S/4HANA ERP & Finance.
SAP S/4HANA is more than just another new release. SAP’s new business suite brings about so many changes and new functionalities that have the power to transform your business. However, the complexity of the software could result in an unsuccessful transformation. Is it that hard? Through 25 years of guiding our clients in their SAP implementations, we have gained the experience and expertise to make your move to S/4HANA a success.
What S/4HANA is really about.
The major innovation of S/4HANA is the radical simplification of the data model it is based on. SAP’s new ERP system SAP S/4HANA is based on the in-memory database platform SAP HANA. Through its fast computing capabilities, it provides you with real time results and insights which are essential in today’s networked and speed driven economy. Besides that, it comes up with renewed applications, analytics and the modern user interface SAP Fiori. One major shift is that important SAP applications like TM and EWM are integrated parts of one single system.
1993
start of our SAP journey with SAP ERP
6
years of experience in S/4HANA
>160
ERP & Finance engagements
S/4HANA: You'll get there with us.
Your path to S/4HANA.
We see switching to SAP’s new business suite SAP S/4HANA not as an aspiration, but a necessity. It’s not a question of “if” but of “when” and “how” to do the migration. Success requires an organization to not only implement or migrate to a new platform, but to decide on the best-fit deployment option for their unique business. Whether it is an on-premise deployment, with altered infrastructure to handle exponential growth but still enabled for quick innovation cycles, whether it is a mature and flexible private cloud deployment with 2 innovation cycles per year or whether it is a next practice public cloud deployment with 4 innovation cycles a year or even be a mix of all 3 options.
1
New to SAP or ready
for a fresh start
for a fresh start
Bring data from your old system to SAP S/4HANA with our integrated data management and quality tools.
If the design of your current SAP landscape is from the 90’s, it’s probably time to consider a fresh start.
Leverage a digital core, without modifications or work-arounds of the past.
If the design of your current SAP landscape is from the 90’s, it’s probably time to consider a fresh start.
Leverage a digital core, without modifications or work-arounds of the past.
2
Convert
your system
your system
Complete conversion of an existing SAP Business Suite system to SAP S/4HANA.
If your current SAP landscape has been highly maintained (ECC6 or later), you most likely can convert to S/4HANA in just a few steps.
If your current SAP landscape has been highly maintained (ECC6 or later), you most likely can convert to S/4HANA in just a few steps.
3
Simplification for
faster business value
faster business value
Ideal for large enterprise with many instances of SAP and non-SAP ERP systems.
Consolidation into one global SAP S/4HANA system or selective data migrations.
Rapidly delivering business value at a corporate-level, such as a soft-close anytime, budget simulations, inventory prediction.
Consolidation into one global SAP S/4HANA system or selective data migrations.
Rapidly delivering business value at a corporate-level, such as a soft-close anytime, budget simulations, inventory prediction.
Establish quick wins with Westernacher.
Accelerate your S/4HANA conversion.
Fast Solution
“S/4 Prepare”
In 90 days to S/4HANA: This Westernacher Fast Solution allows for a secure and fast sandbox conversion to S/4HANA in 13 weeks. The necessary conversion steps are strictly optimized towards a technical conversion. Independent steps need to be finished before the start of this solution.
After conversion of your sandbox system, you will be able to roll out from the sandbox to the productive landscape.
Basic Solution
“S/4 Convert”
In 180 days to S/4HANA: This Westernacher Basic Solution is based on the Fast Solution and includes a full rollout to the productive landscape in 6 months even if the customer release cycles are limited to two releases per year.
All necessary steps for a technical conversion are part of the solution; immediately after conversion, business innovations can be started.
The future is here to stay. Is your ERP system ready for it?
Down payment – a fixed price package with easy and short-term deployment.
Selling high-value items to unknown customers bears a tangible risk of a shortfall in payments.
Being able to request down payments ahead to minimize this risk, parking these payments in
the financials and having a system-supported, predefined point of failure before the logistics
process begins, is a value-adding measure that this package provides.
SAP Fiori. It’s more than just a slick design.
