SAP S/4HANA—first intro­duced in Feb­ru­ary 2015 — is SAP’s cur­rent ERP sys­tem as well as the core of the intel­li­gent enter­prise. It’s the future state that’s already here. 

SAP has released an upgrade to the on-premis­es edi­tion each year since it first intro­duced SAP S/4HANA. Those include 1511, 1610, 1709, 1809, 1909, and most recent­ly, 2020. Each of these releas­es has intro­duced sig­nif­i­cant addi­tions and advances to the plat­form, as well as some unin­tend­ed con­se­quences. In this arti­cle, we’ll go over the six major on-premis­es releas­es, detail their most notable addi­tions, and give you the infor­ma­tion you need to decide which ver­sion of SAP S/4HANA is right for your enterprise. 

SAP S/4HANA: Release 1511

About nine months fol­low­ing the intro­duc­tion of SAP S/4HANA, SAP unveiled an update with release 1511. Broad­ly speak­ing, this update expand­ed the ERP system’s scope and capa­bil­i­ties and was a major first step in turn­ing the next-gen­er­a­tion ERP into the end-all-be-all ERP for all facets of cus­tomers’ busi­ness­es, includ­ing — but not lim­it­ed to — sales, HR, and mate­ri­als management.

This update was exten­sive and addressed a litany of user requests. By far, the two most notable aspects of release 1511 were the intro­duc­tion of SAP S/4HANA Finance and the version’s new focus on sup­ply chain and inven­to­ry management. 

SAP S/4HANA Finance is a wide-rang­ing resource that allowed users to keep track of all finan­cial data, over­see the clo­sure process, and get gran­u­lar insights into finan­cial data and cash flow. The update brought major sim­pli­fi­ca­tions to the SAP S/4HANA mate­ri­als resource plan­ning (MRP) plat­form, includ­ing reduc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing cycle time and stream­line mate­r­i­al flow for inter­nal require­ments. From a logis­tics per­spec­tive, 1511 intro­duced new capa­bil­i­ties to SAP S/4HANA includ­ing pro­duc­tion plan­ning and inven­to­ry management. 

SAP S/4HANA: Release 1610

This next (and size­able) on-premis­es update to SAP S/4HANA built upon some of the big addi­tions fea­tured in 1511, while also con­tin­u­ing to expand on the all-encom­pass­ing ERP plat­form, which touch­es mul­ti­ple Lines-of-Busi­ness. SAP S/4HANA release 1610 began offer­ing solu­tions specif­i­cal­ly for the oil and gas indus­try, includ­ing high-per­for­mance mate­ri­als inven­to­ry man­age­ment along with region­al inven­to­ry views and an inven­to­ry plan­ning workbench. 

Release 1610 was sig­nif­i­cant because it changed the look and func­tion of SAP S/4HANA by run­ning the plat­form on the SAP Fiori 2.0 UX. This sim­pli­fied user expe­ri­ence allows cus­tomers to run SAP S/4HANA on their desk­tops, smart­phones, and tablets. Most impor­tant­ly, cus­tomers could per­son­al­ize their SAP S/4HANA solu­tions and func­tions by down­load­ing spe­cif­ic apps that apply to their job func­tions and main­tain­ing a per­son­al­ized view of the soft­ware on desktops. 

This ver­sion of SAP S/4HANA also expand­ed on the finance com­po­nent intro­duced in 1511 to include a more up-to-date view of finan­cial data. Specif­i­cal­ly, it intro­duced SAP Real­Spend and SAP Finan­cial State­ment Insight com­po­nents. SAP said this ver­sion pro­vides ​“a sin­gle source of truth for all finan­cial details,” cov­er­ing every­thing from gen­er­al ledger main­te­nance to prof­itabil­i­ty. Cus­tomers can have up to 10 par­al­lel cur­ren­cies per ledger, and the plat­form pro­vides a real-time con­ver­sion for all the cur­ren­cies being used. 

SAP S/4HANA: Release 1709 

The biggest change the 1709 release of SAP S/4HANA ush­ered in was an upgrade to SAP HANA 2.0, the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the soft­ware company’s in-mem­o­ry data­base plat­form. Across the entire board, this upgrade boost­ed SAP S/4HANA’s over­all per­for­mance. Most impor­tant­ly, every ver­sion of the soft­ware beyond 1709 now required SAP HANA 2.0 to run. SAP added machine learn­ing capa­bil­i­ties to SAP S/4HANA, includ­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent tools and appli­ca­tions using the tech­nol­o­gy to project sum and fig­ures and reduce redun­dan­cy through­out the plat­form. For exam­ple, the inte­gra­tion for cash appli­ca­tion machine learn­ing used his­toric cash flow data to help users clear pay­ments fast. 

SAP made a litany of changes to SAP S/4HANA with 1709, and fur­ther opti­mized the plat­form. For instance, it added not only fash­ion- and com­mod­i­ty-man­age­ment tools, but SAP also sim­pli­fied trans­porta­tion man­age­ment. Com­bin­ing two sys­tems into one, cus­tomers could now keep track of ship­ments more eas­i­ly with reduced data redundancy. 

SAP S/4HANA: Release 1809 

A year after intro­duc­ing machine learn­ing capa­bil­i­ties, SAP con­tin­ued improv­ing this tech­nol­o­gy, imple­ment­ing it in SAP S/4HANA with the 1809 release. SAP described this as the foun­da­tion of its intel­li­gent enter­prise, with dif­fer­ent solu­tions for many LoBs fea­tur­ing machine learn­ing capa­bil­i­ties. These capa­bil­i­ties broad­ly elim­i­nat­ed redun­dan­cies, increased automa­tion, and pro­vid­ed a fur­ther lev­el of gran­u­lar­i­ty to ana­lyt­ics and reporting. 

