51·çÁ÷Business Suite helps drive innovation by uniting core business applications, data, and AI capabilities

For businesses today, uncertainty isn’t the exception—it’s the environment in which they operate every day. From supply chain disruptions to shifting market conditions and evolving customer trends, businesses are constantly on their toes about what will happen next.

At , we continued to lay out the vision we’re bringing to life with 51·çÁ÷Business Suite to help companies find confidence amid this uncertainty.

51·çÁ÷Business Suite is a seamlessly integrated system of applications, data, and AI that can connect and optimize every part of your business, enabling smarter decisions, real-time insights, and intelligent automation. It’s delivered via 51·çÁ÷Business Suite packages tailored to the needs of functions across the business and easily extended with modular add-ons.

51·çÁ÷CEO Christian Klein used the analogy of a flywheel in his to describe the power of applications, data, and AI coming together. The benefits of the 51·çÁ÷Business Suite were presented in sessions throughout the event, including key topics like:

• Harmonized 51·çÁ÷Business Suite user experience (UX)
• Seamless end-to-end processes
• Suite qualities
• Structured and guided transformation journeys

Businesses today need resilient processes running seamlessly across different lines of business. As we’ve seen time and again, point solutions can’t solve for the challenges and opportunities of today’s business world. This is why we’ve developed a seamless, integrated suite that can allow our customers to move faster, whether responding to a problem or ensuring readiness when opportunity knocks. Imagine if your key business processes like lead-to-cash or hire-to-retire were harmonized with seamless data flows. That’s key for staying ahead of the competition.

Harmonized user experience

An exceptional user experience within 51·çÁ÷Business Suite is paramount for ensuring seamless interactions and heightened user engagement. By providing a harmonized, intuitive interface, 51·çÁ÷Business Suite can enable users to navigate complex processes with ease, fostering a streamlined workflow that can enhance overall efficiency. The user-centric design places emphasis on simplicity, accessibility, and responsiveness, working to ensure that each module within the suite operates cohesively.

The UX highlights include personalized dashboards, real-time analytics, and adaptive design elements that can respond to user behavior, creating a more engaging and productive environment. Enhanced visualization tools and intuitive controls further facilitate quick decision-making and effective data management, positioning 51·çÁ÷Business Suite as a robust platform for driving business success.

Check out from 51·çÁ÷Sapphire, which goes into our strategy for delivering a consistent, integrated, suite-first experience across 51·çÁ÷Business Suite.

At the same time, we are working to improve the experience, efficiency, and intelligence of individual 51·çÁ÷products and solutions.

An AI-assisted smart solution for situations in My Home is planned to be available in preview for beta testing with the August release of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. The sign up is already available .

Seamless, end-to-end processes

An essential part of business transformation lies in optimizing and automating end-to-end processes. As presented at , this is a major benefit of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite, which covers the following key processes: 

• Procure-to-pay
• Design-to-operate
• Hire-to-retire
• Lead-to-cash
• Record-to-report

Lead-to-cash, for example, is a process that directly impacts sales performance and involves several stakeholders across functions. In this process, critical information is added via lead generation and along the process into ordering and billing. Every break in this process directly impacts customer satisfaction and profitability.

With the help of embedded AI capabilities and the support of SAP’s AI copilot Joule, companies can accelerate productivity and increase response times.

51·çÁ÷Business Suite Experience and Seamless Business Processes

Suite qualities

51·çÁ÷Business Suite offers qualities such as streamlined onboarding and provisioning, effective configuration, extensibility, and advanced analytics.

Provisioning helps ensure rapid deployment of applications, while configuration allows customization to meet specific business needs. Extensibility supports integration with other systems and applications, helping to enhance flexibility. Advanced analytics can provide real-time insights and predictive capabilities, empowering businesses to make data-driven decisions. These attributes can collectively drive efficiency, scalability, and security.

Extensibility and adaptability

51·çÁ÷systems are highly flexible and configurable, which is why they’re widely used across industries and regions. Robust extensibility features allow customers, partners, and SAP’s own industry units to adapt and enhance the standard software to fit their unique requirements.

With 51·çÁ÷Business Suite, extensions are created for end-to-end scenarios with minimal time to value (TTV), total cost of implementation (TCI), and total cost of ownership (TCO). This enables:

• Meta-data-driven, in-app extensions; full-stack, side-by-side extensions; and everything in between
• A range from self-service key-user extensions to partner-implemented and -provided extensions

Building on the foundation of a unified extensibility across 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform (51·çÁ÷BTP)-based applications, a wizard for 51·çÁ÷Fiori apps templates and partner-customer reference apps for 51·çÁ÷BTP-based extensibility has been made available.

