SAP’s cloud-based ERP system SAP Business ByDesign is updated four times a year. The May 2021 version update gave a lot of new functionalities and enhancements to many areas. The updates were for customer relationship management, general system functions, reports and analytics, finance, time management and supplier relationship management.
Jump into the key reforms!
New functionalities in CRM
In contracts customers are now able to see the start and end date to each billing item. It is also added to the contract form. This is especially relevant for the subscription business. Also, customers in the sales order scenario can now use a GTIN/UPC (Global Trade Item Number) for the kit header product. It allows charging for the overall kit and scan UPC rather than the individual products.
General improvements to increase everyday convenience
SAP Business ByDesign has collaborated with Microsoft Teams. Users are now able to easily access SAP Business ByDesign features directly from Microsoft Teams for example, opportunity, project, or customer list.
There are also improvements with mobile solutions, as users can now scan a receipt which then will be converted as an expense within an expense report. This will make the expense report process more convenient. Also, employees and managers can now use SAP Business ByDesign Mobile app for time recordings and see push notifications for approvals.
There is a new end user helping functionality in the system. SAP Enable Now Web Assistant is a web-based front-end solution which comes integrated in the system. It will provide context-sensitive assistance for end users straight in the system, and it is in addition to Help Center.
It is now possible to configure the use of general actions like download, send and add fields in the analytical reports. Also, administrators are now able to configure events which will push data to external applications based on events in SAP Business ByDesign.
Customers are now able to access and extract KPI data from SAP Business ByDesign by using OData service. It will help to perform analytics in external tools like SAP Analytics Cloud or any other third-party tool like excel.
Flexibility to finance and lease management
When you select a G/L account that uses open item management and click edit open items on selected account, a new default view appears. It shows only the open items in the current accounting period. With other views, besides current filters, you can now restrict the items to a specific fiscal year. Also, external reference number can now be entered for a manual tax entry. Bank branches can also be maintained when uploading the bank directory through the migration tool.
You can now maintain the lease contract transition date at a company level. If not maintained, it will be calculated according to the default logic. Also, lease accounting is now available for the Public Sector. You can now assign funds and functions to leased objects in a lease contract. It is also possible to reuse the external reference IDs of a canceled lease contract.
Enhancement to service confirmation-based time entries
When an employee performs a service confirmation on a service order and releases it, a time entry gets created in the employee’s timesheet with a reference to it. This feature is now available also for service agents including intercompany service scenarios.
Improvements and intelligence to supplier relationship management
Intelligent supplier invoice scanning has been enhanced to reduce manual effort and increase flexibility. Supplier and company master data do not need to be synchronized manually anymore as there is now a daily job that uploads the data to Document Information Extraction Service. Also, users can now send corrected values back to SAP in order to further improve the quality of pre-trained PDF extraction model. It is also possible to create a credit memo from the scanned documents.
Due to short-term planned changes, it might happen that components need to be added to already started production orders, which is now possible. This is supported for activities that belong to not yet finished productions tasks.
Outbound delivery now supports serial numbers from a return to supplier document. The system now captures the serial number information from the outbound delivery request. Also, when you edit the ship-to address while creating a new return to supplier document or add a document-specific address, the same is now reflected in the outbound delivery process.
Two new supply chain management reports are available enabling better analytical insights for the production and warehouse managers. Those reports are Production Order/Lot: Dates and Quantities report that provides the actual production duration and the delay and Inventory Ageing report that shows the stock quantity for a product/site combination grouped into ranges of age in days for which the stock remains in the warehouse or site.
Consignment stock is comprised of goods which are send to and stored at the customers location, but which are owned by the sending company. The customer is only obliged to pay for these goods when they remove them from consignment stock. Customers are now able to get an overview about the consignment stock at, to and from the customer’s location.
Sources: SAP blog & SAP Help Portal
Over 4,000 companies from 27 different industries have opted for Business ByDesign solution. ISLET Group has packaged the implementation of a comprehensive ERP system for two industries: ISLET SMART PRODUCTION for manufacturing companies and ISLET SMART PROFESSIONAL SERVICES for project business and specialist organizations. We’d love to discuss more about how Business ByDesign might fit in with your business!
Get in touch:
Jukka Penttinen
Chief Business Officer, Isletter
+358 40 355 1973
jukka.penttinen@isletgroup.fi
The author of the blog, Karoliina Luhanka, is ISLET’s SAP Consultant who manages both large lines and small details in projects. She has diverse experience from different industries, so she is like a duck in water in different environments.
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