Showing posts with label S/4HANA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label S/4HANA. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

SAP ECC and S/4HANA: The Ultimate Beginner's Comparison and Transition Guide

With growing enterprises recognizing the need for enhanced data management, real-time analytics, and streamlined user experiences, the transition to S/4HANA has become a strategic imperative. This guide aims to illuminate the fundamental disparities between SAP ECC and S/4HANA, equipping beginners with the knowledge and insights crucial for a successful transition. By exploring key features, business implications, and best practices for migration, this guide serves as an indispensable resource for those embarking on the journey towards S/4HANA.

SAP ECC and S/4HANA migration concept

Key Features and Functionalities of SAP ECC and S/4HANA

When comparing SAP ECC with S/4HANA, dissecting the core features and functionalities that set them apart is essential. The advancements in S/4HANA bring about a shift in data management, user interface, and analytical capabilities, revolutionizing how businesses operate within the SAP ecosystem.

Data Structure

SAP ECC: The traditional relational database structure of SAP ECC has been the cornerstone of enterprise data management, offering stability and predictability in data storage and retrieval.

S/4HANA: In contrast, S/4HANA harnesses the power of an in-memory database, enabling rapid data processing and real-time analytics. This architecture accelerates data access and paves the way for agile decision-making and enhanced business insights.

User Interface

SAP ECC: Known for its robust yet complex user interface, SAP ECC often requires extensive training and familiarity for optimal navigation and utilization.

S/4HANA: With a renewed focus on user experience, S/4HANA introduces a sleek and intuitive interface designed to simplify workflows and empower users with a seamless and responsive platform.

Real-time Analytics

SAP ECC: Historical data analysis and reporting in SAP ECC are typically batch-based, limiting the agility of decision-making processes.

S/4HANA: Leveraging real-time analytics, S/4HANA empowers organizations to glean instant insights from live data streams, enabling proactive decision-making and strategic responsiveness to market dynamics.

Business Implications and Benefits

The transition to S/4HANA bears profound implications for businesses, transcending mere technological upgrades to catalyze tangible operational and strategic advantages.

  1. Improved Efficiency: The streamlined data processing and real-time analytics in S/4HANA pave the way for unparalleled operational efficiency, enabling organizations to respond swiftly to market demands and internal requirements.
  2. Enhanced Decision-Making Capabilities: With instant access to actionable insights and predictive analytics, S/4HANA equips decision-makers with the tools to make informed, data-driven choices, fostering a culture of agile and proactive decision-making.
  3. Potential for Digital Transformation: By harnessing the advanced capabilities of S/4HANA, businesses position themselves at the forefront of digital transformation, fostering innovation and adaptability.

Planning the Transition from SAP ECC to S/4HANA

Transitioning from SAP ECC to S/4HANA demands meticulous planning and execution to ensure a seamless migration that minimizes disruptions and maximizes benefits. Here are essential steps and considerations for a successful transition:

  1. Comprehensive Evaluation: Begin by assessing the existing landscape and infrastructure to determine the readiness for S/4HANA migration. Conduct a thorough analysis to identify potential impact areas and establish clear migration objectives and timelines. Understanding the current state is crucial for devising an effective migration strategy.
  2. Strategic Planning: Formulate a detailed migration strategy tailored to your organization's needs. Consider data migration, system conversion, or reimplementation based on business requirements and constraints. Develop a roadmap that outlines the sequence of tasks, dependencies, and resource allocations to ensure a smooth transition process.
  3. Stakeholder Engagement: Engage key stakeholders, including IT teams, business units, and end-users, from the outset of the transition process. Foster open communication and collaboration to garner support and alignment for the migration effort. Involve stakeholders in decision-making processes and proactively address any concerns or resistance to promote buy-in and ownership of the transition.
  4. Training and Change Management: Develop a comprehensive training program to equip users with the necessary skills to leverage the enhanced functionalities of S/4HANA effectively. Offer training sessions, workshops, and documentation to ensure that users understand the changes and functionalities of the new system. Implement robust change management strategies to manage resistance and ensure a smooth transition. Communicate the benefits of S/4HANA adoption and provide support mechanisms to address any challenges encountered during the transition.

By following these steps and considerations, organizations can successfully navigate the transition from SAP ECC to S/4HANA, unlocking the new platform's full potential while minimizing disruptions to business operations.

SAP ECC and S/4Hana

Navigating Challenges and Solutions

Transitioning from SAP ECC presents inherent challenges that demand adept navigation and practical solutions. Here are some common hurdles and insight on how to mitigate them:

Data Migration Complexity: Data migration from legacy systems to S/4HANA requires meticulous planning and execution to ensure data integrity and consistency. Employing robust data migration tools and methodologies is imperative to streamline this process.

System Integration and Compatibility: Integrating S/4HANA with existing systems and external applications necessitates thorough compatibility checks and strategic integration frameworks. Leveraging middleware solutions and API-driven integration architectures can facilitate seamless system interoperability.

Change Management and User Adoption: Overcoming resistance to change and ensuring widespread user adoption of functionalities demand comprehensive change management strategies and user-centric training programs. Engaging end-users early in the process and fostering a culture of adaptability are pivotal to successful adoption.

Future-proofing with SAP ECC and S/4HANA

Embracing S/4HANA transcends immediate technological upgrades; it lays the foundation for future-proofing businesses in the dynamic space of enterprise technology. The advanced capabilities offer long-term benefits that are pivotal for innovation, scalability, and competitive edge:

Innovation and Agility: S/4HANA's streamlined architecture and real-time analytics empower businesses to innovate rapidly, adapt to market shifts, and capitalize on emerging opportunities, fostering a culture of continuous innovation.

Scalability and Flexibility: With its in-memory computing capabilities and cloud integration options, S/4HANA provides the scalability and flexibility necessary to accommodate evolving business needs and seamlessly handle expanding datasets and transaction volumes.

Competitive Advantage: Leveraging S/4HANA equips businesses to stay ahead, enabling swift responses to market dynamics, informed decision-making, and the agility to pivot strategies in response to industry disruptions.

By harnessing the future-proofing capabilities of S/4HANA, businesses can thrive in an era of rapid technological evolution and digital transformation, ensuring sustained relevance and resilience in the face of change.

Understanding the distinct features and benefits of S/4HANA is paramount for informed decision-making and future readiness. As enterprises navigate the enterprise technology space, embracing its advanced functionalities is a strategic leap toward future-proofing and sustained competitiveness.

Approyo offers specialized guidance and support to unlock the full potential of S/4HANA. If you would like more information, you can visit our website.

Would you be ready to start your transformation? Please send us a message at info@approyo.com or give us a call at 877-277-7696 to ensure your enterprise is prepared for the future.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The Need for an Intelligent ERP System in the Utilities Industry

A radical change in the utility industry is occurring at a rapid pace. Changes in technologies, business models, standards, and the makeup of utility companies themselves require constant adaptation. Utilities must be able to respond to rapidly changing conditions, yet still comply with all standards. How does a digital core with a true single source of truth help?

Agility
A digital core is an IT architecture that offers stability and long-term reliability for core enterprise processes, yet also provides the flexibility to adapt quickly to new opportunities, challenges, and regulations. This solid foundation gives you a single source of truth, which in turn enables flexibility for innovation to accommodate things like new business models, new regulations, and business events, such as mergers or acquisitions.

Managing Big Data
Every utility company needs the computing capability to carry out complex algorithms with large data sets to support timely, real-time analysis. Everyone in the company must have access to data they need, whenever and wherever they need it. This is also true for the rest of the utility ecosystem so that suppliers can stay up to date with a company’s orders; customer service
agents can see customer history for billing, service, and consumption information; and maintenance teams can accurately monitor asset performance.

Innovation
Utilities must transform to grow profits and reduce costs by simplifying their operations. The value of the digital economy is based on how the consumer or “prosumer” (producer and consumer of energy) is served. Value creation often comes from edge solutions that are based on and coordinated by digital core solutions. It is the framework for innovation and business process optimization, connecting the workforce, suppliers, customers, assets, and the supply network.

Analysis
It is crucial to get the right information at the right time on the right device. Plant processes are supported or controlled by predictive and self-learning systems that interact with machines and business processes. Predictive analytics and machine learning (ML) accelerate the delegation of business processes and decisions from people to machines. People who need the knowledge have digital access on demand and in real time, regardless of whether they are part of the core or the extended workforce.

Stand apart in a world that never stands still – with SAP S/4HANA powered by Approyo
Your business isn't generic. Your ERP shouldn't be either. SAP S/4HANA powered by Approyo provides utility companies with industry best practices built from decades of experience – and allows them to bring cutting-edge innovation in the cloud to their core processes, be it customer engagement, predictive maintenance, or usage-based billing. So they can attain the operational excellence they need to deliver the ultimate customer experience.

  • Industry Insight - A world of rapid technological change – distributed energy resources, microgeneration, batteries, microgrids, and electrical mobility – and social media adoption is forcing providers of electricity to rethink how they work, the services they provide, and their business models. The most successful companies will flexibly manage demand, enabled by insights garnered from smart technologies.
  • Customer Success - SAP S/4HANA provides re-engineered and simplified business activities transforming the execution from multistep, batch-driven processes with latency in terms of key performance indicators to real-time processes with actionable insights to accelerate invoice processing, increase cash flow, and protect revenue assurance.
  • Productivity Improvement - SAP S/4HANA empowers call-center agents and field workers with an end-user centric, consumer-grade experience because, for utilities, it's the call-center agents that add value to customer engagements and field workers who deliver operational excellence.
  • Cost Savings - SAP S/4HANA powered by Approyo allows for real-time monitoring of asset health and can predict failure before it happens. Maintenance orders are triggered just in time, avoiding unnecessary inspections and decreasing the cost and risk of unplanned failure.

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Bringing SAP S/4HANA and SAP Leonardo technologies together as a digital core results in a more flexible and intelligent enterprise. Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Get started today...

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Approyo Among “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America” For Second Year in a Row According to Entrepreneur Magazine

Entrepreneur Magazine recognized Approyo, a leading enterprise SAP HANA Solutions Provider headquartered in Milwaukee, as one of the “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America” on its 2019 Entrepreneur 360™ List, the most comprehensive analysis of private companies in America. This is the second year in a row that Approyo has been honored by Entrepreneur Magazine for its impact, innovation, growth, leadership, and value.

“It is an honor to be recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine for the second consecutive year,” says Christopher M. Carter, CEO of Approyo. “2019 has been a great year of growth for the team at Approyo and this recognition further validates our success in the SAP ecosystem. Thank you to our team, partners and customers.”

"Every entrepreneur knows that a healthy business isn't just about growth. It's about being well-rounded—growing your culture and your systems as strongly as you grow your revenue," says Jason Feifer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine. "That's why we're excited to celebrate these companies with our fifth annual Entrepreneur 360. The companies that make the ranking have pushed boundaries with their innovative ideas, fostered strong company cultures, impacted their communities for the better, strengthened their brand, and grown impressively as a result."

Honorees were identified based on the results from a comprehensive study of independently owned companies, using a proprietary algorithm and other advanced analytics. The algorithm was built on a balanced scorecard designed to measure five metrics reflecting major pillars of entrepreneurship — innovation, growth, leadership, impact and business valuation.

For additional details on the E360 List and the companies recognized, visit: entrepreneur.com/360

About Entrepreneur Media, Inc.
For 42 years, Entrepreneur Media Inc. has been serving the entrepreneurial community by providing comprehensive coverage of business and personal success through original content and events. Entrepreneur magazine, Entrepreneur.com, GreenEntrepreneur.com and publishing imprint Entrepreneur Press provide solutions, information, inspiration and education read by millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners worldwide. To learn more, visit entrepreneur.com.