In addition, partners will have further options to help customers shorten the implementation time. Partners are enabled to package their own extensibility and deploy to multi-customer systems. 51·çÁ÷will also provide an option for partners to promote their own developments on 51·çÁ÷Store for both in-stack and side-by-side extensibility. This can give customers even greater choice to address their business needs.

One further step toward extensions across the end-to-end scenarios of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite is to offer partner and customers true, process-based extensibility, where, for example, field extensibility can be defined consistently along the lead-to-cash process. In this process, customer-specific information can be added at the field-level in lead generation and propagated through the process into ordering and billing.Ìý

Common services

51·çÁ÷Business Suite comes with harmonized document management, which helps enable the sharing of documents and a seamless data flow between the various applications of end-to-end processes that involve various lines of business. The shared attachment service leverages a single UI, which helps further enhance the consistency of the business applications while increasing efficiency. A single service for document management can further reduce the TCO.

Another good example for a central shared service is an AI-based inbound document processing platform for all application scenarios in 51·çÁ÷Business Suite. The application-specific consumption scenarios in lead-to-cash, for example, use the shared service of the 51·çÁ÷Document AI solution for automated document inbound processing during the sales order fulfilment process.

Unlike point solutions, 51·çÁ÷Business Suite helps with harmonizing fundamental compliance and security needs, which are required for audit readiness. The next-generation audit log service offers end users a consistent experience in viewing compliance and security audit log events across 51·çÁ÷Business Suite offerings via a centralized audit log viewer. This highly structured approach of the audit log service can provide several advantages and can better meet compliance and security requirements.

Cross-product analytics

Data products and intelligent apps are core to the value proposition of (51·çÁ÷BDC). They leverage SAP’s understanding of application data at the business process, industry vertical, and geographic level. They act as the one true source of 51·çÁ÷data for line-of-business applications, partners, and customers when working on application integration, AI, and analytics use cases.

51·çÁ÷Business Suite will bring the experience to a new level, helping to ensure the needs of business users are addressed with intelligent apps for decision-making and actions. Intelligent apps—which are fed by various data products from relevant business domains—can provide comprehensive insight to the business user working in the context of end-to-end business process.

Seamless localization

51·çÁ÷Business Suite helps ensure seamless localization along the end-to-end process scenarios of the packages, working to meet the unique needs and regulations of each country. These investments will continue across the entire suite, helping to ensure customer choice, regardless of where customers start their journey when opting for one of the packages.

51·çÁ÷Activate supports your 51·çÁ÷Business Suite transformation journey

51·çÁ÷offers proven methodologies to help facilitate business transformation to 51·çÁ÷Business Suite, tailored for new customers via GROW with 51·çÁ÷and for existing ERP customers via RISE with SAP.

These methodologies utilize composable 51·çÁ÷Activate road maps for various deployment types, including implementation, adoption, conversion, transition, and upgrades. Thousands of 51·çÁ÷customers employ these road maps during the various stages of their adoption of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite. The road maps are designed to assist customers in achieving their distinct transformation objectives. They help provide a clear starting point and can guide the project team towards the North Star destination of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite.

Customers starting their journey to 51·çÁ÷Business Suite can utilize a single road map or a combination of road maps covering the scope of their deployment to help guide the project team from receiving the initial environment, through the execution of fit-to-standard workshops, to successful go-live and adoption of innovations. This is enabled by the new capabilities for combining the 51·çÁ÷Activate road maps into one cohesive project plan during the initial project setup in 51·çÁ÷Cloud ALM.

Customers can leverage an integrated toolchain and well-defined quality checkpoints to help achieve the objectives of their unique journey. The integrated toolchain enables seamless execution with tools managing customers’ transformation, including 51·çÁ÷Signavio solutions, 51·çÁ÷Cloud ALM, and WalkMe solutions.

Get started now

Ready to dive deeper into the benefits of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite? In this , you’ll get additional insights on how to leverage the benefits of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite and what transitions could look like.

Want to learn more about 51·çÁ÷Business Suite? We’re offering a series of free webcasts, with content tracks tailored for different lines of business. !

Arpan Shah is SVP and head of Business Suite Product Management at SAP.

As a leader in the SaaS and cloud-enabled midsize business ERP applications market, , we are committed to delivering continuous value to our customers. Let’s dive in and explore the exciting new enhancements of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2408 update.

Improved Productivity with AI

The latest are redefining the way businesses operate. With embedded AI capabilities, companies can now streamline operations, make data-driven decisions, and ultimately drive growth and success in today’s competitive market.

