If your organization needs to process large amounts of data, SAP S/4HANA is the latest ERP package from SAP. Built on in-memory database technology, SAP S/4HANA can process large amounts of data quickly. It also provides real-time data processing and analytics, helping businesses make quick decisions.

For example, one organization that implemented SAP S/4HANA realized the following benefits.

1. Improved production line efficiency: 

By being able to monitor failures on the production line in real time, they were able to resolve them immediately. They also had real-time visibility into production plans and inventory levels, which improved the efficiency of the production line.

2. Improved cost management: 

By utilizing in-memory database technology, inventory management is more accurate and faster, reducing inventory costs.

3. Leverage Business Intelligence: 

By utilizing business intelligence (BI) capabilities, companies can monitor their business performance in real time, enabling faster decision-making.

4. Improve customer service: 

Utilize customer management capabilities to quickly identify and resolve customer issues to improve customer satisfaction.

SAP S/4HANA is an ERP system that can handle large amounts of data, analyze data in real time, and cover a wide range of business functions. There is also a cloud-based version of SAP S/4HANA called SAP S/4HANA Cloud, which allows you to deploy your ERP system while saving money and time.

In addition, SAP S/4HANA offers features that are useful in many areas of your organization's business. For example, it offers the following features

# Key benefits of SAP S/4HANA

1. SAP S/4HANA Finance: 

Provides financial functions such as accounting, treasury, taxes, and payments to help businesses handle financial transactions more efficiently.

2. SAP S/4HANA Sales: 

Provides functions such as sales, marketing, service management, and customer management to help organizations effectively manage their relationships with customers and improve sales performance.

3. SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing: 

Provides production management functions such as production planning, production execution, and production monitoring to help organizations effectively manage their production lines and increase their efficiency.

4. SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain: 

Provides supply chain management capabilities such as demand forecasting, inventory management, and logistics planning to help organizations effectively manage their entire supply chain.

5. SAP S/4HANA Human Resources: 

Provides human resource management functions such as personnel management, payroll management, and talent management. These features help businesses effectively manage their human resources.

These ERP systems from SAP can be selected based on the size of the company, industry, and business needs, and each system offers different features and functionality. When a company adopts an ERP system from SAP, it is important to fully understand the business needs and processes of the company, customize the ERP system to meet the needs of the company, and provide sufficient training and support to help users effectively utilize the system.

SAP S/4HANA is SAP's latest ERP system, which uses in-memory database technology to quickly process large amounts of data and provide the ability to analyze data in real time. This enables companies to make quick decisions and run business processes more efficiently.

In a hypothetical scenario, let's say a beverage company uses SAP S/4HANA.

- Real-time sales monitoring: 

sales data can be monitored in real time. This gives the beverage company information about which products are popular, which regions are selling the most, and so on.

- Analyze customer data: 

you can analyze customer data. This can help beverage companies understand which customers prefer which products, their buying patterns, and more.

- Optimize manufacturing processes: 

you can monitor data from production lines in real time and optimize production processes. For example, you can see which production lines have a high reject rate, which processes are slowing down production, and so on.

- Analyze advertising effectiveness: 

you can analyze advertising data. This allows beverage companies to understand which ads are effective, which advertising channels work best, and more.

With these scenarios in place, the beverage company can use SAP S/4HANA to increase sales, improve productivity, and reduce costs. 

# Key Features of SAP S/4HANA

- Database: 

SAP S/4HANA uses the SAP HANA database, which is a high-performance in-memory database. While previous SAP packages supported multiple database options, S/4HANA is optimized for the HANA database. The in-memory technology enables fast processing and analysis of large amounts of data.

- User interface: 

SAP S/4HANA introduces a new user interface, SAP Fiori. SAP Fiori offers a responsive design that can be used in both mobile and desktop environments and greatly enhances the user experience.

Representatives can create or view orders using their mobile devices, while accounting staff can use the same application on their desktops to complete order fulfillment.

- Simplify and optimize: 

SAP S/4HANA simplifies and optimizes data models and processes so you can work faster and more efficiently. This increases system performance, reduces maintenance costs, and improves overall business processes.

By simplifying processes for supply chain planning, you can easily handle complex calculations and use real-time data to improve transparency into your supply chain.

- Scalability and modularity: 

SAP S/4HANA has a modular structure, allowing businesses to pick and choose the features they need and implement them. This makes it easy to expand or add new functionality, and allows companies to configure the system to meet their business needs.

For example, a small business might initially use only basic accounting and human resources modules, but as it grows, it can easily introduce additional modules such as customer management and production management.

- Cloud support: 

SAP S/4HANA offers both on-premises and cloud versions. This gives companies the flexibility to deploy the system on their own IT infrastructure or use cloud services to manage it.

For example, if your organization wants to reduce initial implementation costs, you can use cloud-based SAP S/4HANA to get your system up and running quickly. Cloud resources can be scaled up or down as needed for flexible IT management.

These differences make SAP S/4HANA a faster and more efficient solution, and give companies greater flexibility to configure and scale the system to meet their business needs. As a result, SAP S/4HANA is considered a more robust ERP solution in the modern enterprise environment.

# Key T-codes for SAP S/4HANA

S/4HANA has various differences from previous versions of SAP ERP, but basically, most of the T-Codes and Profiles are also available in the previous versions. However, since S/4HANA uses a new user interface, SAP Fiori, there may be T-Codes and Profiles related to Fiori apps. There may also be T-Codes and Profiles for new modules or features that are only available in S/4HANA.

There are several T-Code-related internal controls that are important from a security and IT audit perspective for SAP Fiori. We describe them below and show you how to manage them.

- /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE: 

You can use this T-Code to enable and manage OData services, and you should only enable the services you need. Enabling unnecessary services can lead to control weaknesses.

Limit permissions appropriately to prevent certain users from accessing more services than they need.

- /UI2/FLP, /UI2/FLPD_CUST, /UI2/FLIA: 

You can use these T-Codes to set up and manage Fiori Launchpad and its apps, catalogs, groups, etc.

We recommend that you follow the principle of least privilege by setting the appropriate roles and permissions for each user so that they only have access to the apps they need. You should periodically review the settings for apps, catalogs, groups, etc. to update them to meet your needs and remove unnecessary settings.

Overall, however, S/4HANA offers new features and optimizations while maintaining compatibility with previous SAP ERP versions, so you can continue to use most of your existing T-Codes and Profiles. This provides a high level of compatibility and convenience for existing SAP users as they transition to S/4HANA. 

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