SAP Fiori is more than just a slick new design. It is a user interface that can redefine the way enterprise users work and provides a consistent end-to-end experience. It is simple, role-based and responsive. SAP Fiori is part of SAP S/4HANA and other SAP products such as EWM and TM. Westernacher is a true pioneer when it comes to adapting SAP Fiori for the benefit of its customers. With a dedicated Fiori developer team, we can support you in shaping and adapting S/4 functionalities tailored to the specific needs of your company.
The Westernacher tool MDI GDS offers master data management for SAP ECC and S/4HANA. It features automatic importation of GS1 data and maintenance of master data in the usual SAP environment enabling you to work faster and safer. MDI GDS offers the fastest and most convenient way to integrate GS1 into your SAP system.
One of our S/4HANA tools. MDI GDS.
It all starts with a workshop.
We run SAP S/4HANA on our own systems, which are regularly updated with the latest SAP upgrades. We are frontrunners in implementing and hosting S/4HANA solutions, providing the important benefits of real-time decision support and increasing user productivity. Benefit from our experience and expertise and get answers to your specific questions depending on where you are on your individual roadmap.
How can you improve business performance, innovate and speed up processes, increase usability, data quality and flexibility with S/4HANA, Analytics and Fiori Mobile Solutions? What is the advantage and the right time to implement S/4HANA or convert a proven ECC system to S/4HANA? We have four different workshops – adjusted to your individual level of experience. Get to know more by booking a first inspiration day with us:
This workshop is designed for decision-makers from business and IT who want to get a first basic overview of fundamental innovations, functions and technology of SAP S/4HANA.
This workshop is designed for decision-makers from business and IT who want to prepare for a system change from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA.
This workshop is designed for decision-makers from business and IT who want to analyze how S/4HANA innovations affect their current system landscape and applications.
This workshop is designed for responsible project members from business and IT who plan a system conversion or new implementation of S/4HANA.
SAP S/4HANA ERP & Finance
Basic workshop.
Reinvent yourself. See what is possible with S/4HANA.
This workshop is designed for decision-makers from business and IT who want to get a first basic overview of fundamental innovations, functions and technology of SAP S/4HANA.
SAP S/4HANA is currently intensely under discussion, there are lots of sometimes confusing information about S/4HANA. It is difficult to find out what S/4HANA really means for current and future SAP customers. Find the right answer for your company in our individual expert discussions and get the information you need to define your companies IT-strategy.
Goals. Expectations. Lessons.
Your individual workshop program.
- What is S/4HANA?
- What does it mean for your company?
- What innovations does S/4HANA really have, what significance do they have for your company, processes and IT?
- What is the best way to implement S/4HANA
- On Premise or Cloud – which model fits your strategy?
- How are S/4HANA projects planned and implemented successfully?
Your workshop details.
Get more information about your workshop and register now for free.
Date
We will contact you directly
to find the most suitable date for your workshop day.
Place
We are happy to conduct the
workshop on your premises
or in our training rooms.
Time
Please contact us for your
individual workshop offer.
Business
partner
partner
User
interface
interface
Activate
implementation methodology
implementation methodology
Business partner
A major change in S/4HANA, which can be anticipated in ECC, is the Business Partner Concept, known already from SAP CRM. All customer and vendor master data have to be migrated as Business Partner. SAP aligns the concept of Business Partner as other Supply Chain Management (SCM) applications like Advanced Planning & Optimization (APO), Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) or Transportation Management (TM) will be integrated to the Digital Core of S/4HANA.
User interface
Fiori is a new User Experience based on web technology. With Fiori you can have good, modern and intuitive user interfaces to operate with your SAP systems. There are plenty of apps available and ready to use. And there are tools and technology to modify existing apps or even create new apps tailored to your needs. The Fiori ecosystem is growing rapidly and offers many options for various use cases and scenarios.
Activate implementation methodology
There is no concept of blueprinting in S/4HANA implementation. S/4HANA has introduced the new ‘Activate’ methodology. SAP offers a prebuilt demo system with SAP’s best practices for specific business processes. Business users can now test a demo system to see whether it meets their business requirements or not. Fit-gap analysis can be done after the initial trial period.