Embrace the future of business with these state-of-the-art AI innovations:

Our AI copilot enables users to express their business need in natural language and supports with answers based on 51·çÁ÷Help Portal documentation, with fast navigation to applications and with role-based insights on business objects.

The features in 51·çÁ÷Fiori enhance the user experience for business users. These features allow for efficient natural language filtering of business data and seamless summarization capabilities, enabling users to quickly extract relevant information and jump-start subsequent collaboration. This leads to faster decision-making, improved productivity, and more effective communication across teams.*

reduces the time to find skilled resources by providing advanced skill matching.*

Leveraging generative AI, the enables faster analysis and understanding of cost center data, facilitating quicker insights and more informed decision-making.*

*These features are currently available in beta;

Modern and Collaborative User Experience

This update is set to transform the way users work with user experience enhancements, enabling direct access to important applications and intelligent decision-making features.

allow direct actions on workflow items, saving time and reducing the need to switch between applications.

With the , users can collaborate with colleagues directly from an app and share live information using Microsoft Loop components. Cards can be copied between Microsoft applications; for example, from Microsoft Teams to Microsoft Outlook.

The , in combination with share as authenticated card-based loop component, enables users to collaborate, share live data, and access business data directly from their daily applications and activities.*

*This feature is currently available in beta

include enhanced workflow-relevant information and in-place actions for daily tasks​, an intelligent homepage experience to boost productivity​, intelligent app recommendations, and pre-delivered cards for new cloud customers​. The updates allow business users to execute their tasks in My Home with speed and precision.

51·çÁ÷Mobile Start allows direct access to the most important applications on the start screen with , displaying , and to support the decision-making process.

Intelligent and Sustainable Finance

Propel your business toward a more intelligent and sustainable future with the latest finance enhancements, providing tools to achieve transparency, analyze financial data, and streamline processes to improve your business performance.

The provides overhead cost accountants with transparent cost-center reporting, enabling daily analysis of actuals, plan data, commitments, and statistical key figures in one report, with the ability to switch between guided views and adaptable slicing, dicing, and pivoting based on business needs.

The provides an interactive and comprehensive view of the financial KPIs related to the service profitability.

The streamlines processes and increases performance with a modern 51·çÁ÷Fiori app, providing a user-friendly interface and efficient workflows that enhance overall productivity and accuracy in managing general ledger accounts.

Powering Service-Centric Companies

The latest updates for service-centric companies support your business growth and improve your operational effectiveness.

Professional services companies can implement and automate a new business model in which they can negotiate a with their clients. This leads to more accurate real-time profitability and reduces the need for manual effort when a lower cost rate is negotiated for additional work.

and simplifying the sales order process as part of the modern order management journey improves efficiency for internal sales representatives. This reduces administrative efforts and provides seamless support for business users in their daily work.

By leveraging , businesses can facilitate the transition from selling products to higher-margin services and solutions, using pre-defined configurable bundle products which consist of various components in one order.

provide flexibility in defining business roles through segregation of duties for solution order capturing and sales order fulfilment, improving business user productivity. Additionally, minimizes the subscription master data required to accommodate the variations of a subscription business model.

The guides users to the right contract item during the creation of service entry sheets. This supports compliance with contract-based buying for unplanned services and offers flexibility to suppliers for selecting products and services from contracts when submitting proof of service.

Boosting Manufacturing and Product-Centric Companies

Elevate operational efficiency, streamline processes, and unlock new revenue opportunities with updates for product-centric companies.

enables the warehouse staff to receive the handling unit and start the put-away process immediately after unloading it, instead of checking the complete inbound delivery first. By allowing immediate action on received goods, warehouses can streamline their workflows, improve accuracy in inventory recording, and optimize resource utilization — ultimately leading to better overall productivity and reduced operational costs.

Automate the based on assigned handling units to effectively track stock count and manage packaging materials. Integration with 51·çÁ÷Returnable Packaging Management enhances supply chain transparency and operational efficiency by facilitating accurate exchanges and account reconciliation with business partners.

now supports advanced scenarios for efficient transportation planning for supplier returns. This enhancement optimizes logistics, ensuring timely and cost-effective return shipments, ultimately improving supply chain efficiency.

Enhancement of the increases order fulfillment rates and flexibility in sourcing, based on availability information, and minimizes logistical steps and costs by directly shipping from the supplier to the customer.