Friday, September 20, 2019

SAP S/4HANA: The Speed and Power of Simplification

SAP S/4HANA eliminates the complexities of legacy ERP databases, giving organizations a vastly simplified digital core with access to business-critical data in real time. The “S” in SAP S/4HANA is a nod to SAP's legacy business suite. SAP S/4HANA is optimized for SAP HANA, which supports a data model that simplifies the business computing environment dramatically. To take full advantage of this design, SAP S/4HANA was created to reimagine and recode the business suite from the ground up.

REUNIFICATION
Traditionally, the typical enterprise computing environment has been split between online transactional processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP). This split is a compromise made long ago: each system gets a copy of the original transactional data, commonly in a different data model, with each optimized for the type of workload (OLTP versus OLAP) in that system. This compromise, though, comes at the cost and complexity of managing two separate environments and moving data between them. Because SAP HANA can support performing analytical calculations and transformations on the fly, organizations can now bring OLTP and OLAP together again. Gone are the complex “helper structures” (indexes and data aggregate tables) that are used to overcome system performance issues running at the speed of disk. Now, with a simplified data model and the speed of in-memory processing, organizations can perform analytics on all data (live and historical) in a single environment – in the moment, as needed.

SIMPLICITY
By redesigning ERP for SAP HANA, the SAP S/4HANA reduces the number of tables dramatically across a wide range of functions. Take, for instance, finance and controlling. While in the past, data was structured in subledgers (accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, asset accounting, cost center accounting, and so on), today they run on a single universal journal. This universal journal brings together postings related to finance (FI) and controlling (CO) in one single source table. The integrity of financial data is guaranteed by design, eliminating reconciliation effort between FI and CO and ensuring that every-one can always access the most current data. Teams are aligned and more effective because the complexity has been removed. Forecasting is faster and more accurate. Key performance indicators such as days sales outstanding (DSO) are avail-able in real time on a granular level. Profit center reporting, profitability analysis, and other real-time analytics performed on top of the universal journal become a reality.

As much as this simplification helps SAP, it also helps our customers. The SAP Tax Compliance application, for example, helps to streamline tax compliance through an automated tax control framework and now runs in SAP S/4HANA instead of a separate system that requires data replication. This application provides an enterprise-wide repository of compliance checks and enables corrections continuously during the current declaration period, freeing tax specialists from searching for anomalies. This simplification to a single source of truth supports new benefits – such as a comprehensive enterprise search. Now business users can search for master data and documents across different LoBs and across systems for a holistic view of the enterprise with zero latency in a modern user interface. At the same time, a built-in authorization framework helps to minimize administrative overhead and enable single sign-on so that users can work across LoBs in a secure fashion, without impediments.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY FOR THE INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE
A simplified data model is imperative for intelligent technologies, such as machine learning. Traditional database models that maintain acceptable performance only with added complexity simply cannot scale to meet the needs of machine learning deployments. To run simulations, train algorithms, and improve visibility into what’s coming next, technologies need a data model up to the task. SAP S/4HANA is leveraging machine learning technology in the solution itself. One example is accelerated accounts receivable. With legacy databases and complex data models, accounts receivable can be an error-prone process that crosses multiple systems to match purchase orders to invoices. With SAP Cash Application software on SAP S/4HANA, machine learning technology does the matching automatically – and gets better over time with the addition of new data.

THE DIGITAL CORE
With SAP HANA as its foundation, SAP S/4HANA serves as a digital core for the business – one that helps drive business agility, improve customer experiences, and increase business performance.

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Get started today... 

Monday, September 16, 2019

Top Reasons to attend SAP TechEd Las Vegas

SAP TechEd is the single best technical training program of the year offered by SAP. The experiences and content offered at this event are in alignment with both my personal development needs AND the interests of our organization’s development, growth, and success.

Network
Your SAP Community, your peers, innovative customers,  and the technology experts you trust. All in one place for you to make purposeful connections. A unique opportunity in a great community.

Further your SAP Career
Attend for the information, training, and education you need today. Then future-proof your career with essential skills for your role in your organization’s intelligent enterprise.

SAP Knowledge
Seven tracks. 32 Learning Journeys. Over 600 sessions.  SAP experts and customers delivering best practices,  how-to tips, and advice. Get insight into the innovation and new technologies that will put you at the front of the pack.  Collaborate with SAP technology gurus to get the answers you need. One-on-one engagement, demos, sessions, and hands-on experiences foster brain-storming,  problem-solving, and actionable solutions.

SAP Strategy
Look to the future with product road maps to get answers to your questions about what comes next.  Discuss – and even influence – future product functionality through direct contact with strategists.

Attend our session
Approyo CEO Christopher Carter will be speaking at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas on Wednesday, September 25 from 9:30am - 10:15am PST. His session, A Real-Life Journey on the Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 1809, will look at what it takes for a company to migrate or upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 1809.

Friday, September 6, 2019

Industry Capabilities with SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA is an intelligent, integrated ERP system that runs on the in-memory database, SAP HANA. It can help you:

  • Address industry-specific requirements with proven best practices for 26 verticals and enable new business models as your marketplace evolves
  • Revolutionize business processes with intelligent automation — supported by artificial intelligence and robotic process automation
  • Make better decisions faster with embedded analytics, a conversational interface, and digital assistants
  • Meet your IT landscape goals with hybrid, cloud, and on-premise scenarios that share a consistent data model, code line, and user experience

Here are just a few capabilities that SAP S/4HANA provides across multiple industries:

  • Simplify asset operations and maintenance - Maximize asset value, control risks, and help ensure safety with a holistic view of asset status to plan maintenance activities with the right person, tools, resources, and integrated documentation. 
  • Manage environmental, health, and safety risks - Execute tasks in critical environments with a complete view of compliance and safety measures, so you can identify risks and regulations, define priorities, implement controls, and track incidents.
  • Maintain service agreements - Provide a single contract for all outcome-based services and reduce administrative burden by consolidating and maintaining task lists, catalogues, maintenance plans, and warranty information.
  • Provide customer-oriented services - Engage with customers across a multitude of channels to offer packaged service offerings; manage complaints, claims, returns, and refunds; and schedule and dispatch field services to fulfill service orders.
  • Streamline service parts management - Optimize parts logistics and inventory processes with real-time visibility across all supply locations to source service parts globally and ensure their availability.
  • Streamline Core HR and payroll processes - Integrate employee master data, organizational data, and cost-center-related information from the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution to speed reorganizations and other end-to-end processes.

