SAP recent­ly announced the 2023 release of SAP S/4HANA and a ​“pre­mi­um plus” pack­age for RISE with SAP that embeds gen­er­a­tive AI capa­bil­i­ties, among oth­er new offer­ings aimed at dri­ving its cus­tomers’ orga­ni­za­tions toward the cloud. 

For orga­ni­za­tions still run­ning lega­cy on-premis­es ERP land­scapes, the announce­ments con­tin­ue SAP’s cur­rent focus on cloud migra­tion and fur­ther empha­size its RISE with SAP pro­gram as the com­pa­ny’s rec­om­mend­ed path­way for dig­i­tal transformation. 

Eric van Rossum, Chief Mar­ket­ing and Solu­tions Offi­cer for SAP Cloud ERP, spoke to ASUG about the announce­ments, made Oct. 11, to help place them in con­text for our North Amer­i­can user-base audience. 

Inside SAP S/4HANA 2023

The 2023 release of SAP S/4HANA is now gen­er­al­ly avail­able. As in past years, the new release is avail­able as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion (as part of RISE with SAP) and also SAP S/4HANA for on-premis­es deploy­ment. ​“It’s a major release,” van Rossum said, ​“in terms of the scope ver­sus SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (SAP ECC), as well as all the inno­va­tions which we deliver.”

As part of RISE with SAP, the pri­vate edi­tion of SAP S/4HANA Cloud will now fol­low a two-year release cycle, deliv­er­ing addi­tion­al inno­va­tions via enhance­ment packs approx­i­mate­ly every six months; on this accel­er­at­ed time­line, the next release of SAP S/4HANA will be in 2025. Main­stream main­te­nance for each release will also increase from five to sev­en years. ​“With this release, it will be eas­i­er to con­sume inno­va­tions at a more reg­u­lar pace, with less dis­rup­tion,” van Rossum said. 

Accord­ing to van Rossum, SAP S/4HANA 2023 not only fea­tures the full capa­bil­i­ty scope of SAP ECC but also lever­ages the newest archi­tec­ture avail­able, with the express pur­pose of bring­ing finance, man­u­fac­tur­ing, oper­a­tions, and sup­pli­ers into a sin­gle cloud plat­form with line-of-busi­ness applications. 

• With­in finance, SAP S/4HANA 2023 has added pre­dic­tive sce­nar­ios for pay­ment that iden­ti­fy when there is a risk of late pay­ment; this fea­ture uti­lizes machine learn­ing for behav­ioral insights to iden­ti­fy poten­tial late pay­ers, so they can be tar­get­ed with per­son­al­ized col­lec­tion strategies. 
• A new pro­cure­ment overview will present the most rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and tasks to help pro­cure­ment man­agers pri­or­i­tize actions in their workloads.
• Visu­al­iza­tion of mas­ter data gov­er­nance process­es in a cloud-ready mode will allow users to dis­play past and cur­rent process steps and work­flow tasks in graph­i­cal views with pro­cess­ing time and work­flow recip­i­ent details.
• Util­i­ties clar­i­fi­ca­tion cas­es in busi­ness process excep­tion man­age­ment (BPEM) can be new­ly ana­lyzed and man­aged with new SAP Fiori apps and launch­pad con­tent, in addi­tion to a new CDS cube and query focused on BPEM.
• Sus­pen­sion of prod­uct val­u­a­tions ini­ti­at­ed by refunds in the cus­tomer returns process will pro­vide added flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­ve­nience for sales organizations.
• To ensure prod­uct com­pli­ance, SAP has added sup­port for con­tin­u­ous pro­vi­sion­ing of list­ed sub­stances through a reg­u­la­to­ry con­tent service.
• Inven­to­ry man­age­ment has been improved, with more sup­port for bar­codes with­in sev­er­al SAP Fiori appli­ca­tions and enable­ment for Kan­ban with­in decen­tral­ized SAP Extend­ed Ware­house Management.
• New SAP Fiori apps have been added to enable or aug­ment capac­i­ty eval­u­a­tion in man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­duc­tion sup­ply area man­age­ment, change requests to update freight order charges in trans­porta­tion man­age­ment, cost dis­tri­b­u­tion in defense and secu­ri­ty indus­tries, and cre­ation and edit­ing of cred­it memo requests in sales.
• New sus­tain­abil­i­ty fea­tures enable requests for car­bon foot­print data from sup­pli­ers, as well as improved health and safe­ty inci­dent management.

Inside the Pre­mi­um Plus Pack­age for RISE with SAP

SAP also announced a ​“pre­mi­um plus” pack­age for RISE with SAP, which aims to attract cus­tomers by incor­po­rat­ing gen­er­a­tive AI capa­bil­i­ties (such as Joule, the company’s recent­ly announced AI copi­lot) and fur­ther pre­mi­um office-of-CFO func­tion­al­i­ties, like SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud Planning. 