Establishing a Solid SaaS Foundation

The latest SaaS foundation enhancements are designed to improve your experience and workflow efficiency:

• Localization investments have been made to ensure compliance with local regulations and cultural norms, including the introduction of and functional enhancements to our standard 59 local versions
• Providing a ensures regulatory compliance and compliance with security standards
• The master data simplifies data separation of master data along with data controller and purpose attributes (legal entity) for most business processes dealing with personal data

Arpan Shah is senior vice president of Public Cloud ERP Product Management at SAP.

As we recently announced at 51·çÁ÷Sapphire, since Q4 last year we have delivered 50 new AI innovations and we are on track to ship more than 100 AI use cases across the 51·çÁ÷portfolio in 2024. As part of this effort, we, in the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition team, are excited and proud to introduce new AI innovations announced at the event.

When considering use cases, we look to drive business growth and foster innovation with AI-enabled cloud ERP from three perspectives:

• Increase the productivity and efficiency of people by transforming work through automation and simplified user experiences to drive business outcomes.
• Accelerate business processes and optimize decisions by enabling AI-powered processes and data-driven insights and recommendations to make faster, safer decisions.
• Boost finance excellence with AI to optimize working capital and closing functions.

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AI Use Cases to Increase the Productivity and Efficiency of Your People

Joule, the AI-powered copilot: Joule can enable customers to interact with their business using natural language for informational, navigational, and transactional assistance. It is now possible to get quick tips, information, and insights by simply asking Joule. Joule helps redefine user interaction, streamline business processes, and enhance productivity. It can enable contextual access to content and applications by providing users the ability to simply ask for guidance and get pointed in the right direction.

Smart summarization: Customers are now able to leverage generative AI to help seamlessly propose summarizations of business context in multiple languages to enable faster collaboration and communication. This can ensure that daily activities are expedited, providing users with the flexibility to tailor text proposals to their specific needs. For example, in advance of a customer meeting, a sales representative can ask for a summarization of customer details, latest interactions, and current issues. The results are summarized and sent via e-mail so the sales rep has the information at their fingertips to read prior to the meeting.

Easy filter: Our customers can now easily and efficiently filter in elements-based 51·çÁ÷Fiori apps with natural language enabled through generative AI. This can enhance the current filtering experience significantly and helps make it more intuitive for first-time users. For example, a sales manager can, in natural language, get the sales orders for their VIP customer that are open, have a due date this week, and exceed a certain amount.

Collaborative ERP: Empower end users to eliminate redundant tasks and increase efficiency. By combining the power of 51·çÁ÷and Microsoft, users can receive notifications for to-dos from 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition directly in Microsoft Teams through the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA for Microsoft Teams integration. This can not only save time for end users, but can also decrease media breaks. When sharing business context with coworkers, users can benefit from the option to share cards based on adaptive card-based loop components. This allows end users to directly act and copy seamlessly in the Microsoft ecosystem, such as from Microsoft Teams to Microsoft Outlook.

As announced at 51·çÁ÷Sapphire, 51·çÁ÷and Microsoft will start integrating Joule and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 later this year, combining enterprise data residing in 51·çÁ÷with contextual knowledge from Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, and more, helping to deliver richer insights for better decision-making.

Take the example of a sales manager who needs help removing the block off a sales order for one of their most important customers. They recognize by checking on the Microsoft side that a sales order is blocked. They reach out to one of their team members asking for help through Microsoft Outlook. The team member solves the issue directly in 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and sends back an updated note with the real-time status of the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition solution. Finally, the sales order is unblocked, and everyone has worked in the environment they are most used to, efficiently and effectively.

Interested customers can experience innovations for 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition firsthand through our .

AI Use Cases to Accelerate Business Processes and Optimize Decisions

Reinvent customer service with personalized experiences that can address customer needs quickly.

Intelligent recommendations: From sales order completion to customer returns creation, intelligent recommendations in 51·çÁ÷Fiori apps can dramatically reduce the time spent on creating business objects by up to 90%. This can not only minimize manual effort, but therefore accelerate the overall process by improved accuracy and enhanced productivity.

Intelligent matching employees to projects: Our customers can now leverage AI innovations to help streamline project staffing by efficiently matching the best-skilled employees to specific projects. This can reduce the time and effort involved in finding the right talent, helping to ensure that projects are staffed with the ideal team members.

Communication intelligence in enterprise service management: Automating the clearing of open items and matching receivable items has never been easier. Our machine learning solutions can offer up to a 60% reduction in manual effort, helping to automate up to 70% of receivable item matching and potentially reduce days sales outstanding by up to 5%.

