ERP is Easy

If you are someone looking to learn SAP then you would have definitely come across the word S/4HANA. In this video, we are going to discuss what is S/4HANA in simplistic terms.

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Okay, what is S/4HANA?

S/4HANA stands for Suite for HANA which basically means it is a business suite that runs on SAP’s HANA database.

It is SAP’s latest core ERP software.

What is an ERP software?

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning which is a crucial software application that is used by small, medium and big organisations to perform their day to day business operations such as running the payroll, finance, logistics, procurement, supply chain management, sales and distribution, etc.

In simple terms, an ERP software helps an organisation to run it’s business on a daily basis.

SAP has been making ERP software since the 1970’s and they have been pretty good at it.

In 1979, they released an ERP software called R/2. It was based on Mainframe, then in 1992, they released R/3. Which was based on a client/server architecture. And in 2004, SAP released ECC which stands for ERP Central Component. ECC has been very popular and used by thousands of organisations globally. It is supported by SAP until 2027 and the customers can purchase extended maintenance until 2030 but after that, they have no choice but to transition to S/4HANA which was released in 2015 and it is SAP’s latest core ERP software.

What type of functionalities does S/4HANA support?

S/4HANA consists of modules or you can call them as functionalities or capabilities. They include Sales & Marketing, Finance, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Professional Services, Asset Management, R&D / Engineering, Sourcing & Procurement and Human Resources.

What are the key advantages of SAP S/4HANA?

• ECC can run on various databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, MaxDB and HANA, whereas, S/4HANA can run only on HANA.
• HANA is an in-memory database offered by SAP that stores data in column oriented databases for easy calculations and retrieval of data. S/4HANA as an application is optimised in a way to take advantage of the in-memory capabilities offered by the HANA database.
• S/4HANA can be deployed on-premises, private cloud on Rise with SAP or as a public cloud version. In simple terms, on-premises means customers can host the software on their own server or in a data centre of their choice. Private cloud is an option that is offered by SAP which is called Rise with SAP. I have made a video about Rise with SAP in detail and the link is in the description. Then SAP offers a SaaS version of S/4HANA which is called the S/4HANA public cloud version.
• Some of the functionalities that were available in SAP ECC were removed in S/4HANA since there is a cloud product available as an alternative for those functionalities. For example, Supplier Relationship Management or Customer Relationship Management functionalities are not available in S/4HANA since they are available as cloud products like Ariba and SAP Hybris. As a result, redundant functionalities and database tables has been removed in S/4HANA making it a lean software.
• SAP claims that customers can experience a 50% reduction in data footprint by taking advantage of HANA’s data compression technique. SAP also claims that reports run 100 times faster in S/4HANA, customers experience improved insights, better forecasting and experience better user experience with the help of S/4HANA.
• S/4HANA has a much improved user interface when compared to it’s predecessors. It follows SAP’s common user experience theme called Fiori. Fiori enables the users to access S/4HANA via browser and it is very intuitive to use.

I have made a detailed video about the differences between ECC and S/4HANA in my YouTube channel if you are interested to check that out.

Now let’s talk about how can you learn more about S/4HANA?

SAP Learning Hub is the best place to start learning about S/4HANA or any other SAP product.

It offers a variety of free and paid courses.

You can choose your courses based on a specific product, role or by industry. Let’s say that I am interested to learn about S/4HANA. I select “By Product”, then i select S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, then you can choose the module that you are interested in. For example, I choose Finance and then it lists the various sub modules within Finance that are available to choose. I choose financial accounting and then it gives me the learning journeys that are associated with financial accounting. I can then select the learning journey and go through and complete it. At the end of the journey, you can take a quiz to test your knowledge and you will be provided a record of achievement.

Then you can use SAP’s training and certification shop to get certified as well.

I have also made videos about SAP learning hub and certification shop in my YouTube channel. Please check them out if you are interested to learn more about it.

I hope you now understand what S/4HANA means and please share this blog with your friends and colleagues who can also benefit from it.

Thanks and see you next time.