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Get started today...

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Approyo CEO Christopher Carter to present at SAP TechEd Las Vegas

We are excited to announce that our CEO Christopher Carter will be speaking at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas on Wednesday, September 25 from 9:30am - 10:15am PST. His session, A Real-Life Journey on the Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 1809, will look at what it takes for a company to migrate or upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 1809.

This session will look into the process used to migrate to SAP S/4HANA 1809. We will discuss the pitfalls, the success, and the overall project. We will not dig into the details on failed activities but will give everyone a sense of the timing and skill set needed to be able to accomplish such a herculean task.

Make sure you add this to your agenda at SAP TechEd.

SAP TechEd is the single best technical training program of the year offered by SAP. The experiences and content offered at this event are in alignment with both my personal development needs AND the interests of our organization’s development, growth, and success.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Approyo to showcase SAP S/4HANA Migrations and Upgrades at TC Sessions: Enterprise

The Approyo team is proud to announce that we will be attending this years Tech Crunch TC Sessions: Enterprise as a Featured Startup on September 5 in San Francisco, CA. Our team will be on-hand at the event talking about migrations and upgrades to SAP S/4HANA. We invite all attendees to stop by our table and speak with one of our experts. We also want to send out a personal invitation to SAP CEO Bill McDermott to stop by our table while he is at the event!

The Session is a full day of interviews with enterprise software leaders, rising founders, and VCs that are ahead of the game as well as breakout sessions, exhibiting startups, and networking opportunities.

Speakers Include:

Aaron Levie, Co-Founder & CEO (Box)
Aparna Sinha, Director, Product Management for Kubernetes & Anthos (Google)
Bill McDermott, CEO, (SAP)
George Brady, CTO (Capital One)
Jim Clarke, Director of Quantum Hardware (Intel)
Sanjay PoonenChief Operating Officer, Customer Operations, (VMware)
Scott Farquhar, Co-founder & Co-CEO (Atlassian)

About TC Sessions: Enterprise
No category in tech is bigger or more ferociously competitive than enterprise software. The race to deliver productivity tools to the business world produces hundreds of new startups and a steady stream of multi-billion dollar acquisitions every year. Silicon Valley is the epic-center of all that and TechCrunch's editors can't wait to dig in on the top enterprise trends and companies at TC Sessions: Enterprise.

Friday, June 21, 2019

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact Distribution

The digital economy is disruptive. Wholesale distribution companies need strategic priorities that drive transformation into intelligent enterprises. SAP powered by Approyo supports a reimagined set of end-to-end business scenarios that are part of a digital environment.
  • Using value-added services to create new revenue sources - For years, most distributors have been providing value-added services, many of which have been free of charge. Leading distributors will take these value-added services to the next level and use them to significantly increase revenue and bottom-line profitability. Distributors should consider providing customers with a menu of options such as light manufacturing, sensor-based services, training and consulting services, or lending services.
  • Becoming a real-time distributor - Companies everywhere face volatile customer demand and heightened service expectations. Innovative technologies can help resolve these issues by providing vital business information across the network, improving real-time analysis, and enabling better collaboration across departments and trading partners – thus transforming the supply chain into a responsive network.
  • Building lasting customer relationships - Build trusted relationships with customers by empowering sales teams and personalizing buyer engagements. Provide a vast variety of ordering channels from call centers, Web sites, text messages, and in-person interaction to deliver the exact products and services customers need when they need them. The customer experience today constitutes a lifecycle, not just an interaction restricted to the front end of the enterprise.
Leading wholesale distributors are transitioning into information-centric companies that utilize new business models to gain competitive advantage and deliver premium, consistent customer service. Digital transformation fosters operational excellence, specifically across order management and inventory management processes, providing wholesale distributors with real-time information and the ability to drive immediate impact with intelligent ERP.

Responding to rapid changes
A digital core is an IT architecture that offers stability and long-term reliability for core enterprise processes, yet also provides the flexibility to adapt quickly to new opportunities, challenges, and regulations. This solid foundation gives you a single source of truth, which in turn enables flexibility for innovation to accommodate things such as new business models, new regulations, and business events, such as mergers or acquisitions.

Simulation and analytics
The ability to respond quickly is an essential part of managing a wholesale distribution company. To do this, simulation, prediction, and analytical capabilities are important components. Data is critical for gaining the insight to make decisions. This insight must be at a granular level, so that decision-makers have the details they need to understand trends, opportunities, and risks, and quickly carry out what-if analysis using predictive algorithms.

Keeping data under control
Every wholesale distribution company needs the computing capability to carry out complex algorithms with large data sets to support timely, real-time analysis. Everyone in the company must have access to data they need, whenever and wherever they need it. This is also true for the rest of the ecosystem so that suppliers can stay up to date with a company’s orders, salespeople can see customer history for credit risk and stock information, and accurate delivery schedules can be provided.

Addressing innovative opportunities
Customers in every industry are demanding innovation. Companies are responding with new products and services that better meet individual needs. These new offerings impact every facet of business, not just the front office. Companies must address end-to-end (E2E) processes across departments and lines of business to deliver on new customer experiences, products, and services.