For example, an accounts receivable agent can get every incoming customer mail classified, summarized, and all key information extracted. Furthermore, the system can guide the agent to help identify financial disputes, resolve them, and generate mail responses back to the customer.

Boost Finance Excellence with AI to Optimize Working Capital and Closing Functions

Financial business insights: This can enable customers to reach optimized profitability through tailored resolutions via tailored prompts. The user can gain real-time insights and detailed analysis for financial decision-making, receive targeted recommendations, and improve teamwork and collaboration across business functions with the help of .

For example, an overhead accountant who must prepare a high-level expense report summary can get an overview of cost centers with the highest deviation compared to the previous period with quick actions supported by generative AI.

Guided error resolution in advanced financial closing feature: AI-generated recommendations can assist users in resolving errors identified during financial close processes. This not only helps to accelerate the financial close, but also to reduce manual errors and IT costs, empowering business users like never before.

Assisted configuration for complex processes: Whether it’s explaining depreciation keys in user-friendly language or intelligently configuring U.S. tax codes, generative AI capabilities can simplify complex configurations, helping to enhance the onboarding experience and improve productivity during critical periods like financial year-end closings.

Customers Can Get Started and Experience AI Firsthand

Our customers now have the opportunity to join our community of innovators, creators, and forward-thinkers who are harnessing the power of technology to drive change and make a difference. We have launched a site that can enable our customers to embark on a journey of discovery, growth, and endless opportunities.

And there’s more to come. Our outlines what features are planned for future releases.

With the pace of innovation ever increasing, we believe that 51·çÁ÷customers are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that business AI brings.  

Arpan Shah is SVP of Public Cloud ERP Product Management at SAP.

Over the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm and captured our collective imagination – and it has been a clear focus for us. We see a lot of potential in how AI can improve user and organizational productivity: doing things faster, making better decisions, and automating business processes. We have been embedding intelligent capabilities in our product regularly and will continue to invest in AI to help organizations be successful. 

Simply Ask Joule

Available through the , Joule, our AI-powered copilot, can redefine user interaction, streamline business processes, and enhance productivity. It can offer quick, contextual access to content and applications; users can simply ask Joule for guidance and get pointed in the right direction.

Catch a glimpse into the future of AI in ERP and find more information about the development of AI and Joule in 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition .

Improve Productivity with Embedded AI

The 2402 update also enhances productivity across various business processes through embedded AI capabilities. Examples include:

• helps accelerate sales order creation and processing by providing smart input field recommendations.

• helps streamline material inspection for customer returns, enhancing logistical efficiency and flexibility.

Adopt a Modern and Collaborative User Experience

The launch of spaces and pages in the 51·çÁ÷Fiori design system can offer a more intuitive user experience, enabling better task organization and quicker resource access. Highlights include:

• The helps enhance personalization for end users, including personalization export/import and improved language support for System News. Watch a to learn more.
• facilitates information sharing in Microsoft Teams, helping to enhance collaborative efforts across platforms. Watch a to see it action.

• Contact card collaboration is now possible by initiating chats, calls, or video meetings directly from the . Watch a to see how.

Transforming to Intelligent and Sustainable Finance

One important aspect is treasury and risk management, . Our latest finance enhancements are specifically designed to help elevate businesses into sustainable, intelligent enterprises:

• can increase transparency and process health, helping to ensure a more robust compliance structure in your financial operations.

• in 51·çÁ÷Analytics Cloud allows planning alongside economic sustainability goals. This can provide a dual perspective on financial metrics and environmental impact, aiding in the development of eco-responsible strategies and identification of related financial risks.

• The focuses on seamless data management for enhanced efficiency in real estate and contract management processes.

Powering Service-Centric Companies

We have seen a spike in service-centric companies using 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and were named a leader in this area by . Based on feedback from our customers and partners, we are continuously improving the product experience. Examples include:

• The can offer a detailed project overview, enabling managers to monitor project health and address issues like missing time entries, pending invoices, or unassigned roles. This can allow for more proactive and efficient project management.

• The improved billing solution helps prevent revenue losses and streamline billing processes for increased flexibility and accuracy. Enhancements include , , and , all within the Manage Project Billing app.
• The 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform (51·çÁ÷BTP)-based module of 51·çÁ÷Subscription Billing is tightly and seamlessly integrated. It can support customers’ transitions to subscription-based commercial models. Effective and detailed profitability analysis becomes instrumental to maximize revenue with tailored subscription-pricing models with the . Take a look at our brand-new .
• Advanced solution order management can elevate your sales strategies. By , we provide the tools to help enhance your solution selling approach, working to ensure that every sales opportunity is maximized for optimal results, enhancing the process from ordering to billing and accounting.

