Flexibility and Agility of Innovations via CFD for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 Release

Agree or not, we’re all transcended to cloud evolution. Today, every business of every shape and size is adapting to cloud operations at an increased pace. But what most of us cease to realize is the perpetual delivery of innovative features by SAP S/4 HANA Cloud like CFD (Continuous Feature Delivery).

Why is that important, you ask? Well, simply because the flexibility and agility of the ERP enable organizations to deliver features to customers at more frequent intervals. Therefore, organizations with SAP S/4 HANA Cloud are not required to wait for planning and release something major instead, and they can deliver the features on-demand as soon as they are ready.

The Continuous Feature Delivery (CFD) aspect of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud is one of the best things to have been developed for business. This system is very useful for businesses because it provides them with regular delivery of features that can improve, optimize and even realize the value of the business at an accelerated pace. Further, the time and pace of delivering these features can be seamlessly coordinated from within the business to ensure that none of these clashes with any major releases. This way, customers can get access to new features twice every year.

But what impact does it have on the customers?

The latest 2108 release of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud that has been made available since August this year, that contains every documented roadmap of innovations to make it easier for customers to carry out the upgrade without any complications. The success and adoption of the 2108 release has prompted customers to go live on S/4 HANA Cloud earlier than anticipated.

In terms of planning for the next year, there are plans to increase the frequency of releases by leveraging the CFD technique and providing customers with at least two major releases every year. The next release called 2111 would be by October this year itself.

How to prepare for the Quality (Q) System upgrade in October?

For the 2111 release which is slated to happen in October 2021, it is favorable to consider the upgrade schedules in the regular scope of business. However, it is important to pay more attention to the fact that an upgrade occurring at the end of October requires customers to devise their plans with extra caution because of the month-end closing requirements. As we already know, most customers carry out the month-end closings in the five-day period that lay on either side of the month, which is 25th of October to 5th of November. Therefore, Quality (Q) systems are set to enter the freeze period from the 27th of October, so that customers can easily prepare their systems for the 2111 upgrade in the meantime. This means that all the imports to production must be completed before that date. Thus, Q systems are set to be upgraded on the 30th of October this year, a Saturday, and the productive upgrades are decided to occur on the 14th of November this year.

Prior to the upgrade, make sure to plan the project milestones and transport/ extensibility

The scheduled release makes it necessary to make adjustments and alterations to the milestones within the project, more importantly for company codes and even the country activations, go-lives, and scope of the extension. Therefore, be sure to carefully plan the cutover, data migration, and service or provisioning requests scheduled around the release date of the 2111 upgrade. During this time, one can leverage the General Ledger (G/L) sync application to alter the G/L accounts. However, it is also important to consider any alterations made to the Financial (FIN) master data that requires an import to production through Quality to Production (Q2P) transport and it is crucial to complete this before moving forward with the upgrade. This comprises any alterations made to the valuation, actual costing, tax codes, changes in assets, and more.

Also, ensure that you leave enough time to finalize the extensibility because the upgrade is set to occur in a time with proximity to the month-end. This is important because the changes cannot be imported through the Q2P mechanism until the completion of the production upgrade. Further, considering the fact that the next chance to transport will be available after the upgradation of the production system, it is better to manage all the plans for transport accordingly. In addition, if there is any activation of country extensions or scope items or even expert configurations that is not completed before the upgrade of the quality system, then it is recommended to delay those activations until the production system is upgraded.

Latest Innovation featured in the 2111 Release

Even though the 2111 release requires some alterations to the project milestones, it is still worthy of appreciation, mainly because it is equipped with enhanced capabilities that will benefit the customers in numerous ways. For example, with the release of the Registration for Indirect Taxation Abroad (RITA), companies with operations in different countries can seamlessly comply with all the tax and reporting regulations laid out by the countries in which they operate.

Furthermore, as an increasing number of businesses are shifting their focus from product to services, the solution order can be great for them as it is possible to bring together both services and products in a single order through the 2111 release. This latest release will also be equipped with a new report to exhibit the profit derived from the orders of solution amid the augmented margin analysis context.

Universal allocation is gaining immense popularity, as it provides customers with a simple way to carry out allocations and distributions. In the case of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud release 2108, the allocations can be carried out across the boundaries of the company. However, in the case of the upcoming 2111 release, it is expected that round-offs will be made to support joint venture accounting along with the ability to deal with a wider time frame through cumulative processing.

Also, the universal parallel accounting of the 2105 release that is upgraded in the upcoming 2111 release comes with an extension with templates of job scheduling to plan different overhead accounting tasks such as settling different numbers of ledgers.

Conclusion

As you can see with SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 release with CFD (Continuous Feature Delivery), we can transform our processes and operations very smoothly with enhanced features which are built-in as mentioned above. Now, every business can adopt cloud-based operations very quickly.