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Sdhana
Sdhana
company’s marketing materials you might think that it was old news. After all, the product
launched four years ago and has been pitched so hard since that surely by now every SAP
customer must have not only drunk the Kool-Aid dry but also signed up and finished implementing
it. But outside of the Orlando conference center spin zone, businesses need more than trade show
hype to jump at the latest bright and shiny object. Business cases must be made, budgets
approved, and projects scheduled, all of which take time. Lot’s of time.
On a personal level it was just this year that I completed my first SAP S/4 HANA project as an SD
consultant. And despite a mountain of marketing materials, I found very little useful information
about what exactly is different in S/4 HANA vs ECC and specifically from an SD perspective. I
thought I would share my experiences and a few tips and tricks learned along the way. To set the
stage, the project I was involved with was implementing the on-premise version of S/4 HANA
1809, with the hardware hosted remotely by the consulting company. By the way, someone will
have to explain to me sometime the point at which on-premise and cloud diverge. With the
servers thousands of miles away how is this still called ‘on-premise’? But I digress. As I said this
was my first S/4 project, but far from my first rodeo. I’ve been implementing SAP SD for the past
22 years, ten years with SAP America and the last twelve as an independent contractor. So like the
Farmer’s insurance company ad says, I like to think I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing
or two.
Here’s the good news (shh, don’t tell anyone), 80% of SD is exactly the same in S/4 HANA as it was
in the earlier versions of SAP. And when I say exactly the same, I mean exactly the same. Pricing is
the same, sales orders are the same, texts, item categories, deliveries, billing, on and on and on, all
the same. It was actually surprising to me how few differences there actually are. Digital core my
eye!
Ok, so if it’s 80% the same then what exactly is different? And why isn’t this information easy to
find? Let’s break it down in my completely unauthorized, un-scientific analysis of what’s different,
in order of impact:
Fiori, Fiori, Fiori
If your customer is implementing S/4 HANA there’s a pretty good chance that they’ll be using the
latest and greatest revolution in User Interface technology, a thing called “Fiori” or as I like to call
it, ‘Web Pages’. If you’ve ever used a thing called ‘The Internet’ you’ve probably seen web pages.
I’m joking (a bit). At it’s best, Fiori is more than just HTML enabled SAP screens. Some of the Fiori
tiles/apps are actually new screens that combine functionality from several transactions in the
‘backend’ (that would be S/4 HANA in this case), and really do improve ease of use and look pretty
good. However it’s really sort of a mixed bag – some of the Fiori tiles are just the same old SAP
tcodes, web-enabled and made slower and more awkward with scroll bars embedded within in
scroll bars that make using them just painful. Then there are some things that just don’t quite
make sense. There is a manage sales orders app which gives you a nice sales order list and is quite
a visual improvement over good old VA05. It’s also got a hyperlink in it to launch a ‘create sales
orders’ tab. And of course, there’s a tile just for sales order create. But somewhere, somehow,
someone decided that you don’t need a quotation create or a sales contract create tile. Those
features are only available within the manage quotation or manage sales contracts apps. So
creating a quote or a contract becomes a two-step, two-click process for no apparent reason. And
speaking of sales order create, the mother of all SD transactions, within Fiori it is…drumroll
please…here it comes …wait for it…..just an HTML version of the VA01 screen, but made more
awkward. Would it be too much to ask that someday, someway, SAP introduces any easy
configuration tool that lets you control the tabs and fields on sales orders? Here’s a secret –
we’ve had this on service notifications and service orders for over 15 years! Would it be too much
to ask to have something similar for sales orders? In my experience over half of the tabs and fields
are unused for any given customer and the busy-ness of the screen just frustrates people.
(Whatever happened to ‘simplify’, Bill?)
Another huge change in the S/4 HANA /Fiori world is reporting. Bye-bye BW. Adios BI. All of the
sales reporting is now directly in the transactional system, accessed via Fiori apps.* Not only are
there a fair amount of pre-delivered reports, but there are also tools that let you pretty easily
build your own custom reports/queries/cds views. It’s actually pretty awesome except 1)Trying to
figure this out in the middle of a project takes time, 2) What the heck is a cds view,** 3) On our
project we had no reporting resource so the SD guy is now the reporting guy, 4) The last time I did
reporting was on 3.1 before BW when we were still messing around with info structures in SIS /
LIS etc., 5) I was actually interested/excited to do something new (reporting) but with the project
moving at warp speed that can was always kicked down the road and there wasn’t enough time to
do reporting, let alone learn it properly.