In addi­tion to SAP Sup­pli­er Por­tal and func­tion­al­i­ties for cash man­age­ment and group report­ing, the pre­mi­um plus pack­age will fea­ture SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foot­print Man­age­ment and SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Con­trol Tow­er, mak­ing the pack­age a rec­om­mend­ed start­ing point for cus­tomers plan­ning to embrace SAP’s forth­com­ing green ledger.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty insights will focus on cal­cu­lat­ing and shar­ing car­bon data across the val­ue chain and con­tin­u­al­ly enhanc­ing offer­ings to address evolv­ing envi­ron­men­tal, social, and gov­er­nance (ESG) report­ing stan­dards. ​“We are the com­pa­ny that invent­ed the sys­tem of record of finance, and we’re excit­ed to build upon that cred­i­bil­i­ty and knowl­edge to do the same for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG report­ing,” he said.

Finance inno­va­tions will focus on stream­lin­ing plan­ning oper­a­tions, improv­ing fore­cast accu­ra­cy with finan­cial and non-finan­cial busi­ness unit data, and enhanc­ing invoice man­age­ment and cash col­lec­tion process­es. In addi­tion, the pre­mi­um pack­age will include a sup­pli­er por­tal to sim­pli­fy spend com­pli­ance for net­worked ERPs.

“With RISE, we take S/4HANA Cloud as a foun­da­tion­al pil­lar and pre­dom­i­nant­ly add SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form and SAP Sig­navio around it to gain exten­si­bil­i­ty and stan­dard­ize process­es, help­ing cus­tomers keep the core clean,” van Rossum said. ​“With the pre­mi­um plus pack­age, that remains the main mes­sage, but we’re adding more of the func­tion­al com­po­nents we see cus­tomers buying.” 

On the note of gen­er­a­tive AI, van Rossum added that he’s see­ing ​“demon­stra­ble val­ue change in reduc­tion of costs and human effi­cien­cies” through SAP’s exist­ing AI tools, such as 10 – 15% reduc­tion of days sales out­stand­ing (DSO), 50% less over­due items, over­all time spent reduced by 20%, and addi­tion­al val­ue dri­vers that reduce direct labor costs. 

Still, RISE cus­tomers do not need to select the Pre­mi­um Plus offer­ing to ben­e­fit from gen­er­a­tive AI and sus­tain­abil­i­ty insights; it’s pos­si­ble for RISE cus­tomers to buy these as stand­alone com­po­nents, though van Rossum assess­es the pre­mi­um pack­age as dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by the eco­nom­ic val­ue it can pro­vid­ed as a bun­dled offer­ing for customers.

Inside the Con­ver­sion and Mod­ern­iza­tion Program

SAP also announced a new con­ver­sion and mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram for RISE with SAP cus­tomers, fea­tur­ing a RISE with SAP adop­tion frame­work to plan con­ver­sions and the SAP Sig­navio Process Insights solu­tion to assist with build­ing busi­ness cases. 

For on-premis­es SAP S/4HANA cus­tomers, SAP will offer cus­tomer-cen­tric con­ver­sa­tion sup­port plans. With the SAP Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion kit, described by van Rossum as ​“a new, free ser­vice that offers 1:1 ses­sions with ded­i­cat­ed SAP experts to eval­u­ate how to best con­vert to SAP S/4HANA Cloud,” SAP hopes to assist cus­tomers in quick­ly tai­lor­ing trans­for­ma­tion plans to their own orga­ni­za­tion­al start­ing points in an action­able manner.

“We’ll be work­ing with our installed-base cus­tomers through this free ser­vice, where we look at their sit­u­a­tion, at where they are, and do a readi­ness check of their envi­ron­ment, so that we can tai­lor-make an offer to them and explain what the roadmap would look for them to move,” van Rossum said. ​“We’ll be fur­ther invest­ing in tools for them as well, such as AI, to reduce the cost and time of the migra­tion through test automa­tion or doc­u­ment creation.” 

The con­ver­sion and man­age­ment pro­gram, van Rossum added, is intend­ed to answer lega­cy ERP and on-premis­es SAP S/4HANA cus­tomers’ ques­tions about how they can make the move to RISE and ben­e­fit from cloud-only innovations. 

“Every­one starts from a dif­fer­ent start­ing point with dif­fer­ent strate­gies,” van Rossum said. ​“RISE was set up exact­ly for the installed base to deal with that, because every­one has got to have their own pace, their own jour­ney, and we need to have flex­i­bil­i­ty and choice around that. With these ser­vices, we’re start­ing the dia­logue where cus­tomers are today, under­stand­ing what their sys­tems look like, and being able to map that jour­ney for­ward of where they’re going.”

The announce­ments were first made through an Oct 11. blog post, cred­it­ed to van Rossum. 

“This year’s events are, yet again, a reminder that com­pa­nies that can dig­i­tal­ly trans­form the fastest have the high­est odds of long-term suc­cess,” added Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Com­mu­ni­ty Cham­pi­on, in an offi­cial state­ment. ​“SAP’s lat­est announce­ments and inno­va­tions are in lock­step with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion neces­si­ties, giv­ing cus­tomers a clear path to achieve more val­ue from their enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments in pro­gres­sive­ly short­er time frames.”