6.10    Summary

The functional depth and breadth of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is only touched on here, for two primary reasons. First, within the scope items covered here are myriad options for use, depending on configuration. How one company uses a scope item could be very different from another company’s use; even within SAP Best Practices, there’s room for tailoring the system to meet a specific company’s needs. Second, because current applications are being enhanced and new scope items are being added every quarter, the functional capabilities of the system continue to expand. The point-in-time view in this book is intended to provide an overview of the available functionality and the way it’s structured within SAP S/4HANA Cloud while knowing that new functionality is always just around the corner.

Business can be complex, but managing the information for a business doesn’t need to be. SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides comprehensive functionality for the digital core while also providing key integrations for peripheral but necessary functions that are better accomplished via point applications (such as Concur, SAP Fieldglass, SAP Ariba, etc.). This end-to-end integration of data makes information management simple, allowing companies to focus on what’s most important to them: their customers, their products, and their business processes. With its process-based orientation, SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides the ability to make running a business an exercise in continual business process improvement—the highest level of maturity in a capability maturity model.

This chapter included a few insights into the embedded analytical capabilities of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The next chapter will go into much greater detail about these important capabilities and how they make the data within the system not only visible, but also actionable.