SAP has confirmed the S/4HANA 1902 is now available. The update includes a series of new improvements to general functionality over the existing S/4HANA.

Sven Denecken, the Senior Vice President of product management and co-innovation at SAP explains the top features associated with the new release:

-Finance: S4/HANA will offer new functions that enable businesses to define, automate, process and measure processes.
-Supply Chain: S4/HANA includes a new SAP Fiori KPI Analysis app that supports inventory analysts by monitoring movement in inventories against a defined set of KPIs, enabling constant trend monitoring.
-The overall quality management process in warehousing has been improved, allowing for more regular inspections within product touch points.
-Asset Management: The new update now allows users to mass produce orders for maintenance changes.
-Procurement and Sourcing have been improved via the analytics in the SAP Fiori application. Users now have more options to monitor changes in purchase order items and the opportunity to inspect orders in more detail and action any changes.
-Services: The new updates make it possible to import contracts from other systems via a SOAP API.
-Professional Services: SAP has enhanced its localisation features within timesheets, enabling users to track details for their work location of employees and not just within their home country.
-Situation Handling: SAP has introduced a new feature that enables certain users to be contacted if specific procurement events happen e.g. if a supplier doesn’t confirm delivery date.
-SAP Enable Now, the in-app assistant has been integrated with S/4HANA, enabling companies to deliver relevant supporting content within solutions.
-Clients can now use Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. CALM utilises the SAP activate process which supports customers with a detailed guide for implementing projects.

Aside from these new benefits SAP highlight three specific features within the new release, of which two are mentioned by Denecken (Service Contract Management and Advanced Financial Close). The third benefit emphasised by SAP involves the recognition of contract-based revenue. The finance application enables users to create revenue contracts specific to provider contracts. With the new release, it is possible to develop performance obligations based on provider contracts and to understand the revenue as the obligations are met. This process essentially enhances revenue recognition, particularly for service contracts.

The detailed release notes for what’s new in SAP S/4HANA 1902 is a lengthy document with additional updates covering the following functional areas:

• Asset management
• Finance
• Human resources
• Manufacturing
• Professional Services
• R&D Engineering
• Service
• Sales
• Sourcing and Procurement
• Supply Chain

Aside from the functional improvement, the new release has been upgraded for certain regions, including a range of enhancements for compliance in Brazil and other updates across Europe, North America and Asia.

Industry analysts are stating that this is a significant update from SAP and its strategic cloud ERP. SAP has received criticism in the past for its lack of strategy towards Cloud ERP. The sheer number of strategic updates, however, clearly suggest that SAP is focusing on transforming this. SAP has focused its development into creating a complex range of functions that customers really need. Yannick Peterschmitt of SAP S/4HANA Product Management explains that ‘Intelligent Enterprises’ is the future for SAP customers and that the focus is about automated processes, providing information for employees and generating revenue, all within a simple and intelligent platform.