Enhance and Extend Next-Generation Processes with Intelligent ERP
Bringing SAP S/4HANA and SAP Leonardo technologies together as a digital core results in a more flexible and intelligent enterprise. To achieve next-generation business processes and respond to rapid changes, companies need an intelligent ERP solution that can be continuously enhanced and extended with innovative business services and applications built on emerging technologies, including machine learning, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Wholesale distributors focused on innovation or who prefer to be early adopters have already begun this journey.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Intelligent Finance with SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP S/4HANA is the digital core – the nerve center – of your entire business. It consolidates internal and external elements into a single, living structure that goes beyond traditional ERP. In other words, it connects all of your processes, provides you with live information and insights, and seamlessly integrates your enterprise with the digital world at large.

Finance on SAP S/4HANA is a set of comprehensive solutions designed to help the office of the CFO meet the demands of a digital economy. It is part of the market-leading, best-in-class finance solution portfolio from SAP, built on a modern digital core that harnesses the benefits of the SAP HANA platform.

Increasing efficiency in operational finance with next generation automation scenarios
With the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release SAP has added multiple new highly automated scenarios lifting the level of automation to the next level:
  • The goods and invoice receipt reconciliation process, not only all relevant information is brought together in just one screen, but by integrating our digital assistant into the process, users experience a much more fluent collaboration. All aimed at quicker and more efficient reconciled items. On top of that, we planned for October complementing machine learning capabilities to add pro-active recommendations to resolve specific issues.
  • As part of the evolution towards a continuous close, the introduction of a new highly automated process supports us in making the accrual management process not only more efficient but more accurate as well.
With SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, further enhancements are added to enable a more complete real-time margin analysis, including predictions through:

SAP further improved our real-time margin analysis with integrating profitability information in the universal journal

The introduction of predictive accounting, which unlike mathematics-based predictions make use of the already available document flow to predict financial results of the future

To cope with a changing organizational view, responding to the need for better insights not only for entity but also at the business unit or group level in a more automated way, new key components are being introduced:
  • Group reporting – The need to deliver accurate, up-to-date financial information continuously in a company’s consolidation process is not limited to the level of an individual entity. Therefore, SAP has introduced the SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting solution which provides direct access to the underlying transactions and detail across the entire enterprise so that a company can confidently and efficiently consolidate their financial and managerial results required in their closing cycles. It enables organizations to extend this evolution towards a continuous financial close on group level. It provides unprecedented transparency by delivering a complete flow of collection, processing, analysis and publication of the information.
  • Embedded analytics – Most finance professionals will agree that it is often cumbersome to get interesting information out of their ERP system. Additional capabilities have been added to support business users in getting insights more flexibly and efficiently, so they can concentrate on acting on the information, rather than investing time in number crunching.
  • Tax service – Global tax regulations get more diverse, complicated and change more often than ever before. Keeping up with the pace of change, typically in multiple systems, is a challenge. SAP’s response is a central tax determination engine with rules and rates maintained by SAP or its partners. With the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, emphasis has been placed on enabling self-service tax management, facilitating an organizations chosen approach to reduce the risks and costs of inaccurate calculations and liability from non-compliance.
Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Get started today... 

Friday, June 7, 2019

Digital Supply Chain - New innovations with SAP S/4HANA

Supply chains are now a competitive differentiator based on their speed, agility, and insight. Customers’ unique needs must be met with personalized products, new business models, greater intimacy through Internet of Things insights and deeper real-time prediction and intelligence across the enterprise.

Intelligent enterprises across all industries are focused on business outcomes and innovation by leveraging an intelligent suite of applications, intelligent technologies, and digital platforms. Discover how SAP S/4HANA and other supply chain solutions from SAP can help your business turn digital innovation into a competitive advantage.

Prediction of stock-in-transit arrival
The ability for warehouse managers to predict the arrival date of a shipment and manage delivery delays. Prebuilt set of KPIs supports robust analytics for the business scenarios. Early and efficient visibility for stock transport orders that leads to reliable processes for planning and scheduling of goods in transit.

Real-time Inventory
Live inventory management that enables unlimited simultaneous material movements and true transparency on inventory and material flows. Decreased stock buffers due to better transparency and insights.

Advanced ATP
Intelligent, real-time product availability check for sales, planned, and production orders. Includes scalable available-to-promise (ATP) for managing large transaction volumes and flexible allocation management capabilities. Provides back-order processing with intuitive priority classification and interactive exception handling.

Improve production planning
Coordinate manufacturing operations across your organization including material requirements, logistics, and receipts for proper material handling, work in process, and inventory. You can also make plan adjustments based on real-time information from the enterprise, suppliers, and the plant floor.

Accelerate manufacturing workflows
Plan and schedule maintenance tasks synchronizing labor, material, equipment and schedules. Execute planned and unplanned maintenance to ensure optimal operations including improved safety and environmental impact.

Single platform for warehouse management
Reduced TCO by landscape simplification through native warehouse management with SAP S/4HANA; a single warehousing platform for all warehousing operations, including optimization, automation, and labor management.

Single platform for transportation management
Reduced TCO by landscape simplification through native Transportation Management with SAP S/4HANA; a single platform for transportation management with basic and advanced shipping functionality and real-time embedded analytics.

Demand-Driven MRP (DDMRP)
Dynamic planning of replenishments with demand-driven MRP (DDMRP) that is fully integrated into existing MRP concept. Replenishment only for real demand and introduction of buffers at strategically important points.

Friday, March 15, 2019

The Intelligent Enterprise powered by SAP HANA

The SAP HANA business data platform is unrivaled, combining a robust database with services for creating innovative applications. It enables real-time business by converging transactions and analytics on one in-memory platform. Running on premise or in the cloud, SAP HANA untangles IT complexity, bringing huge savings in data management and empowering decision-makers everywhere with new insight and predictive power.

Accelerate with Simplicity
An intelligent enterprise requires a business-ready data platform that helps you find the signal in the noise and unleash your data’s potential for better business outcomes. The SAP HANA business data platform provides the next-generation data management foundation for all of the industry-leading SAP® solutions. It also enables development of cutting-edge applications to deliver intelligent solutions for the enterprise quickly.