Single source of truth
New General
Ledger
Integration of Finance and
Controlling
Profibility Analysis
Credit
management
Revenue recognition
Single source of truth
S/4HANA simplifies the data structures of Finance and Controlling (Finance FI, Asset Accounting AA, Controlling CO, Profitability Analysis CO-PA and Material Ledger) into the Universal Journal with its centerpiece, the single line item table ACDOCA. This reduces aggregate and index tables and therefore reduces the data volume drastically and speeds up transactions and reporting.
Integration of Finance and Controlling
In S/4HANA, only one field of Universal Journal is used to store both General Ledger account and cost element posting. Reconciliation as in ECC is not needed anymore. Period-end closing and reporting will be several times faster.
Revenue recognition
Revenue Recognition is being replaced by SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting (RAR) due to the new accounting standard jointly released by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and meeting the requirements of parallel accounting and cost recognition.
Profitability analysis
Account-based Profitability Analysis CO-PA is now the default option, and costing-based CO-PA is optional. Both options can be run simultaneously.
New general ledger
S/4HANA is based on the New General Ledger (GL) of ECC, and the migration is done automatically when converting from ECC with Old General Ledger to S/4HANA. Customers do not need to use the features of New General Ledger as Document Split or Parallel Ledger, but can implement during conversion or at a later stage. The New General Ledger’s functionality is a prerequisite for the new Asset accounting.
Credit management
Credit Management of ECC (FI-AR-CR ) is replaced by that of Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM-CR), which is based on a distributed architecture and allows interfaces with external credit rating agencies. Traditional FI-AR-CR credit control setting requires a high degree of manual work. FSCM-CR has advanced features such as:
- Credit rule engine for automatic risk scoring & credit limit calculations
- Automatic update to master data on approval of credit limit
- Workflow for credit events
aATP
Warehouse
Management
Foreign
trade
Material
ledger
Material
requirements planning
requirements planning
Material
number
number
Transportation
Management
aATP
The new advanced ATP check (aATP) is optimized for the HANA database. The logic to read the planning elements has been fully redesigned to improve the performance and is benefiting from the newly introduced inventory data model.
New confirmation strategy in backorder processing.
- Predefined confirmation strategies: Win, Gain, Redistribute, Fill and Lose
Product allocation process
- Newly developed
- Neither ECC process, nor APO process
- Reduced customizing effort in Fiori Apps
Release for Delivery
- New Fiori app to review shortage situations and the result
- Easy control of assigning critical sales order requirements
The newly developed aATP is neither a replacement for gATP, nor delivering all features of gATP in the near future. gATP can be called from S/4HANA for very complex ATP scenarios. gATP on APO has unique features like rule-based ATP (for substitution of location plant or material), multi-level ATP check, advanced check for product allocation with ATP or advanced backorder processing.
Warehouse Management
Existing Warehouse Management modules will be replaced by SAP’s new application for Extended Warehouse Management (EWM). There will be two options:
- Native integration inbuilt in S/4HANA
- Sidecar approach for decentralized deployment
There are several advantages like complex warehouse processing through Process Oriented Storage Control (POSC), improved and easily customizable RF functionality, value-added services like kitting, enhanced wave & replenishment processes and labor management.
Foreign trade
Foreign trade functionality has been replaced by Global Trade Services (SAP GTS). Advanced features are Sanctioned Party List Screening (SPL), automated embargo check, automatic and simplified license check and automatic import/export declaration.
Material ledger
Activation of Material Ledger (ML) is mandatory. ML valuates inventory in multiple currencies. Traditionally inventory is mainly valuated with a single currency in SAP ERP. ML allows valuation in two additional currencies. Today’s global organizations operating in different countries need to valuate inventory in multiple currencies. For example, a company in Norway dealing with oil needs to maintain their books in Norwegian currency (NOK); they would also like to evaluate their inventory in USD as oil is traded on the international market in USD.
Material requirements planning
Material Requirements Planning (MRP) in ECC is run through batch jobs during off-peak hours. As there is no need for batch jobs in S/4HANA, MRP can now be run in real-time.