Release 1809 built on many of the solu­tions for the var­i­ous LoBs. As always, there was a sig­nif­i­cant update to SAP S/4HANA Finance, where machine learn­ing now assist­ed with invoice rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Addi­tions to Cen­tral Pro­cure­ment increased trans­paren­cy across the entire pro­cure­ment sys­tem. The 1809 release of SAP S/4HANA also saw inno­va­tions in plan­ning strate­gies in the retail and fash­ion indus­tries, along with loan and deposit man­age­ment enhance­ments in the bank­ing industry. 

SAP S/4HANA: Release 1909

For the third year in a row, SAP buck­led down on automa­tion and machine learn­ing. SAP S/4HANA release 1909 went even fur­ther, ingrain­ing these capa­bil­i­ties into the core of the plat­form. The ​“Dig­i­tal Core,” as SAP calls it, is a new archi­tec­ture that embeds automa­tion and sys­tem intel­li­gence to help with busi­ness prac­tices across the entire SAP S/4HANA platform. 

Ver­sion 1909 intro­duced inno­va­tions to many of the SAP S/4HANA key LoBs that direct­ly use all these new auto­mat­ed capa­bil­i­ties. For exam­ple, cus­tomers in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor now have a pre­dic­tive mate­r­i­al and resource plan­ning appli­ca­tion that can reduce inven­to­ry car­ry costs by pre­dict­ing the demand for com­po­nents and materials. 

The finance and sales com­po­nents of SAP S/4HANA also saw sig­nif­i­cant updates. Finan­cial users now have access to group report­ing and finan­cial plan­ning with SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud. Users work­ing in sales have more work­flows for sales doc­u­ments — for exam­ple, they can man­age approvals for work­flows and receive noti­fi­ca­tions relat­ed to those workflows. 

SAP S/4HANA: Release 2020

Unlike the oth­er on-premise ver­sions before it, SAP released SAP S/4HANA 2020 right in the mid­dle of the pan­dem­ic. Despite this com­pli­ca­tion, SAP rolled out sev­er­al key inno­va­tions and updates to SAP S/4HANA in line with its road map for the solu­tion. ​“We exe­cut­ed this release as planned,” said Jan Gilg, pres­i­dent of SAP S/4HANA. ​“We deliv­ered on the com­mit­ments we made for our­selves and our customers.” 

SAP S/4HANA 2020 is the sixth on-premise release since the solu­tion was first intro­duced. Gilg believes it is also the most com­plete, bring­ing the most val­ue to cus­tomers. ​“SAP S/4HANA 2020 is so far ahead com­pared to SAP ECC,” he said. ​“There is no rea­son for any cus­tomer to wait or post­pone their migra­tion for fur­ther devel­op­ments and innovations.” 

Gilg laid out sev­er­al inno­va­tions includ­ed in SAP S/4HANA 2020. The solu­tion con­tin­ues to expand its finan­cial capa­bil­i­ties, intro­duc­ing added ana­lyt­ics to trea­sury func­tions in an effort to more eas­i­ly track cash flow and rev­enue. The newest release also con­tin­ues to inte­grate the SAP Ari­ba net­work into SAP S/4HANA, allow­ing buy­ers and sell­ers seam­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty between vital doc­u­ments. When it comes to the sup­ply chain, SAP S/4HANA 2020 has a ser­vice parts plan­ning solu­tion, which is the result of a co-inno­va­tion with SAP cus­tomers. On the pro­cure­ment and sourc­ing side, the solu­tion intro­duced real-time dash­boards, giv­ing cus­tomers impor­tant insights on inven­to­ry con­sump­tion, cen­tral pur­chas­ing con­tracts, and vital KPIs. 

When to Update and Why

In a recent blog post, Johnsonville’s VP and CIO Ron Gilson not­ed, ​“SAP requires third-par­ty cer­ti­fied solu­tions to be cer­ti­fied or recer­ti­fied on every release of SAP S/4HANA.” So, do your due dili­gence and check to make sure your com­pa­ny is ready and that your part­ners are cer­ti­fied. This should also be the case for when you decide which release of SAP S/4HANA your com­pa­ny will go live on. ASUG research ver­i­fied this is a chal­lenge for those who have adopt­ed SAP S/4HANA. 

Recent­ly, SAP announced a main­te­nance com­mit­ment to SAP S/4HANA until the end of 2040. Jens Berno­tat stressed that, ​“The main­te­nance com­mit­ment will be ful­filled through the sequence of releas­es laid out in the SAP S/4HANA Release and Main­te­nance Strategy.” 

SAP will con­tin­ue to make avail­able new func­tion­al­i­ties and inno­va­tions with each release of SAP S/4HANA. You’ll want to take advan­tage of the val­ue each update can bring to your orga­ni­za­tion. Like any tech­nol­o­gy update, new func­tion­al­i­ties and prod­uct enhance­ments can be great tools to inno­vate and move the nee­dle for­ward in meet­ing busi­ness goals. But also — like any oth­er tech­nol­o­gy update — you need to be sure that your orga­ni­za­tion is ready for it. 

Have you upgrad­ed your sup­ply chain tech­nol­o­gy stack, nav­i­gat­ed an SAP S/4HANA migra­tion, or solved an oper­a­tional busi­ness chal­lenge through tech­nol­o­gy or process improve­ments? Your peers are eager to learn from your expe­ri­ences at our upcom­ing events. Sub­mit your abstract for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to share your SAP journey.