**Independent consultants get to learn by doing rather than going to training classes.
Business Partner
This is the one difference you’ll hear about the most often. In theory, it makes sense. The concept
is this – an entity that a company does business with has different roles. That same entity could be
both a customer of the company and a vendor to the company. And a way to describe that
relationship is the role the entity plays. So in S/4, we have business partners instead of customer
master, and those business partners have the role of ‘customer’. Ok, so conceptually I’m down
with this, it makes sense. But in practical terms, what SAP has done in the BP transaction is add a
million and one roles to scroll through, with different screens and tabs, and new things to learn. To
solve what? That we occasionally had to link a customer and vendor record? As an experienced SD
consultant the main things you’ll need to do are:
A customer will have to be created in three roles: General, Customer (Fin Accounting), Customer.
Have fun scrolling. Tip – if you open an existing customer in display mode instead of change only
the existing roles will show up and you’ll do a lot less scrolling. You can also configure the default
to open in display instead of change. You can also configure to hide unused roles but that impacts
everyone.
The Grouping field controls the number range so if you want to use a specific number range check
out the help on this field before trying to customize your own. It might already exist and all you
have to do is create the customer, sorry, business partner with a specific entry in this field.
Ok, cálmate reporteros nerds, sí, todavía existe la
posibilidad de tener un sistema de BI y vincularlo a
Fiori, bla, bla, bla, Roadmap, bla, opciones.
Socio de negocios
Esta es la única diferencia de la que escuchará con
más frecuencia. En teoría, tiene sentido. El concepto
es este: una entidad con la que una empresa hace
negocios tiene diferentes roles. Esa misma entidad
podría ser tanto un cliente de la empresa como un
proveedor de la empresa. Y una forma de describir
esa relación es el papel que juega la entidad.
Entonces, en S / 4, tenemos socios comerciales en
lugar de clientes maestros, y esos socios
comerciales tienen el rol de "cliente". Bien,
conceptualmente estoy de acuerdo con esto, tiene
sentido. Pero en términos prácticos, lo que SAP ha
hecho en la transacción de BP es agregar un millón
de roles para desplazarse, con diferentes pantallas y
pestañas, y cosas nuevas que aprender. ¿Para
resolver qué? ¿Que ocasionalmente tuvimos que
vincular un registro de cliente y proveedor? Como
consultor de SD experimentado, las principales
cosas que deberá hacer son:
Within the customer role, you have to select the sales and distribution button at the top to have
all of the familiar sales area dependant SD fields appear.
The vast majority of the fields are the same. Sales District is new but everything else is pretty
much the same that it’s been forever. The transactions XD01 and VD01 have been removed and
replaced with ‘BP’ but customer business partners are still built on top of the same tables, KNA1,
etc. Enjoy!
BRF+
BRF+, or Business Rules Framework, or what happens when you give developers the keys to the
car. This has got to be my least favorite of the S/4 HANA innovations. I know I’m going to sound
like a crusty old man, but you take what was working perfectly fine, in this case Output
determination, and replace it with some half-assed kludgy pseudo-programming interface, and
well, let’s just say I’m not a fan. Rather than detail out my gripes here I’ll just pass on a few tips:
BRF+ is optional – at least in 1809 you can still use regular output determination instead. Choose
wisely grasshopper.
BRF+ doesn’t work for all SD output – Sales orders, yes. Billing docs, yes. Deliveries….oops. But for
an added twist, it kinda looks like it might work for deliveries, and you’ll try, and search and search
for answers and try to figure it out, until you come to this same conclusion.
Dentro del rol de cliente, debe seleccionar el botón
de ventas y distribución en la parte superior para
que aparezcan todos los campos SD familiares
dependientes del área de ventas.
BRF +
BRF +, o Business Rules Framework, o lo que
sucede cuando les da a los desarrolladores las llaves
del automóvil. Esta tiene que ser mi menos favorita
de las innovaciones de S / 4 HANA. Sé que voy a
sonar como un viejo cascarrabias, pero tomas lo que
estaba funcionando perfectamente bien, en este caso
la determinación de salida, y lo reemplazas con una
interfaz de pseudoprogramación torpe y torpe, y
bueno, digamos que yo no soy un fan. En lugar de
detallar mis quejas aquí, solo daré algunos consejos:
Configuration – most of the configuration is done in the aforementioned web interface. So you’ll
need to spend a bunch of time figuring this out. Tip – when you can’t find something that should
be there, it’s probably hiding because you don’t see the scroll bars to go to the right until you
scroll down. Madness.
Transports – Rant begins: the web configuration piece is transportable, but it appears to be all or
nothing, in that it doesn’t transport just your changes but rather everything. And if someone else
has made changes before you what they changed gets locked up under their transport and even
though you reassign it to yourself it still won’t unlock even after you move it, and instead you go
directly into the test system and make your changes there, but everytime you transport from
development your changes get overwritten, because as I said at the beginning it transports the
whole damn thing. Rant finished.
Herramientas de configuración: ¡mucha
diversión aquí! Está en parte en la IMG y en
parte en una interfaz web. Pero para que el
elemento web funcione, alguien tiene que
hacer algunas tonterías XML. Configuración: la
mayor parte de la configuración se realiza en la
interfaz web mencionada anteriormente. Por lo
tanto, tendrá que dedicar mucho tiempo a
resolver esto. Sugerencia: cuando no puede
encontrar algo que debería estar allí,
probablemente esté oculto porque no ve las
barras de desplazamiento para ir a la derecha
hasta que se desplaza hacia abajo. Locura.
Transportes: comienza Rant: la pieza de
configuración web es transportable, pero
parece ser todo o nada, ya que no transporta
solo los cambios, sino todo. Y si alguien más
ha realizado cambios antes que usted, lo que
cambió se guarda bajo su transporte y, aunque
se lo reasigne a sí mismo, no se desbloqueará
incluso después de moverlo, y en su lugar
ingresará directamente al sistema de prueba y
realizará su los cambios allí, pero cada vez
que transportas desde el desarrollo, tus
cambios se sobrescriben, porque como dije al
principio, transporta todo el maldito asunto.
Rant terminó.
Status Tables
This is one of the few things I could find information on. The sales order status tables for both
header and item have been moved to VBAK and VBAP. You won’t really care about this unless
you’re building an interface or custom report.
If you thought ATP was cool, now there’s ‘AATP’ or Advanced Available to Promise. My experience
with this went as follows: Oh, I see there’s some new functionality called AATP. I wonder if that
would be useful for our project. Let’s see, it says here that it requires an additional license,
bummer. Oh wait over here there’s no mention of an additional license, hmm. Ok, let’s see where
it’s setup. Here’s a config setting for item category to use advanced atp. Set it. Nothing happens
that’s different than regular ATP. Hmm. Back to Google. Back to SAP help. Conclusion – unclear
and out of time. Suspicion – the ATP part of AATP is just a rebranding that combines old ATP with
what really is new which is….
BOP
Backorder processing has a new name in HANA land. Now it goes by ‘BOP’. You might have known
it by the name of its twin sister ‘Rescheduling’, but apparently there’s something new under the
sun in S/4 Hana. At least that’s what SAP says. Lot’s of marketing videos on this one. The videos
will tell you a story about how BOP is the love child of ATP and APO, and all the groovy new
features. There are “winners and losers”, “gainers and fills”, and “redistribution strategies”.
Sounds pretty cool, right? I thought so, until I tried to use it. Here was my experience:
Research which of the three tiles you are supposed to use and how it’s supposed to work – partial
success, not a lot of clear detailed information on this.
I’ll stop here to tell you that behind the scenes of BOP is a whole boatload of basis stuff including a
HANA DB connection, a HANA XS connection, a HANA rules framework, a bunch of OSS notes, and
a lot of other techno-junk that a functional consultant has no business being involved with. I just
want to see the winners and losers, but instead, I spent close to a month going back and forth with
support teams. Continue.
Tablas de estado
Esta es una de las pocas cosas sobre las que pude
encontrar información. Las tablas de estado de la
orden de venta para el encabezado y el artículo se
han movido a VBAK y VBAP. Realmente no le
importará esto a menos que esté creando una
interfaz o un informe personalizado.
AATP y Bop doo Wop
Si pensaba que ATP era genial, ahora hay "AATP"
o Advanced Available to Promise. Mi experiencia
con esto fue la siguiente: Oh, veo que hay una
nueva funcionalidad llamada AATP. Me pregunto si
eso sería útil para nuestro proyecto. Veamos, aquí
dice que requiere una licencia adicional, fastidio.
Oh, espera aquí, no hay mención de una licencia
adicional, hmm. De acuerdo, veamos dónde está
configurado. Aquí hay una configuración de
configuración para que la categoría de artículo use
atp avanzado. Configurarlo. No sucede nada que sea
diferente al ATP regular. Hmm. Volver a Google.
Volver a la ayuda de SAP. Conclusión: poco clara y
fuera de tiempo. Sospecha: la parte ATP de AATP
es solo un cambio de marca que combina el ATP
antiguo con lo que realmente es nuevo, que es….
