2.2 Simplification
The rise of the so-called digital natives—the generation that has grown up with advanced digital technologies—as employees fundamentally changes the requirements for IT business systems: More and more employees expect to access IT systems anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Furthermore, application interfaces should be intuitive and guide users (if possible via artificial intelligence), thus allowing users to focus on the content-related solution to their business issues.
SAP S/4HANA meets these requirements with the new user interface (UI) architecture and with adapted development policies for this UI, which is accessed via browser-based apps on a frontend server. The name of this new UI concept is SAP Fiori, which we’ll discuss in more detail in Section 2.4.
These newly designed user interfaces are only a part of the overall simplification that SAP wants to implement with SAP S/4HANA. However, SAP S/4HANA’s simplification goes deeper. Simplifications and optimizations of data models form the foundation for this new concept. On this basis, access to data is considerably enhanced in comparison to the traditional suite. For example, you’ll have access to embedded data analysis functions, which are described in Section 2.6. Business applications are then built on these technical simplifications, and SAP has merged functions from various areas of the traditional SAP Business Suite into SAP S/4HANA.
While alternative solutions for similar business processes have emerged over time, SAP today focuses on the applications that have gained the highest customer acceptance. Some applications in the traditional SAP Business Suite were replaced or will be replaced by others as demonstrated in Section 2.2.
In most cases, adapting these implementations is mainly technical and does not require time-consuming projects on the customer side. However, depending on the individual structure of your system, further activities might be required. Usually, you can flexibly schedule these activities, because the traditional functionality will still be available for some time.
Note: Simplification List for SAP S/4HANA
SAP provides a complete list of the functional simplifications in the simplification list for SAP S/4HANA. When planning your migration to SAP S/4HANA, you should always refer to the following list:
The following conclusions can be drawn from the simplification: SAP S/4HANA is a new product and not a new version of SAP ERP. SAP S/4HANA also covers all core business processes but follows a new approach and is based on a different technical architecture.
Thus, SAP currently provides two lines of products for core business processes:
- The traditional line of products, which consists of the core SAP ERP applications and EHPs as well as SAP CRM, SAP SCM, and SAP SRM, will be maintained at least until 2025 and is compatible with all common databases.
- The new line of products, SAP S/4HANA, which has a completely revised architecture, forms the basis for future innovations. This line of products is exclusively available on the SAP HANA in-memory database.
[+] SAP S/4HANA and SAP ERP
SAP S/4HANA refers to a separate line of products that is available in parallel to the line of products of the traditional SAP Business Suite. SAP S/4HANA is an alternative implementation of the business functionality.
Thus, changing to SAP S/4HANA means that you’ll switch to a different product family. Chapter 3, Section 3.2, introduces the members of this new product family. While migrating to a higher version within a product family is implemented via upgrades, changing to a new product family usually requires a new implementation (see Figure 2.4). For SAP S/4HANA, SAP also provides the option of converting an existing SAP ERP system into an SAP S/4HANA system. Chapter 4 defines in more detail the different technical options for changing to the new product family.