MRP can be run on plant and MRP area level, but not on storage location level. In ECC, Storage location can either be excluded from MRP or planned separately. SAP recommends using MRP area with MRP type (ND in case of exclusion or VB for re-order point planning) for those scenarios at storage location level. MRP with subcontracting has also been simplified.
Material number
The Material Number can now be 40 characters, as opposed to the existing 18. The impact of this extension on custom coding, interfaces and other SAP applications needs to be evaluated before switching to 40 characters.
Transportation Management
Since the release of S/4HANA 1709, S/4HANA Supply Chain for Transportation Management (TM) is finally fully embedded in the S/4HANA environment. Of course, LE-TRA can still be used in S/4, but it is part of the Compatibility Scope, which means that it can be used during migration phases, but it is not part of the target architecture. There are several possible scenarios to run TM in S/4HANA, which starts with basic shipping, and ends with the complete scope of the inbuilt TM solution. The functional scope of S/4HANA Supply Chain for TM is the baseline for full automation, Control Tower and Management by Exception scenarios.
Rebate
management
management
Backorder
processing
processing
Lead &
opportunity
management
opportunity
management
Service
contracts
contracts
Pricing
Rebate management
The Settlement Management Solution is the functional equivalent of SD Rebate processing on S/4HANA. The Condition Contract Settlement Solution allows you to set up different rebate scenarios and settlement processes to fulfill the business requirements.
Key features:
- Flexible data sources
- Business selection criteria
- Settlement calendar
- Streamlined contract entry and contract processing
Backorder processing
The new Backorder Processing (BOP) introduced with S/4HANA is a new approach to rescheduling and redistributing order quantities depending on the Advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) confirmation strategies: “Win, Gain, Redistribute, Fill, Lose”.
The backorder rules follow a custom segmentation of ATP requirements. To fulfill your company’s strategy of backorder processing, you can trigger rescheduling and redistribution based on specific selection criteria and prioritization.
Key features:
- Maintain and reuse existing BOP variants
- Assign confirmation strategies
- Define new requirement categories
- Define global filters
- Simulate and schedule backorder processing runs in one step
Lead & opportunity management
With the introduction of S/4HANA for Customer Management, the Lead and Opportunity Management of SAP Business Suite CRM is available on S/4HANA. It is now possible to plan the sales pipeline without the need for an additional CRM server, which has a positive impact on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This feature is accompanied by the Activity and Task Manager.
Service contracts
With the introduction of S/4HANA for Customer Management, the Service Contract Management of SAP Business Suite CRM is available on S/4HANA. Service contracts represent long-term service agreements with customers in relation to the content and scope of services guaranteed within a predefined timeframe.
In general, the “S/4HANA for Customer Management – Service Core Option” is the successor solution for the Customer Service (CS) solution that is currently running in “compatibility mode” on S/4HANA. Support for this ends in 2027.
Pricing
The Pricing Data Model has been optimized for the SAP HANA database.
Some database tables and structures have been replaced and data elements have been changed in their length. As an example, the number of customer condition tables has doubled and the number of access steps in an access sequence has increased to 999. Migration reports are rolled out to update the existing condition records.
In 90 days to S/4HANA: This Westernacher approach allows a secure and fast sandbox conversion to S/4HANA in 13 weeks. The necessary conversion steps are strictly optimized towards a technical conversion. Independent steps need to be finished before this solution starts. After conversion of your sandbox system, you will be able to roll out from the sandbox to the productive landscape.
- This solution is optimized for the technical conversion of a sandbox system to S/4HANA.
- In order to start with this solution, you should already have done the Unicode conversion yourself. The custom code conversion for HANA 2.0 readiness is part of the solution.
- The solution is limited to an ECC system with FI, CO, MM, SD, PP and QM modules in use.
- If applicable, findings and changes during the sandbox conversion are transferred to the productive system in parallel as well.
- After sign-off of the successful sandbox conversion you are well prepared to convert your productive landscape. The productive landscape conversion is not part of this offering.
Key benefits
- Decoupling of the conversion project from productive landscape.
- Business continuity is secured.
- Limited impact on important parallel project activities.