SAP HANA is one of the first data management platforms to handle both transactions and analytics in-memory on a single data set. It converges a future-proof database with advanced analytical processing and capabilities for application development, data integration, and data quality. Embedded in a robust, state-of-the-art security framework, it supports compliance with the latest security standards and data protection regulations. You gain a single secure environment for all your mission-critical data assets. You can manage large volumes of structured and unstructured data efficiently, leveraging the value of your business data while improving total cost of ownership (TCO).

Reimagine the Database
SAP HANA is built on an in-memory columnar store that is optimized for both transactional and analytical workloads, enabling the benefits of multicore processing, modern storage technology, and the single-instruction, multiple-data instruction set. It’s fully compliant with requirements for the atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) standards.

Intuitive modeling tools and preconfigured function libraries let you run complex business logic directly inside the database. That means you avoid latencies from moving data between the database and application server tiers.

Multitenant databases can be managed as one while maintaining their isolation from one another. The data tiering capabilities of SAP HANA, such as extension nodes, allow you to maximize your value by balancing performance and cost of data storage. This enables administrators to control which data is kept in-memory and which is kept in alternative persistent data storage. At the same time, the multistore tables in SAP HANA mean that where and how data is stored is completely transparent to consuming applications.

Act with Live Intelligence
SAP HANA provides next-generation hybrid transactional and analytical processing (HTAP) with the broadest advanced analytics capabilities to help business leaders understand information in context and achieve situational awareness to act in the moment. This includes native high-performance predictive and machine learning algorithms and integration with TensorFlow and R to reveal meaningful patterns in data and build applications that can learn and automate manual business processes. Text analysis and search capabilities help extract real insights from unstructured textual data in many different languages. Administrative boundary content, advanced services such as geocoding, and spatial services available in the cloud help accelerate development of location-aware business applications.

SAP HANA can store and query streaming data from sensors, plant equipment, and Internet of Things devices; time-series data such as price fluctuations and information on machine efficiency; and highly interconnected graph data. It also provides a JSON document store. These powerful capabilities can be leveraged with standard SQL, enabling data to be combined from standard relational databases, spatial and graph data, and data stored in a JSON document. A wealth of new possibilities helps you reimagine business models.


Innovate with Confidence
To achieve business insight in real time, SAP HANA helps you innovate with confidence. You can analyze sensitive data while effectively aligning with compliance requirements with real-time data anonymization. State-of-the-art techniques such as k-anonymity and differential privacy render personal data disconnected from an individual. This empowers business users and data scientists to “know without seeing” and explore new business opportunities for data as a service.

SAP HANA connects with existing applications using open standards and offers a choice of ways to build applications that are Web based or based on microservices. SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA offers a comprehensive lightweight tool set for data modeling and application development. Complex security authorizations can be easily shared between native applications and extensions running on SAP HANA and SAP business applications.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Thursday, February 7, 2019

9.5 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA today


SAP S/4HANA is the digital core – the nerve center – of your entire business. It consolidates internal and external elements into a single, living structure that goes beyond traditional ERP software. In other words, it connects all your processes, provides you with live information and insights, and seamlessly integrates your enterprise with the digital world at large.

SAP S/4HANA 1809
SAP S/4HANA 1809, released in late 2018, significantly increases the possibilities for digital transformation across all lines of business. Imagine giving voice commands to your SAP ERP system and obtaining instant analytics. Or automating a large portion of your business processes, freeing employees for value-added activities. The streamlined architecture of the 1809 release is also scalable, enabling you to drive growth and profitability.

Enter the Intelligent Enterprise
Intelligent enterprises effectively use their data assets to achieve their desired outcomes faster – and with less risk. SAP is committed to helping every customer become a smart, best-run  business and make the world run better. SAP S/4HANA 1809 is the core to the intelligent Enterprise.

Intelligent Technologies will help SAP Applications differentiate while at the same time natively comprehending the context of the business application. This includes higher-order intelligence with many scenarios oriented along business outcomes and relevant to lines of business, feedback mechanisms leveraging IoT and business networks as data sources for training feedback, as well as actionable insights in order to derive connecting insights to strategic decisions via a consistent User Experience (UX).

9.5 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA right now:

1. Improve order fulfillment
2. Increase customer satisfaction
3. Reduce manufacturing error rates
4. Reduce procurement costs
5. Respond to market fluctuations faster than ever
6. Streamline your supply chain
7. Improve your manufacturing cycle time
8. Streamline your supply chain
9. Reduce unplanned downtime
9.5 The Intelligent Enterprise

Download the Whitepaper: 9.5 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA right now

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

What's new in SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP S/4HANA® is a real-time enterprise resource management suite for digital business. It is built on advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA, and offers personalized, consumer-grade user experience with SAP Fiori. Deployable in the cloud or on premise, SAP S/4HANA can drive instant value across all lines of business – no matter your industry or business size.

SAP S/4HANA is the digital core – the nerve center – of your entire business. It consolidates internal and external elements into a single, living structure that goes beyond traditional ERP software. In other words, it connects all of your processes, provides you with live information and insights, and seamlessly integrates your enterprise with the digital world at large.

The Intelligent Enterprise
Intelligent enterprises effectively use their data assets to achieve their desired outcomes faster – and with less risk. SAP is committed to helping every customer become a smart, best-run business and make the world run better.

Intelligent Technologies will help SAP Applications differentiate while at the same time natively comprehending the context of the business application. This includes higher-order intelligence with many scenarios oriented along business outcomes and relevant to lines of business, feedback mechanisms leveraging IoT and business networks as data sources for training feedback, as well as actionable insights in order to derive connecting insights to strategic decisions via a consistent User Experience (UX).

SAP HANA 1809 - The Intelligent ERP
SAP S/4HANA 1809, released in late 2018, significantly increases the possibilities for digital transformation across all lines of business. Imagine giving voice commands to your SAP ERP system and obtaining instant analytics. Or automating a large portion of your business processes, freeing employees for value-added activities. The streamlined architecture of the 1809 release is also scalable, enabling you to drive growth and profitability.

