What does S/4 HANA Finance provide functionally?

What does S/4 HANA Finance provide functionally?

SAP S/4 HANA Simple Finance provides multiple innovations, such as Universal Journey, streamlined design, and real-time analysis, which generate a notable operational improvement in the Economic-Administrative and Financial area. Ever since SAP announced the release of SAP S/4 HANA Finance (then called SAP Simple Finance) in early 2014, there has been some confusion about what SAP S/4 HANA Finance actually delivered and what exactly it was. At this point, Tech-edge intends to clarify that with a minimum technical impact, any organization can benefit from multiple advantages at the business level by minimizing the technical dependencies of the previous version.

Differences between SAP Business Suite on HANA and SAP S/4HANA?

SAP Business Suite on HANA is exactly the same ERP that was used until now, but with a change in the DB. that optimizes it at the performance level. This will not provide any changes at the functional level except that some processes will run faster. However, SAP S/4 HANA is a new generation ERP that has been “rewritten” to remove technical dependencies or limitations. Thus, S/4 HANA is much more flexible to adapt to business needs, building on existing functionality and generating new ones, both at the back end and front end levels.

What is the difference between Smart Financial, Simple Finance and SAP S/4HANA Finance?

In essence it is the same, they are different names that have been used for the same product. The one that is current today is SAP S/4 HANA Finance and its version depends on the year and month in which they were released (Version 1503 was followed by 1505, 1508 and 1511). Since SAP S4/HANA Finance is part of the S/4 HANA suite, it is important to understand that SAP S/4 HANA consists of four components

  • The core/functional component: SAP provides several financial capabilities and enhancements as part of the core/functional component. To do this, you must be at least on SAP NetWeaver version 7.4, SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 6.0 Enhancement Package 7, and SAP HANA version 1.0 to be able to consider a migration or upgrade to S/4 HANA. A migration to S/4HANA from ECC 6.0 is a functional upgrade that involves migration of transactional tables

  • The User Experience (UX) component: This SAP Fiori component helps you interact with the component through easy-to-use Fiori screens. This requires SAP NetWeaver 7.4 and SAP Gateway version 2.0. Please note that this is an optional component and can be continued with the existing SAP user interface.

  • The reporting/analysis component: This component enables real-time reporting and analysis using preconfigured views. Prerequisites for installation is SAP HANA Live 1.0 for SAP ERP and SAP HANA. This is also an optional component.

  • Applications Component: This component is a set of analytical applications in the Finance suite for key financial decision makers in a company.

What does S/4HANA Finance provide?

S/4HANA Finance provides a single source of information. From our point of view, the introduction of the universal journal (ACDOCA table) brings SAP closer to a single accounting repository. This is achieved based on the New General Ledger (improving it) and merging General Ledger, Assets, Cost Center Accounting, Profit Centers, Income Statement (COPA), Special Purpose Ledger and Material Ledger into a single data model. In operational terms, each transaction will generate a single document with all the information (recorded in the ACDOCA table), instead of one for each component (and then reconcile everything to square). In this way, in case of extracting the information to BW systems, only a single extractor will be necessary, instead of the previous 4 or 5.

Why is this so important?

In a single step, it reduces the number of cases of data redundancy and duplication in all FI modules. The ACDOCA table can be extended to include the coding block, COPA features, etc. One of the most difficult aspects of FI/CO implementation in any organization has been reconciling CO postings to FI. This is now instant and automatic.

S/4 HANA has alleviated a major pain point – real-time reporting or analytics. The delay in reporting and analysis due to extracting, transforming, and loading to connect to storage systems. With S/4 HANA you can do all the transactions and reporting all at the same time because within SAP HANA you can have SAP BW embedded. This eliminates the need to download reports and analysis to third party systems. You will now be able to pull real-time reports that combine transactional and historical data allowing you to make strategic and tactical decisions based on the latest data.

SAP S/4HANA Finance has greatly simplified the flow of data in the finance modules. Those who have been involved with FI/CO for many years will readily agree that the data model was unnecessarily complex. As an illustration, FI postings typically involve changes to many tables (known as secondary indexes). All of these boards (such as the BSIK and BSAK) have been removed. That reduces complexity and improves control by having everything in a single repository.

Fiori plays a more important role, providing an interface on all devices, whether from a laptop or mobile device. Fiori uses both SAP HANA Live and S/4 HANA with built-in analytics. S/4HANA comes integrated with over 800 role-based applications including finance-specific roles. One category of these applications are analytics applications that provide users with real-time visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs).