The speed of innovation and disruption touches all our lives. The signs are all around us and easily visible — at airports, robots are parking cars and cleaning floors; in a single tennis match, we watch a professional tennis player change her game plan mid-set based on real-time analytics.
High- and low-stake innovations are everywhere, and they are upending our personal and work lives.
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002, the Intelligent Enterprise mixes promised innovations with must-have essentials for a new decade
While the fast-moving arc can be breathtaking within technology, SAP remains confident in our focus. We continually stretch our expertise to deliver the promise of the premium technologies that define the intelligent enterprise.
Today’s news about SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 is a powerful follow-up to the 1911 release. Looking back, 1911 highlights included the integration of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with Experience Management solutions from SAP (Qualtrics) and integration with SAP Analytics Cloud.
With 2002, we are excited to announce further integrations, dozens of new features across line-of-business editions, the extension into more global regions, and more built-in intelligence.
SAP is merely getting started in a very busy year marked with three more planned releases. In 2002, and in those to follow, we are delivering on the vision of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and its role in an intelligent enterprise that helps customers realize immediate time to value.
More Integrations Add Power and Convenience
Integration is no easy feat, but SAP is dedicated to creating more powerful integrated offerings. Customers are seeing the value of experience management with SAP S/4 HANA Cloud and Experience Management solutions from SAP (Qualtrics). The same is true for customers realizing improved business insight, planning, and predictive through the integration of SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP S/4HANA.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 brings more convenience and power through integration. Efforts in this release center around line-of-business editions.
In manufacturing and the supply chain, new integration between production and warehouse shares valuable data closer to the machines that need it. The lean integration allows production supply areas to be assigned to warehouse-managed storage locations. A valuable outcome for customers is that stock in production can be managed on a more granular storage bin level.
Sourcing and procurement customers can realize better contract management from integration of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with the SAP Ariba Contracts solution. Users can perform strategic sourcing activities and integrate prices from SAP Ariba Contracts into SAP S/4HANA Cloud for improved contract development, management, tracking, and administration.
Another valuable integration is between product compliance and sales contract. Users can view the statuses of compliance checks to assure compliant transport and prevent noncompliant sales orders. They can also provide dangerous goods information on the sales contract.
Line-of-Business Editions Handle More Specific Tasks, Additional Offices Open Closer to Customers
Another goal for this initial release in 2020 was to broaden the capabilities of SAP S/4HANA Cloud across more industries. To achieve this, we added one or more new customer-centric features to: finance; sourcing and procurement; manufacturing and supply chain; sales; product compliance; environment, health, and safety; professional services; service; enterprise portfolio and project management; asset management; security; and identity and access management.
We have also expanded our reach, extending our locations into 43 countries. This means that more customers and more regions will have access to SAP technology experts who can help them implement best practices and help ensure a successful digital journey.
Better Experiences through Intelligent Automation and Instructional Materials
SAP is casting a wide net around experience and including this year’s addition of SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, a complete automation suite where intelligent bots handle the tedious tasks of manual clicks and make suggestions to humans about repeatable business processes. This time-saving feature has the potential to automate many standard, repetitive tasks.
Another area with improved experience is around onboarding to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Among the 2002 improvements, SAP Activate — our methodology for deploying, upgrading, or migrating to SAP S/4HANA — has been further polished and refined. A new questionnaire and additional instructions offer the support and information that customers need for faster and easier implementations.
2020: Shaping Up as a Year to Remember
While it’s early in the year, I like 2020 a lot. SAP is roaring out of the gates with the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 release, and engineering and design are already working on upcoming improvements for the forthcoming 2020 releases.
Here’s to a fast-moving year filled with inspiring innovations that bring more, better, easier and interesting into our lives.
For more details on the release, read the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 release highlights.
Oliver Betz is senior vice president and head of Product Management for SAP S/4HANA at SAP SE.