Industry innovations:


  • Finance with Goods and Invoice Receipt Reconciliation leveraging machine learning, and the new SAP S/4HANA for Accruals Management, which is designed to support customers along the entire process of accruals
  • Central Procurement, a big step in ERP landscape simplification and a functionality that will help you increase transparency across the procurement systems
  • R&D innovation with the new Recipe Finder App and portfolio and project management analytics
  • Manufacturing and Demand-Driven Replenishment, the game changer that helps you plan and manage supply chains based on customer demand, and not only via the traditional MRP procedures
  • Retail and Fashion with new business scenarios including new planning strategies enhanced with segmentation functionality
  • Banking, coming this release with and Loans Management / Deposits Management enhancements
  • Public Sector, including major architecture simplifications
  • Utilities with a new Analysis of meter reading, supported by an extended virtual data model
  • Insurance, providing in that 1809 version a new Product configuration for insurance and digital products


Download our new Whitepaper: What's new in SAP S/4HANA today to learn more about the benefits and features of SAP S/HANA 1809.

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Demystifying SAP: Understand your Journey to SAP HANA

By 2025, SAP will no longer support SAP ECC 6, the core component of SAP ERP. This means you will need to upgrade your SAP systems. But what are your best upgrade options?

There are three common SAP cloud migration paths. Companies that want to start off slowly can undergo a traditional SAP cloud migration, moving their assets into the cloud without moving to SAP HANA at all. This allows you to show ROI quickly from running in the cloud, while minimizing initial disruption and lets you wait for the major SAP HANA and S/4HANA upgrade for a later date.

Another option is a migrating to Suite on HANA — with SAP ECC 6.0 Enhancement Pack 7 running on a HANA database. This gives you all the incremental benefits of HANA, such as faster performance and compatibility with newer applications and will get you close to a full S/4HANA landscape.

However, most companies will benefit from moving directly to S/4HANA. In most cases, a complete upgrade and migration will be less disruptive and less costly than several smaller upgrades and the new functionality will provide a major competitive advantage right away.

Understand what option is best for you and get started today
If you run ECC 6.0 or earlier version, you will need to upgrade by 2025. Don't wait, start planning for your best upgrade path now and schedule a complimentary consultation with our team. We will help you understand all of your options and help you choose the best path forward.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

SAP Releases SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP announced the latest version of SAP S/4HANA; SAP S/4HANA 1809. The latest release promises to continue on with SAP's commitment to both converting existing ECC functionality into S/4, as well as, introducing newer functions and features.

Here is an overview of SAP S/4HANA 1809 from sap.com

Innovations and Intelligence in SAP S/4HANA 1809

In the area of Procurement, SAP is delivering number of Machine Learning capabilities with SAP S/4HANA:

  • Increased invoice automation and efficient invoice monitoring for exception handling
  • Reduction of free-text items by automatically proposing the creation of a new catalog item
  • Proposal of material group for free-text items in purchase requisitions
  • Provision of options for materials without source of supply

Quotation Conversion Rates is an innovation in Sales and Distribution which truly delivers on the promise of an intelligent ERP. As an internal sales representative or a sales manager, you can use Quotation Conversion Rates to track to what extent your quotations are being converted into sales orders before expiring. By leveraging machine learning capabilities, you can gain predictive insights into quotation conversion by comparing actual and predicted results. The Quotation Conversion Probability (also known as Order Probability) is the probability that a quotation item will be converted into a sales order item. The probability, expressed as a percentage, and net value of the quotation is used in order to calculate a total expected order value.

In Manufacturing SAP is introducing Demand-driven replenishment. With the demand-driven buffer level management, you can plan and manage supply chains much more efficiently. Providing decoupling points with strategic stock positions, manufacturers can avoid the so-called “Bull-Whip-Effect”, where the variations in demand increases as you move further up the supply chain from customer to supplier.

Moreover, in inventory management, SAP included intelligence by leveraging predictive analytics and machine learning for decision support. Finance as well has quite a few intelligent innovations in store for you, for example predictive accounting. When a sales order is confirmed in the system, this is not recorded in accounting until goods have been delivered and the invoice has been sent. With the predictive accounting functionality, based on the sales order, a predictive goods issue and a predictive invoice is registered.

The Intelligent Suite build on the ingredients of the digital core
The Intelligent Suite will retain the modularity and flexibility of independent solutions while delivering a suite experience. Scenarios are business-driven and integrated, intelligent, and extensible. We embedded intelligence to deliver unmatched business value in each of the scenarios.

Intelligent Technologies
Intelligent Technologies will help SAP Applications differentiate while at the same time natively comprehending the context of the business application. This includes higher-order intelligence with many scenarios oriented along business outcomes and relevant to lines of business, feedback mechanisms leveraging IoT and business networks as data sources for training feedback, as well as actionable insights in order to derive connecting insights to strategic decisions via a consistent User Experience (UX).

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Approyo Named Among 10 Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the Year 2018 by The Silicon Review Magazine

Approyo today announced that The Silicon Review Magazine has named it among the ‘10  Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the year 2018.’

Silicon Review highlights Approyo’s competitive edge, attributing it to their method of offering cutting edge SAP HANA and S/4HANA solutions that can be migrated in easy and quick manner.

“The Silicon Review 10 Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the year 2018 program identifies companies which are revolutionizing the decision making process, and Winning a spot on this list indicates the company is one of the most trusted partner of SAP and is known for its simplest yet immaculate solutions for resource planning complexities,” said Sreshtha Banerjee, Editor-in-Chief of The Silicon Review Magazine. The publication has selected Approyo based on its strategic plans, ability to resist uncertainties, and the ability to predict the possible outcomes.

“We are honored to be recognized by The Silicon Review Magazine as the one of the 10 Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the Year 2018,” said Chris Carter, CEO at Approyo.