Boosting Manufacturing and Product-Centric Companies

The enhancements for product-centric companies help elevate operational efficiency, streamline processes, and unlock new revenue opportunities. . Highlights of the 2402 update include:

• For manufacturing sectors operating under the produce and sell standard products model, we now offer . This synergy allows you to leverage comprehensive data insights for precise production planning, helping to ensure that your manufacturing processes align seamlessly with market demand.
• is tailored for businesses in a two-tier ERP setting and can simplify direct shipments from suppliers to customers with enhanced order fulfillment, greater sourcing flexibility, and reduced logistical expenses.

• The helps improve the combined sales of a physical good and a service and enables you to increase revenue by selling combinations of physical products, one-time services, and recurring services. This also helps to avoid errors and reduce manual effort.

Enhancing Global Reach

We further invested in localization, so our software complies with local regulations and cultural norms:

• With the 2402 update we are to meet specific regional requirements.
• We , responding to customer needs and enhancing local compatibility.
• We enhanced scope in our Customer Local Version countries (formerly CLT) to include baseline, finance, and now product-centric capabilities, catering to a wider range of customer needs.

And So Much More…

Throughout this year, we will deliver many more innovations that help bring value to your business. For more details around what is being delivered for the 2402 update, see the . For more information on 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition:

• Watch product videos on ourÌý
• Explore the early release webinar series 
• See what’s new 
• Visit on the 51·çÁ÷Help Portal site
• Explore extensibility options by leveraging sample scenarios from 51·çÁ÷in the tool
• Learn more about

Arpan Shah is SVP of Public Cloud ERP Product Management at SAP.

Modern and Intelligent Experience

We deliver a built-in, intelligent, modern experience across all our business processes and are delivering several enhancements to help make the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud, public edition user experience more modern, productive, and collaborative for end users and IT. Some highlights include:

• The existingÌý has been enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI) and now enables auto-completion of sales order data. Follow-up processes, such as delivery of the sales order, may be blocked if certain information is missing when a sales order is created. The incompletion log now warns the user whenever a configurable set of fields is incomplete, helping to ensure missing data is manually filled in. The user is assisted by receiving recommendations of the most probable values for these fields, based on historic data. This solution is planned for delivery later this year.
• You can access your work through spaces and pages in My Home on any device. With the 2308 release, you can now to your needs by adding, removing, or adapting the sort order of spaces displayed.

  

• The feature is now generally available. You can accelerate decision-making and improve collaboration by sharing business data from 51·çÁ÷Fiori apps through tabs in Microsoft Teams channels, groups, and chats.

• is SAP’s new central entry point for all 51·çÁ÷cloud business solutions. It provides intuitive and easy access to the most relevant business information from all integrated 51·çÁ÷cloud solutions in one central place. This is now available for all 51·çÁ÷customers with a RISE with 51·çÁ÷or GROW with 51·çÁ÷contract, or an 51·çÁ÷Build Work Zone standard subscription and will be available to all customers soon.

• Your IT users can now use the System News in My Home to get an overview of relevant system news. No additional tools or information sources are required. This helps reduce efforts to identify what information is relevant for your system and reduce the risk to miss critical system information.

• Your IT users can also define color-coding for different system types, such as development or test. A color-coded system info bar in the header of 51·çÁ÷Fiori launchpad indicates the system role and system name.

Core ERP Innovations

With seamless and modern project management, billing, and planning experiences, organizations can run their service business and financial processes effectively. Here are some highlights for finance and service-centric industries:

• The buying 360 capability empowers your casual users to shop via catalogs and marketplaces with full transparency on their requests. They can get tailored recommendations and be guided through the procurement process while the system helps ensure compliance, including approval processes. The processes are highly automated and require the attention of the operational purchasers only in exceptional cases. This allows buyers to focus on higher-value activities and can increase user satisfaction.

• The enable you to use credit management in sales items, service order items, and service contract items so that the solution can be provided without financial risk. This helps avoid revenue loss by checking the creditability of your customers before starting the delivery and service fulfillment.

• We facilitate the financial close process for accountants by providing . We have added the new 51·çÁ÷Fiori apps Manage Balance Validation Rules and Groups and View Balance Validation Results to enable maintenance and execution of validation rules. These apps are seamlessly integrated with 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud for advanced financial closing to help further increase automation and acceleration of entity closing.

• The new version of offers significantly enhanced usability based on user research, including direct access to more related apps and functions, greater detail in the list of journal entries, and clearer navigation between journal entries and line items.