- Business resources with limited capacity are less impacted.
- Compatible with budget sensitive overall situation.
Solution highlights
- Your ECC sandbox is converted to S/4HANA.
- Focus is on pure technical conversion steps.
- We apply the Business Partner concept.
- The New Asset Accounting will be switched on.
- The New General Ledger and Material Ledger are set up from a technical perspective.
- Deliverable: A converted sandbox that you can use for general rollout into your productive landscape.
In 180 days to S/4HANA: This Westernacher approach is based on the Fast Solution and includes a full rollout to the productive landscape in 6 months even if the customer release cycles are limited to two releases per year.
Not only are all necessary steps for a technical conversion part of the solution, but the productive system landscape is also converted.
- Independent steps are an integral part of this solution.
- The solution is optimized for a technical conversion in a sandbox system and directly rolled out to the productive landscape within the existing release cycles.
- The term “productive landscape” refers to one development, QA and productive system each.
- The solution is limited to an ECC system with FI, CO, MM, SD, PP and QM modules in use.
- All activities are done within half a year.
Key benefits
- Direct rollout of the converted sandbox to the productive landscape to allow digitalization and fast process improvements across the board.
- Clear strategy of digitalization first.
- Focus of business resources on “getting this done” to kick-start S/4HANA as an innovation platform.
Solution highlights
- Custom code is converted to HANA-readiness.
- Focus is on pure technical conversion steps.
- We apply the Business Partner concept.
- The New Asset Accounting will be switched on.
- The New General Ledger and Material Ledger are set up from a technical perspective.
- The productive landscape is converted to S/4HANA.
Selling high-value items to unknown customers bears a tangible risk of a shortfall in payments.
Being able to request down payments ahead to minimize this risk, parking these payments in
the financials and having a system-supported, predefined point of failure before the logistics
process begins, is a value-adding measure that this package provides.
Description
- Implementation of down payment package through the use of billing plans
- Workaround for partial delivery scenario
- Documentation
- How-to guide
- Handover to IT and Business
Highlights
- Proactive measure to prevent shortfall in payments
- Transparent process
- Integration in existing processes
- Know-how transfer documentation
- Predefined process breach in case of no payment
- Option of 24/7 AMS support
1
- Order creation with decision for down payment item
- Maintenance of billing plan with a percentage down payment and a final invoice using a billing plan template
- Automatic set delivery block
2
- Down payment request item is in the billing due list
- Initiate billing process
- Print the down payment request
- Post the down payment request to a special general ledger account
- Post incoming payment against the liability
3
- Unlock the delivery block manually
- Start the delivery process
- Removal of the billing block in the billing plan
- Billing of the order
- Payments already made are automatically taken into account
4
- Financial documents are generated
- Automatic consideration of the down payments made
- Post incoming payment
- Payment of the financial documents
Would you like to know more about our approach? Contact us today and get a detailed overview.
This workshop is designed for decision-makers from business and IT who want to prepare for a system change from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA.
As SAP announced, the maintenance of the classic SAP ECC system will end probably in 2025. Even if that seems to be a long way off, there is a lot to consider and to prepare to move from ECC to S/4HANA. It’s not only a technical system upgrade, as a change to S/4HANA offers the possibility to renew and improve business processes, close functional gaps and, if necessary, replace proprietary developments. Find out more about the process and functional innovations as for example one or more of the following topics.
Goals. Expectations. Lessons.
Your individual workshop program.
- Long-term corporate strategy from ECC to S/4HANA
- Modules, functions, industry solutions, innovations and GAPs
- Process analysis based on existing scenarios
- Simplification List: relevance for current processes and applications
- Process innovations – opportunities and potential
- System Conversion or Green Field Approach: first recommendations
- Preparatory steps in the ECC system
- Migration of external systems
- S/4HANA Analytics
- Mobile solutions with SAP Fiori
- The SAP S/4HANA Product Roadmap, License Models
- Your questions, wishes and ideas
Your workshop details.
Get more information about your workshop and register now for free.
Date
We will contact you directly
to find the most suitable date for your
workshop day.
Place
We are happy to conduct the
workshop on your premises
or in our training rooms.