GOLPEAR
El procesamiento de pedidos pendientes tiene un
nuevo nombre en la tierra de HANA. Ahora se
llama "BOP". Es posible que lo haya conocido por
el nombre de su hermana gemela
"Reprogramación", pero aparentemente hay algo
nuevo bajo el sol en S / 4 Hana. Al menos eso es lo
que dice SAP. Muchos videos de marketing sobre
este. Los videos le contarán una historia sobre cómo
BOP es el hijo amoroso de ATP y APO, y todas las
nuevas características maravillosas. Hay "ganadores
y perdedores", "ganadores y llenos" y "estrategias
de redistribución". Suena muy bien, ¿verdad? Eso
pensé, hasta que intenté usarlo. Esta fue mi
experiencia:
Inicie sesión en Fiori y busque mosaicos de BOP
relevantes - Fallo
Buscar información de mosaicos en el sitio web de
SAP - Éxito
Pídale al equipo técnico que agregue mosaicos a su
función: Éxito
Lanzar mosaicos - Fallo
Investigue cuál de los tres mosaicos se supone que
debe usar y cómo se supone que debe funcionar:
éxito parcial, no mucha información clara y
detallada sobre esto.
Crear una variante para el trabajo BOP - Fallo -
error técnico
Me detendré aquí para decirles que detrás de escena
de BOP hay un montón de cosas básicas que
incluyen una conexión HANA DB, una conexión
HANA XS, un marco de reglas HANA, un montón
de notas de OSS y muchas otras tecno- basura con
la que un consultor funcional no tiene nada que ver.
Solo quiero ver a los ganadores y perdedores, pero
en cambio, pasé cerca de un mes yendo y viniendo
con los equipos de apoyo. Seguir.
Schedule BOP job – Success
Review BOP results – Fail because the job had failed. Who knew that I would become familiar with
the term ‘Artifact Generation’ and the myriad of ways it can fail?
Search notes, more technical fixes, finally the first job completes!
Ready to explore how to work with it and party like it’s 1999! Oops, out of time.
Seriously out of time! The window for exploring options had closed, and it was time to cut bait or
fish. Is it too much to ask for SAP to deliver standard functionality that works out of the box
without multiple people messing with it? This was the opposite of simplicity.
While it’s not necessarily tied to S/4, one of the items that falls into the new and different category
is the latest SAP project methodology, “Activate”, which to me is akin to ASAP having a one-night
fling with Agile, and then kicking him out the next morning. Yes, you’ll find a bit of Agile
terminology sprinkled about (can you say ‘Sprint’?) but for the most part, Activate just seems like a
rebranding of ASAP. So instead of a ‘Blueprint’ phase, we have a ‘Discovery’ phase, yadda yadda
yadda. I suppose the idea is to ease the customer’s mind around project implementations. We are
not implementing in fact, we are just ‘activating’ the software. One big positive that I found
around the new methodology is that it comes delivered with a whole host of pre-defined, pre-
configured, and pre-documented scenarios. The documentation includes pre-written test scripts
for each scenario which really speeds that task. And if you find a customer who doesn’t want any
changes, the system is pre-configured and delivered ready to go. Just let me know when you find
that customer.
Fiori – A mixed bag. Overall a more user friendly interface, with some apps having an
improvement in functionality and some a step backwards. New customers might prefer it but
consultants and power users will find it cumbersome.
Reporting – A big improvement. One system to rule them all. Bye-bye BW.
BRF+ – Someday I will find the demon developer who foisted this upon the world. Until then,
suffer in silence.
Activate – About time customers don’t have to pay for consultants to keep re-writing
documentation. Thank you.
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SAP S/4HANA
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Related Questions
Could you pelase provide SAP S/4 HANA sales related documents & Certification realted links
8 Comments
Sitakant Tripathy
Brutal, hilarious but true. Had similar experience when looking at Asset and Work Management
functions on 1709.
You will surely be outcasted from the community for this brilliant and critical write up 😛
Regards,
Sitakant.
Like(1)
Pensamientos finales
Para terminar, aquí está mi opinión sobre cómo se
acumulan los cambios:
Fiori - Una bolsa mixta. En general, una interfaz
más fácil de usar, con algunas aplicaciones que
tienen una mejora en la funcionalidad y otras un
paso atrás. Los nuevos clientes pueden preferirlo,
pero los consultores y los usuarios avanzados lo
encontrarán engorroso.
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Etiquetas asignadas
SAP S / 4HANA
Ventas CRM
SAP Fiori
Ventas en la nube de SAP S / 4HANA
Gerente de ventas de SAP
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Foto de perfil del autor Sitakant Tripathy
Tripatía de Sitakant
31 de octubre de 2019 a las 10:36 am
Brutal, hilarante pero cierto. Tenía una experiencia
similar al analizar las funciones de gestión de
activos y trabajo en 1709.
Sitakant.
Me gusta (1)
Estoy particularmente feliz de ver a un consultor
funcional que desprecia BRF + con la misma
venganza que cualquier desarrollador que se precie.