Buyers benefit directly from various innovations in S/4HANA in their day-to-day business. They include new functionalities that simplify daily work with SAP and improve the user experience. Here is an overview of the most important of them.
S/4HANA Highlights Operational Procurement
Requirement:
For indirect purchasing, the Fiori tile group Employee Self-Service (ESS) is offered - virtually as a successor to the SAP SRM shopping cart. Here, the employee can create a purchase requisition, check the approval status, confirm goods receipt, and upload the vendor invoice via four simply designed Fiori apps without much knowledge of the system.
![[Translate to English:] ESS](/fileadmin/trendblog/Digital_Procurement_II/Digital_Procurement_operativ_2.svg)
Thanks to its simplified usability and clarity, ESS is a good alternative to SAP GUI transactions, especially for occasional users.
When creating the purchase requisition, the user can either create his own item (material, service, free text) from the ESS or jump to purchasing catalogs, if these are connected. For more intensive catalog use, Ariba Guided Buying or the SAP Lean Catalog can also be connected for the administration of own catalogs.
Approval:
![[Translate to English:] Automatische Freigabe der Bestellung](/fileadmin/trendblog/Digital_Procurement_II/Digital_Procurement_operativ_3.svg)
The new approval process - Flexible Workflows - is an overarching framework in S/4HANA, unlike the previous module-based approval processes. The configuration requires only process knowledge and can be mastered without much training effort. No programming is required to create a workflow, but this is possible in principle. Here, too, operation is via Fiori apps, and multiple workflows can be used simultaneously. The Flexible Workflows offer numerous additional functionalities, such as the ability to set validity periods.
Purchase Order and Delivery:
Source assignment is simplified with Fiori: The source is automatically assigned to the purchase requisition and is displayed in the "Manage purchase requisition" app in the "Assigned supplier" tab. The user can also perform other actions such as displaying supplier evaluation and creating a contract or tender directly from the app.
![[Translate to English:] Bestellanforderungen bearbeiten](/fileadmin/trendblog/Digital_Procurement_II/Digital_Procurement_operativ_4_01.svg)
With the new so-called situation processing, the purchaser can improve the procurement process through additional functionalities: Situations are defined that require a certain action when predefined values are reached. The user is informed about this and can act accordingly. For example, if a supplier's delivery confirmation is missing by a certain date, the search for a new supplier is suggested as an action. The system already contains predefined situations, but users can also define their own. The user can create new situation types e.g. by copying the templates.
With the Fiori app "Post goods receipt for purchase order", SAP provides an alternative to the transaction MIGO, which on the one hand contains a similar scope, but on the other hand offers a better user experience thanks to the intuitive user interface. Furthermore, for the first time, when searching for a purchase order, not only the purchase order number but alternatively the vendor, the plant or the plant name can be entered in the search field. Practical functions such as the display of stock when selecting the storage location complete the picture.
The balance sheet transfer is also simplified in S/4HANA. Not only is the user interface more intuitive than in the GUI transaction, the search for the correct movement type is no longer necessary thanks to the self-explanatory symbols for posting and clearing: When the corresponding button is pressed, the movement type is determined automatically.
SAP LEAN Service is an alternative to the familiar service processing, which is no longer available in SAP S/4Cloud, and offers a simplified way to process service orders in SAP S/4HANA. For simplification purposes, SAP has introduced the material type "SERV" for services, i.e. the view of the material master is simplified, fields and departments have been reduced or hidden.
The purchasing documents contain a new field "Product type group", which is used to differentiate between the procurement of materials and services. Based on the product type "Services", additional fields are shown, such as service provider and service performance period in the Schedule lines area. The service provider must be created as a partner function in the vendor master.
A separate flexible workflow is provided for the release of the service entry sheets, which can be activated as required.
A visualization of the data takes place on many levels in Fiori. Thanks to the process visualization, the user will find an extended document flow under the "Process Flow" tab, in which all core information, such as the status of follow-on documents, can be seen at a glance. With the drill-down function, further details can be viewed on different dimensions.
New functions can also be found in other areas of purchasing under S/4HANA. In the next part of our series of articles on digital procurement, we will provide an overview of innovations in strategic purchasing. You can also read the article on master data in Digital Procurement and attend our webinar on Digital Procurement, in which CONSILIO experts examine the innovations in purchasing in detail.
Buyers benefit directly from various innovations in S/4HANA in their day-to-day business. They include new functionalities that simplify daily work with SAP and improve the user experience.