We are committed to continuously expanding our set of ready-to-use capabilities needed to run your business processes. Here are some of the 2308 highlights for product- and manufacturing-centric industries:

• By using , you can increase efficiency by grouping warehouse request items into waves and releasing them together as packages.
• Transportation demand and capacities are frequently measured by floor space in trucks and containers. You can now use consistently in the entire process from demand generation, planning, and subcontracting to charge calculation and settlement.
• With the for milestone-based supply chain monitoring of materials and proactive handling of risks, we enable reporting with analytical capabilities across the field logistics supply chain for all logistics items throughout forward and return processes.

SaaS Foundation

Our software-as-a-service (SaaS) foundation helps ensure that businesses can streamline their operations, reduce manual efforts, and focus on their core activities while staying compliant with local regulations. In addition to localization, we invested heavily in other foundational topics, such as an improved E2E onboarding experience to make it easier for you to get up and running.

• We now offer four .
• Multiple scope items for the existing standard were released to increase business scope across the countries.
• Three new countries (India, Mexico, and South Korea) have been developed for 51·çÁ÷Billing and Revenue Innovation Management.
• We with mass upload from Excel templates for over 1,200 configuration objects in 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud, public edition by using 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform (51·çÁ÷BTP). This allows you to save time and effort when setting up your business configurations.
• The extension of the baseline implementation for professional services results in a 70% reduction in time to value for your initial implementations thanks to predefined accelerators. We can accelerate your implementation to under 37 days by offering templates and automation for configuration, data migration, and testing.

For more information on 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, check out these links:

• Latest 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud release and
• Product videos on ourÌý
• Explore 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud extensibility options by leveraging the sample scenarios from 51·çÁ÷in the tool
• For more details around what is being delivered for 2308, seeÌýon 51·çÁ÷Community

Arpan Shah is senior vice president of Public Cloud ERP Product Management at SAP.

Over the last year, we have been pleased to see an increase in user adoption and customer satisfaction, and we always look for ways to make the product better based on customer and partner feedback.

Modern Experience

We are taking collaboration and user experience to the next level, enabling users to collaborate easily and make better decisions based on business data and processes. Some of the 2302 highlights include:

• The feature released through an : As the name suggests, users can collaborate with their colleagues directly in Microsoft Teams by adding live data based on 51·çÁ÷Fiori elements as tabs in their Teams channels.

• , initially delivered with 2208, that orchestrate information, tasks, and applications and allow users to do their daily activities more effectively and efficiently.

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• The provides functional usage and experience data in an automated way in to help customers to understand their investment return value, monitor their adoption and consumption, and make data-driven decisions based on their own company usage.

Core ERP Innovations

We strive to enable users to get up and running with out-of-the-box business processes based on industry best practices. We are committed to expanding our set of ready-to-use capabilities customers need to run their businesses.

Highlights for product and manufacturing-centric industries include:

• Innovations to enhance end-to-end process visibility and efficiency such as the to support business transformations from products to higher-margin services and solutions by offeringÌýcombined quote and orders including products and service contracts.
• Increased flexibility, granularity, and ease in selecting the orders that are relevant to the user with a new that allows users to choose their area of responsibility with respect to the orders.
• With the new and modernized , relevant data can be intuitively accessed with quick views and an additional column through a modernized look and feel and a flexible materials list.

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Highlights for finance and service-centric industries include:

• Functionality to improve project planning and project resource management by providing to increase efficiency in building ESG data collection forms by using sample forms as reference​.
• Increased flexibility in billing preparation through a released to enable external applications and resource related billing processes.
• With the new , flexible options for capacity analysis are provided, delivering insights about offered or available capacity within a flexibly defined timeframe, and about offered or available capacity, based on flexible aggregation options.

ÌýSaaS Foundation

Customers operate globally and keep up with ever-evolving legal mandates. We are committed to delivering a global service and now support 51 local versions. In addition to localization, in release 2302, we heavily invested in other foundational topics, such as two-tier ERP, in-product accelerators, and extensibility, including:

• The addition of three new SAP-delivered local versions in 2302 forÌý.ÌýÌýwith general availability to all customers planned for 2308.
• The switch to Euro in Croatia was effective January 1, 2023. Financial reports have to be compiled using Euro and a is now available.
• Global organizations are increasingly adopting a multi-site ERP strategy to run their global businesses on two or more ERP systems to meet their market needs. The following are now available: , for better coverage on the material demand and supply planning of replenishment elements between tier-1 and tier-2 systems; and , which enables the system to predict future cash flows that can be used as reference data in long term liquidity planning.
• The released and in-product accelerators — including automation bots, templates, and bundles — reduce time to value and accelerate customer implementations.
• Extensibility is a key attribute of every scenario, and we deliver an extensive range of cloud and tools to support these scenarios without compromising innovation updates.

