need to run in parallel, thereby enabling multiple decision makers to process the workflow steps and save process time. See the following capabilities:

• Legal counsel can execute and release parallel workflow steps in order to speed up the process
• Legal counsel can enable review and approval by multiple decision makers at the same time
• Legal counsel can also choose the action result in exception handling to repeat steps after the previous workflow step

Parallel Workflow Steps

SAP S/4HANA for Procurement Planning

Multicurrency support***

SAP S/4HANA for procurement planning is a  stand-alone project management application running on BTP. It optimizes direct material sourcing by offering project management capabilities for new product launches (NPI – New Product Introductions). Procurement projects in global companies are not always planned in the same currency. Furthermore, there could be global projects were each subproject is planned in a different currency. SAP S/4HANA for Procurement Planning now addresses these challenges by offering an option to define the allowed currencies within a tenant and by allowing users to select which of these currencies can be used in a project. Furthermore, each bundle is now linked to one currency which is also respectively transferred to SAP S/4HANA for Product Sourcing. Following new capabilities come with this release:

• Master-data administrators can define the allowed currencies for procurement planning at the tenant level
• Procurement project managers can choose the allowed currencies for each project and then select the desired currency for each subproject they are creating
• Sourcing managers can group items as bundles based on their currency and send them to SAP S/4HANA for Product Sourcing

Select currency for a subproject in Manage Procurement Projects

Bundles of parts are linked to one currency and transferred to SAP S/4HANA for Product Sourcing

Watch the Replays of Our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302 Early Release Series!

We’ve hosted a series of compelling live sessions from the heart of the SAP S/4HANA Engineering organization. Missed the live sessions? Watch our replays on demand!

Among the replays, you can find a 60-minute replay, a presentation, and demos for Sourcing and Procurement as part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302 release as well as 19 other sessions on diverse topics like manufacturing, finance, two-tier ERP, SAP User Experience, developer extensibility, and many more. For more information on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Early Release Series and how to sign up for it, see this link.

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

• ‘Highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302 Release’ blog post here
• The Link Collection for Sourcing & Procurement here
• Ulrich Hauke’s finance blog post here
• Yannick Peterschmitt’s 2302 intelligent ERP blog post
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release blog posts here and previous release highlights here
• Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• Early Release Webinar Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Community: here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here
• Help Portal Product Page here

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

*** Not part of SAP S/4HANA shipment; requires additional products