Price
Please contact us for your
individual workshop offer.
This workshop is designed for decision-makers from business and IT who want to analyze how S/4HANA innovations affect their current system landscape and applications.
S/4HANA is not just a new data base and new user interface. In all applications there are major changes in business transactions and enhanced functionality. What is really new in S/4HANA? What does the S/4HANA simplification list means for the business processes of your company?
Get a deeper insight into the deltas between your current ECC system and a future S/4HANA system. Learn more about one or more of the following topics depending on your individual landscape and focus:
Goals. Expectations. Lessons.
Your individual workshop program.
- Which new business processes are introduced with S/4HANA?
- Order To Cash (OTC)
- Procurement To Pay (PTP)
- Plan To Manufacture (PTM)
- Logistics
- Marketing & Sales
- Claims, Returns & Services
- What are the major delta changes available in the latest SAP S/4HANA version compared to a SAP ECC system
- Where to look for delta changes?
- What are the major changes?
- Finance and Controlling (FI/CO)
- Sales and Distribution (SD)
- Customer Service (CS)
- Material Management (MM)
- Production Planning (PP)
- Available-to-Promis (ATP)
- Project Systems (PS)
- Plant Maintenance (PM)
- Enterprise Warehouse Management (EWM)
- Transportation Management (TM)
- Industry Solutions
- Modern ABAP
- Table structure
- Master Data
- Analytics
- User Interface SAP Fiori
Goals. Expectations. Lessons.
Get more information about your workshop and register now for free.
Date
We will contact you directly
to find the most suitable date for your
workshop day.
Place
We are happy to conduct the
workshop on your premises
or in our training rooms.
Price
Please contact us for your
individual workshop offer.
SAP S/4HANA ERP & Finance
Conversion workshop.
Your path to S/4HANA. System Conversion, Green Field implementation or Landscape Transformation.
This workshop is designed for responsible project members from business and IT who plan a system conversion or new implementation of S/4HANA.
There are basically three different ways how you can move your ERP system to SAP S/4HANA, first you can build up S/4HANA from scratch on a green field, second you can convert an existing ECC to S/4HANA or third you can convert an existing SAP landscape to one S/4HANA. Find out more details and advantages of each of the three scenarios.
1. Green Field implementation
This is a new implementation of SAP S/4HANA (greenfield):
Customers who are migrating from a non-SAP legacy system or from an SAP ERP system and implementing a fresh system that requires an initial data load. In this scenario, the SAP S/4HANA system is implemented and master and transactional data are migrated from the legacy system, thus standard data migration tools and content has to be used.
- New installation of the SAP S/4 HANA system and migration of existing master and movement data.
- Changeover without having to take into consideration the growing structures, organizational conditions and partially obsolete own developments.
- Back to Standard: Greenfield is also a sensible approach to a system without modifications and without taking over burdening workarounds from the past.
2. System Conversion
This is a complete conversion of an existing SAP Business Suite system to SAP S/4HANA (lift & shift):
Customers who want to change their current SAP ERP system to SAP S/4HANA. This scenario is technically based on Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO) in case the customer is not yet on SAP HANA as the underlying database.
- Conversion of an existing ERP system in one step to SAP S/4HANA
- Planning the project schedule, roadmap, team
- Preparation in ECC
- System Conversion with Software Update Manager
- Rework after Conversion
- Migration of external Systems
3. Landscape Transformation
This is a transformation of an existing SAP system landscape to S/4HANA:
Customers who want to consolidate their landscape or carve out selected entities (such as a company code) or processes.
- Solution for larger companies with a wide range of SAP systems and possibly also third party systems (non-SAP)
- Consolidation into a global SAP S/4HANA system or, as the case may be, selective data migration
- Consolidation of current regional SAP systems into one global SAP S/4HANA system or a split out of different parts of a system
Your workshop detailes.
Get more information about your workshop and register now for free.
Date
We will contact you directly
to find the most suitable date for your
workshop day.
Place
We are happy to conduct the
workshop on your premises
or in our training rooms.
Price
Please contact us for your
individual workshop offer.
Offer
Inspire