Elevate your ride to the next level - The “solution order” subway map

With my article post on LinkedIn “Getting to Your Destination Faster - SaaS ERP is the World′s Business Tube” I have created a metro analogy to the SaaS solution SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. I was surprised how much feedback came back.

The Metro example was meant to explain the difference between Public Cloud and Private Cloud more tangible, representing the different deployment options of ERP solutions. The flexibility and individuality represented by the intricate network of streets and cars can be synonymous of a private cloud option, whilst the efficiency and communality of a subway can be that of a SaaS offering. If you are keen to investigate further, I recommend visiting the above linked article.

Now, one token of feedback I heard multiple times: I like the metro analogy, can you provide an up-to-date metro map of the most current SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition capabilities. Thanks for the feedback, here it is: “Elevate your ride to the next level – The “sales order” subway map”.

Through the extended storyline of the metro travel experience, I am going to share with you the high-level Sales and Service solution coverage & functionalities as a metro map. When my mind goes to a down-memory lane with a metro experience, which has been a unique experience many years back, the multi-level Tokyo Central Station comes to mind. Millions of people, signs Japanese only, scary large and scary complex. I wasn′t sure if I ever find the right train and reach my destination. I was seeking for information through sign boards & looking at the paper map (at that time: no smart phone, no GPS, no online maps) crowded with color-coded tube routes. Where should I go to buy a ticket; how to ensure my ticket serves to my destination? Which platform to take??

I don′t want to bother you with more challenges, but stepping in the shoes of a passenger often turns the perspective upside down. As our Cloud ERP Product Success team does that on a daily base, we wanted to give you access to a simplified navigation experience of your ERP journey.?

BTW, with the same goal on mind, we recently switched from groups to?spaces and pages, SAP’s go-to approach for visualization and layout on the SAP Fiori launchpad.?This brings in a journey-like user-friendly interaction through features such as,

• Color-coding to indicate the system type = tube line identifier,
• Personalization of the navigation bar = your personalized Travel App
• The display of custom news = news ticker and arrival/departure real time information,
• The ability to group your favorite apps via drag and drop etc. ? = Modern experience

And similar as the trained human-brain memorizes ways once walked, and make the repetition way easier, intelligent SaaS based SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public edition system provides similar memorized opportunity. Machine learning based guided experience makes life easier for creating documents such as e.g. sales orders, Auto-activation of the intelligent scenario for input recommendations makes the sales-orders process effective and intuitive. With the required activation, the system employs an auto-training mechanism with periodic training of ML model based on past business data thus recommends values to fill in the sales order faster. And many more via Business AI LLM models on the roadmap.

On an additional note, sales order processing is a crucial aspect of the order-to-cash process for enterprises. In B2B situations, internal sales representatives often receive order requests in the form of unstructured data, such as PDF attachments in emails. The?"Create Sales Orders - Automatic Extraction app"?application enables internal sales representatives to generate sales orders from unstructured data, such as PDF as attachment, from the emails or image files containing purchase orders.

Think further through product, hardware physical goods such as printer, with business processes involving service, subscription additionally. An interesting multitasking one-stop shop is the Solution order. A single order framework which can combine sales, services & subscription, and service contract together, incl. Printer Hardware, Printer Setup and potentially long-term maintenance of the equipment through an AMC (annual maintenance contract), enabled via a one-order solution to recognize multiple sub-level orders. In service,?ad-hoc billing plans in service orders?are recently added allowing you to set specific billing dates and amounts. For long-duration, fixed-price service orders, billing requests on flexible dates can be created without waiting for order completion. Furthermore, enabled is In-House repair with the?ability to consume serialized parts through service and repair confirmation.

Displaying the option along the metro-map gives you a hopefully a better visualization on the public cloud coverage of the Sales and Service domain solution.

Let me know if this is helpful for you. I will look forward seeing you at the platform onboarding to a trip. See you there, all the Best...

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