The magazine spotlights companies that provide leading, effective and groundbreaking technologies. For the full article, please visit Silicon Review.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Major Business Benefits of Moving to SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA is proving to be SAP’s most successful ERP system. SAP’s involvement with ERP solutions dates back to 1979 when SAP R/2 was launched. In 1992, SAP R/3 was introduced and we have continued to see improvements as the product has evolved from SAP ERP in 2004 to SAP S/4HANA in 2015. The launch of this 4th generation SAP ERP solution is timely, as it has coincided with new technologies and concepts that are driving global business operations, such as cloud services and mobile computing. SAP S/4HANA will replace the current SAP ERP product suite by the end of 2025

Empowering business to maximize the opportunities of new emerging technologies
New digital business models set demanding technical requirements. SAP S/4HANA is your way to a next generation, digitalized business platform. SAP S/4HANA runs only on SAP HANA, SAP’s flagship in-memory computing database. This means that running an SAP solution such as S/4HANA naturally takes advantage of the speed of transaction processing and reporting native to SAP HANA. S/4HANA allows you to experience better performance as it relates to complex and time driven business activities such as real-time planning, execution, reporting and analytics based on live data, as well as prompt period closing and improved forecasting. It also allows you provide a better service level for customer-centric applications

Access to real-time information to support decision-making
SAP S/4HANA brings you instant insight, as well as real-time access to all relevant data and results, enabling timely business decisions and faster planning and forecasting cycles. For example, real-time transparency allows the CFO to address and resolve possible issues as soon as they arise – not at month-end - leading to faster closing times.

Increased efficiency via automation
SAP S/4HANA’s unique combination of innovation and simplicity drives automated, real time business processes that boost productivity and are less
prone to error.

Innovation
SAP S/4HANA sets the stage for future innovation. Technology is evolving rapidly, which means merely ‘keeping up’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Enterprises have to stay ahead of the curve and make decisions that are future ready. SAP S/4 HANA applications leverage speed, context and data accessibility like never before. It is also driving cloud adoption by businesses, a platform which enables organizations to deliver innovative solutions and widens the capabilities offered by SAP S/4HANA itself.

Increased productivity
SAP S/4HANA streamlines business processes to deliver an expanded range of tangible benefits. Advanced analytics enable business users to access the data they need, instantly enabling transparency and faster reaction to changes in the business environment, while at the same time reducing the manual workload.

IT cost savings
S/4HANA simplifies your IT landscape and optimizes data volumes, removing parallel and overlapping data, to drive a reduction in ongoing operating costs and infrastructure investment.

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Approyo Named Among ‘Silicon 70’ by The Silicon Review Magazine

Approyo is proud to announce that it has been named to the Silicon 70 by The Silicon Review.

Silicon Review highlights Approyo’s competitive edge, attributing it to their method of offering cutting edge SAP HANA and S/4HANA solutions that can be migrated in easy and quick manner.

“The Silicon 70 edition identifies companies which are revolutionizing the technology and business marketplace, and winning a spot on this list indicates the company has distinguished itself being highly adaptive, innovative, customer centered, and having the ability to grow,” said Sreshtha Banerjee, Editor-in-Chief of The Silicon Review Magazine. The publication has selected Approyo based on its business strategies, service/product innovation, financial soundness, ability to attract key demographics, and the ability to conduct global business.

“We are proud to be part of this great list of companies" said Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo. "This achievement continues to validate our success in the SAP and Cloud marketplace.”

The magazine spotlights companies that provide leading, effective and groundbreaking technologies. For the full article, please visit Silicon Review.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Finance with SAP S/4HANA

Enterprises today are increasingly experiencing a new normal of volatility that is  fundamentally changing how they engage with their investors, customers, suppliers, regulators, and employees. This volatility is driven not only by traditional areas of currency exchange risk and commodity prices but also by macroeconomic volatility and rapidly changing consumer and employee preferences. Additionally, tax policy volatility and complex regulatory requirements are challenging finance to capture, analyze and provide deeper and more relevant real-time information.

The role of finance itself is evolving towards active engagement with business partners, simplifying and automating processes, enabling new questions to be asked that were never possible and delivering new insights during the decision-making process. Leading finance organizations are driving digital transformation and fundamentally changing the way they bill, collect, report, and pay taxes, and how they plan for and manage a constantly changing business. Finance’s role is expanding as it leans into innovation to creatively adapt to change, manage volatility, and to find new opportunities to create value.

SAP S/4HANA is the finance innovation platform that enables today’s digital business by bringing business processes and analytics together into a single, smooth, digital motion. It provides the foundation for continuous innovation by allowing customers to benefit from newest SAP Leonardo innovations as they emerge along with the ability to leverage extended finance for procurement, workforce management, travel & expense management, etc. The time to innovate and transform is now and SAP supports a live business for all roles of the office of the CFO.

SAP S/4HANA for central finance foundation
Provides a non-disruptive path to adopt SAP’s latest finance simplifications and innovations for customers with heterogeneous landscapes, out-of-maintenance, and/or highly customized SAP systems. It provides a unified financial and management platform to centralize process execution, planning, and reporting based on the same (single source of the truth) data. Benefits include advanced reporting at the segment, entity, or group level; business-model-agnostic rollups for reorganizations and M&A modeling; scalable local and central process execution (complementing process execution in source ERPs); and a starting point for finance shared services across business units.

Transformation platform for the digital enterprise
Create an advanced digital data architecture (universal journal), a platform to include future innovations, a single source of the truth for both transactions and analytics, and a digital core to include integration for workforce, network, customers, and new innovations enabled by SAP Leonardo, SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Field glass solutions.

Rapid value creation with minimal disruption
Massive simplification and optimization within SAP S/4HANA can be deployed with minimal business disruption to accelerate business value and capture and eliminate the need for overly complex processes.Additional value can be achieved by deploying solutions and templates within our SAP Activate methodology, standardizing master data using the SAP Master Data Governance application, and focusing effort on the reduction or elimination of legacy custom code.

 Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com