SAP has made its latest update of their enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 generally available for enterprise use.
The German multinational has included a couple of new features in the 1808 update, aimed squarely at the manufacturing and professional services industries.
Recently, SAP announced a triple collaboration with Accenture, Capgemini and Deloitte to drive up usage of their ERP cloud platform SAP S/4 HANA in June this year.
See Also: SAP Announces S/4 Hana Deal with Accenture, Capgemini, and Deloitte
What Are the New Features in the 1808 Update?
With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 update, there are some new features that build on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1805 release earlier in the year.
On the finance side, Smart Alerts have been introduced for SAP’s Financial Statement Insights, which aims to detect unusual business situations involving revenue and cost accounts.
Anomaly Detection has also been introduced with SAP RealSpend where it uses machine learning to detect expenses involving fraud, seasonal effects, wrong bookings and unusual amounts.
Manufacturing also has some new features included in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 update, including capacity evaluation and adjustment.
SAP has introduced a feature on their SAP Fiori app called “Manage Work Center Capability”.
The feature allows the user to “detect and resolve overload situations” while also visualising and utilising bucket types such as shifts, days or weeks.
Buffer positioning is also included in the 1808 Update for manufacturing, which allows the visualisation to position itself via a network graphic.
Professional Services
The SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 updates are not just restricted to manufacturing as there is a raft of extensive updates included for the professional services industry.
In the 1808 Update, individuals working in professional services who are using SAP S/4HANA Cloud now has a “Cap in Time and Expense Billing”.
Managers negotiating with a client about a project can now define what the upper limit cap is.
There is also the inclusion of a new “Staffing Analysis Application”, which is available for both Project Manager and Resource Manager Roles.
Alongside this, SAP has created a new app called “My Projects – Key Figures” where steering committee members can now track their project statuses.
Sven Denecken, SVP Product Management, Co-Innovation SAP S/4HANA at SAP commented in a blog post: “With the new app, they can easily analyse projects by different measures and dimensions, e.g., project types, statuses, priorities, or even financial information.
“Leveraging this view of key project data supports steering committee members in identifying risks in time.”