And So Much More

Throughout this year we will deliver many more innovations that bring value to our customers. For more details around what is being delivered for 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud 2302, see Bert Schulze’s .

More Information on 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud

• Latest 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud and
• Product videos: and
• : Explore 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud extensibility options by leveraging the sample scenarios from SAP

Arpan Shah is senior vice president of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Product Management at SAP.

That is what 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud is all about.

We deliver innovation on a regular basis, and we do not just deliver ERP capabilities that support new business processes and models, but also modern experiences that simplify the way people and businesses work. It is humbling to be able to do this, as many customers — such as and — trust 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud to run their businesses. (.)

I want to share some of the innovation highlights from the most recent August (2208) release.

Modern, Fast, Intuitive User Experience

The user experience (UX) of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud lets users easily access business processes and data. We deliver tailored experiences across a wide range of devices, including laptops, tablets, and phones.

Our customers want an easy way for their user base to collaborate and make better decisions based on business data and processes. For example, there may be blocked sales orders or supply chain issues; you may need your sales team to review metrics or your marketing team to be aware of product delays. We make it easy for any user to collaborate using their preferred productivity tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Office, and Google Workspace.

Some of the new UX highlights in the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud 2208 release include:

• New that delivers a clean, beautiful user experience across devices in a light and dark mode.
• Building on the functionality of 51·çÁ÷Fiori launchpad, orchestrates information, tasks, and applications so that you can do your job with speed and agility.
• offers easy sharing, plus a new , and an Excel add-in for analytics.

Best-in-Class Product and Service-Centric Functionality

We are committed to enabling all organizations to operate globally. Whether you are an organization that sells services or products, we deliver out-of-the-box pre-configured business processes built on industry best practices. We focus on time to value so you can be up and running quickly. We have even been recognized as cloud ERP leaders, both service-centric and product-centric, by analysts including IDC and Gartner.

Other 2208 highlights include:

Support for , meeting business and legal requirements, including Bulgaria, Colombia, Chile, and Qatar.

For service-centric industries, we are releasing functionality to improve project planning and project resource management. You can now . It is also possible to improve and .

For product-centric industries — alongside innovations to enhance the end-to-end process visibility and efficiency such as the and stock transfer — we are introducing capabilities such as that reduce risk and costs of changes. To accelerate the pace and quality of decisions with an integrated information flow from planning to execution of an outbound transportation process, we are introducing the .

Designed for Extensibility and Lifecycle Management

While 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud delivers a wide range of ready-to-use core capabilities, we know that customers and partners want flexibility to extend based on their business needs. With that in mind, extensibility is a key attribute of every scenario — not an afterthought. We deliver an extensive range of cloud and tools to support these scenarios without compromising innovation updates. If you are curious about the different extensibility capabilities, check out the sample scenarios on the ÌýThe allows the building of extensions directly in 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud and makes extension options even more powerful.

Extensibility and lifecycle management highlights include:

51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud already offers extension capabilities for business users with a low-code/no-code tooling and the possibility to add functionality by . We will also provide an offering to implement new functionality directly on the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud stack to realize development projects that need a tight coupling of business processes — in-app available via a three-system landscape (3SL).

We expect to make generally available in the near future. In addition to quality and production systems, we are adding a dedicated development system to the 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud system landscape, giving you a more powerful, granular, and transparent distribution of developments and configuration changes. You can continuously implement, test, and deploy, even during a software update period.

Immersive Analytics and Intelligence

Whether it is quick actions and insights on the home page, embedded analytics in different places, or recommended actions and automation based on your data and goals, we strive to make our users more productive.

Highlights of this release include:

The supports accountants by automating payment advice processing. This artificial intelligence-supported capability enables automatic matching and clearing of invoice and payment items while creating more transparency and reducing otherwise time-consuming tasks.

With , purchasers can gain more transparency on the carbon footprints of their products with material movements. The data can be analyzed across various dimensions, such as by product category or plant. A trend view analyzes the carbon footprint across a timeline.

And Much More

At SAP, we stand on the shoulders of giants: 50 years of leadership in industries, 50 years of business applications innovation, 110,000 employees, 23,500 partners, and more than 100 development locations worldwide. The numbers are impressive, but what matters most is how we can help our customers run their businesses efficiently and securely.

Arpan Shah is senior vice president of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud at SAP.