10.2    Recent Innovations and How They Might Affect the Roadmap

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud being relatively new software, improvements to the product are being introduced at an uncharacteristically breakneck speed. Much of the customer adoption is founded on a complete functionality match; likewise, many of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud decisions taking place are based on new functionality to be released according to the near-term roadmap. Thus, the roadmap is of paramount importance for user adoption—and even for the ultimate success of on-premise SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Recent innovations—such as core ERP functionality additions, enhanced business processes, new ways to position SAP S/4HANA as a framework, and a push towards pioneering functionality, including integration with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more—are impacting the roadmap in exciting ways. Figure 10.3 depicts how SAP is positioning SAP S/4HANA Cloud as the digital core for cloud innovation.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud as Digital Core for Cloud Innovation

Figure 10.3    SAP S/4HANA Cloud as Digital Core for Cloud Innovation

The following sections discuss some of the roadmap innovations affecting SAP S/4HANA Cloud and how organizations can reap the benefits of new SAP S/4HANA Cloud functionality. The two primary innovation components highlight major factors within the SAP S/4HANA Cloud roadmap. Master data and extensibility are fundamental not only to the overall success of SAP S/4HANA Cloud customer implementations but to the cost to implement, as well. These key factors are discussed in further detail in the following sections.

10.2.1    Master Data

Master data is a major issue in any SAP initiative, especially within the ERP world. Within the SAP S/4HANA Cloud world, the topics of data, data conversion, and master data are all equally as important.

As discussed in Chapter 4, Section 4.4, one of the ways that SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementations limit scope and associated cost is by eliminating the expense associated with data conversion. This often-tedious and sometimes complex activity of data cleansing and data conversion is being looked at by the SAP S/4HANA Cloud product team, including ways to simplify the overall data component of implementations.

Understanding the importance of master data, SAP S/4HANA Cloud is addressing this need via a series of innovations. The following are several of the upcoming SAP S/4HANA Cloud master data innovations coming to life shortly:

  1. Business partner and product maintenance
  2. Business partner and product integration
  3. Master data mass processing
  4. Master data consolidation
  5. Master data governance

10.2.2    Extensibility

Arguably, the greatest area of SAP S/4HANA Cloud innovation opportunity resides within extensibility functions, because they essentially extend SAP S/4HANA Cloud’s capabilities. SAP S/4HANA Cloud will never possess the superset of all needed business process (and technical) functionality for all the possible customers. Thus, the way to fill all possible functionality gaps is to open SAP S/4HANA Cloud via hooks into outside applications. This is performed via extensibility.

By leveraging extensibility capabilities, SAP S/4HANA Cloud can act as a digital core or platform in which all business transactions can persist. These hooks act as a gateway or portal into SAP S/4HANA Cloud for access to its functions and data. More information on extensibility can be found in Chapter 9.

The exponential growth opportunity for SAP S/4HANA Cloud functionality via extensibility is tremendous. As such, SAP S/4HANA Cloud is continuing to grow innovation specific to this topic. The following are several of the upcoming SAP S/4HANA Cloud extensibility innovations being released soon:

Behind the Curtain: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Becoming Creative

With the relative newness of SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a product and the fluidity in its positioning, SAP is becoming creative with how SAP S/4HANA Cloud can be deployed within some more complex scenarios. This is primarily driven by the currently missing pieces of functionality that customers are requesting. SAP is looking to close the perceived functionality gap through some very creative solutions. This may or may not be the future of how SAP is looking to position SAP S/4HANA Cloud in the long term, but it’s happening now.

One very common example we’re seeing in the marketplace positions SAP S/4HANA Cloud as the primary ERP platform and user experience for the customer, then complements SAP S/4HANA Cloud with non-SAP S/4HANA Cloud functionality. This non-SAP S/4HANA Cloud functionality may come from another SAP product or may be SAP Cloud Platform customer-specific functionality.

Here’s a more extreme example: To replatform a global manufacturing company, SAP proposed presenting the company with a single SAP S/4HANA Cloud instance integrated with an SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud-hosted on-premise SAP S/4HANA instance, complementing the missing functionality required by the customer (and missing from SAP S/4HANA Cloud). In essence, SAP is using SAP S/4HANA Cloud and on-premise SAP S/4HANA in tandem, showing customers a single entry point into the SAP world via SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

This creative SAP S/4HANA Cloud positioning could potentially change the way SAP pivots to more complex, formerly on-premise SAP solutions.