SAP Tips: How to understand the future of SAP
SAP Tips: How to understand the future of SAP
SAP is a complicated landscape, there is no doubt. Since its inception in the 1970s, SAP has grown from a simple MRP and finance system to an all-encompassing business integration suite, covering all modules and functionalities in a tightly integrated suite of applications.
So how to make sense of this? The SAP world is growing and changing at a breakneck pace. As SAP consultants, how on earth is it possible to keep up with all the changes and understand the implications for our skills and careers?
This selection of tips aims to help you out and give you some resources which you can bookmark.
Tip 1: Understanding the SAP roadmap
SAP very helpfully publish their upcoming road maps on a dedicated website (note SAP universal ID needed for this website):
https://roadmaps.sap.com/welcome
Once you click in the Search field, you can narrow your search down by SAP product. For example, I have chosen SAP Analytics Cloud. This then shows me all the innovations planned in the upcoming quarters for SAC:
Once you have all your roadmap items you want (you can search by multiple products, industries and focused topics), you can then select the Save icon to add the results to your roadmaps. See below.
You can drop each item down and click on it to show more details. From there you can add each item to your favourites if you wish.
Tip 2: Exploring SAP Newsletters
One useful resource to help you keep ahead are SAP’s own newsletters. There are dozens of newsletters, published in multiple languages, on the SAP website for anyone with a universal ID to explore.
The link to the newsletters is here: https://www.sap.com/dashboard/newsletters.html
Once you select the newsletter and language you are interested in, save your entries in order to receive an email every time a new newsletter is published in that area.
Tip 3: SAP Hot News
SAP has a nice feature available for those with their own universal ID – SAP Hot News. You can get a list of urgent legal and regulatory SAP notes by going to: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/hotnews
This opens in the SAP For Me browser, so you have all the functionality of marking each one as not relevant or confirmed, to show you have addressed them.
Tip 4: The SAP “What’s New Viewer”
This is really helpful as it gives you a navigable insight into the Simplification Lists for each SAP application. The page can be accessed here:
https://help.sap.com/doc/474a13c5e9964c849c3a14d6c04339b5/100/en-US/8880de6dbfb94ea3b0de1f26b40816dc.html
For example, if you need to know what is new in the area of Accounting and Financial Close in the S/4HANA 2023 FPS01 feature pack, you can select that in the filter:
This will then show you all the new features in that version and that area:
Tip 5: The SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM)
This should be your SAP architect’s best friend. The page can be found here:
https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/support/pam/pam.html#ts=8
This page will show you information about every SAP product available. The information will show you links to all the other pages list above, but also dates of release for each product, end date for mainstream maintenance, release note links and technical information for the version. This is truly a goldmine!
For example, if I select SAP S/4HANA 2023, I can see immediately the links to all the useful documentation, the release date of the version, and the end date for mainstream maintenance:
I hope you find this useful! Stay tuned for another SAP Tip from Eursap next month.
Be sure to also check out Eursap’s SAP Blog for more in depth articles.
Author: Jon Simmonds, IT Director, Architecture
Get in touch with Eursap – Europe’s Specialist SAP Recruitment Agency