With the year com­ing to a close, SAP unveiled SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 release, the final release of the year. Like most SAP S/4HANA Cloud releas­es, this newest one includes a litany of updates and new func­tions that span many dif­fer­ent industries. 

“What we are always try­ing to do is look at how we can improve busi­ness process­es by influx­ing tech­nol­o­gy and intel­li­gence,” Sven Deneck­en, senior vice pres­i­dent and COO of SAP S/4HANA. ​“How can we help our cus­tomers, based on the data they’ve gleaned using our sys­tems and oth­ers, to make the right deci­sions in real-time?”

Deneck­en recent­ly sat down with ASUG to dis­cuss the release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 and what cus­tomers can expect from future releases. 

AI and ML in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111

Deneck­en spoke about the impor­tance of AI, ML, and automa­tion in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and how these intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies are help­ing SAP customers. 

“The entire notion of automa­tion has got­ten so much more impor­tant,” he not­ed, under­lin­ing how the scarci­ty of resources and the way sup­ply chains func­tion can be improved by lever­ag­ing these technologies. 

He also spoke about a few of the AI and ML-focused updates in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111. He not­ed the major­i­ty of the inno­va­tions in this release have AI and ML capa­bil­i­ties includ­ed. Deneck­en used life­cy­cle man­age­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing as an exam­ple, not­ing that automa­tion is a key part of ​“man­ag­ing pro­duc­tion,” and high­light­ing the impor­tance of pre­dic­tive analytics. 

Key High­lights

Deneck­en took time to high­light a few of the inno­va­tions in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111. Here are some of the solu­tions he discussed: 

• Reg­is­tra­tion for Indi­rect Tax­a­tion Abroad (RITA): a tool that can be used to man­age the dif­fer­ent tax­a­tion reg­u­la­tions for orga­ni­za­tions oper­at­ing in mul­ti­ple coun­tries. Deneck­en said this inno­va­tion will allow users to ​“cre­ate and main­tain for­eign cur­ren­cy infor­ma­tion and apply it to your legal enti­ty.” This allows users to keep track of chang­ing tax­a­tion rules and apply them to their business. 
• · SAP Intel­li­gent Real Estate: this new tool not only help orga­ni­za­tions eval­u­ate their leased space (which is going to be help­ful as orga­ni­za­tions begin fig­ur­ing out how to safe­ly return to their offices), but also gives them a broad look at their real estate port­fo­lio. Deneck­en not­ed that orga­ni­za­tions need a sin­gle source of truth for all the data and infor­ma­tion on a piece of real estate — includ­ing build­ing effi­cien­cy, lease management, 

Look­ing to the Future 

Deneck­en also spent some time dis­cussing the future. Right off the bat, SAP S/4HANA Cloud will begin hav­ing only two major releas­es a year — as opposed to the quar­ter­ly releas­es we are used to, this accom­pa­nied with small­er month­ly inno­va­tion drops – increas­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty. This was done for a vari­ety of rea­sons. SAP cus­tomers pro­vid­ed feed­back to the com­pa­ny indi­cat­ed that they pre­ferred larg­er incre­men­tal updates a few times a year than small­er, quar­ter­ly updates. 

Look­ing to the next SAP S/4HANA Cloud release, Deneck­en told us to expect intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies to be applied to cer­tain lines of busi­ness. He also indi­cat­ed that the next update would have ​“sig­nif­i­cant advances” in the user expe­ri­ence. Deneck­en said the team is look­ing at ways data can steer users.