SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition, also known as S/4 HANA Essentials is currently the ERP system at the front and ...
SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition, also known as S/4 HANA Essentials is currently the ERP system at the front and centre of SAPs entire product portfolio and the product in which it is placing a very large part of its investment and innovation capacity.
In this post, we'll answer:
SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition is a version of SAP S/4 HANA which is purpose built to run natively in a multi-tenanted Cloud environment.
Public Cloud takes the power of the S/4 HANA product and places it on a scalable, low maintenance managed Cloud environment with the majority of day to day technical and application management services performed by SAP.
This means that with SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud / Essentials, your business doesn't need to worry about performing upgrades, taking care of uptime or investing in a large administrative heavy IT function - you simply need to configure S4 Public and you're set.
Get pricing and detailed analysis on SAP S/4 HANA Public:
SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition originates from the same product as SAP S/4 HANA On-Premise Edition and offers much of the same functionality. However, as the Public Cloud version was released later and was re-engineered for a multi-tenanted, modern Cloud architecture, the product isn't quite as mature by most accounts.
However, much of the same functionality is still available:
Core Finance Capabilities: Includes financial planning and analysis, accounting and financial close, treasury and financial risk management, accounts payable and receivable, risk management, and compliance.
Advanced Financial Closing: Streamlines the financial closing process, ensuring accuracy and speed in closing books and reporting financial results.
Supply Chain Management: Offers capabilities for demand planning, inventory management, order fulfillment, and logistics to optimize the supply chain's efficiency and responsiveness.
Advanced Available to Promise (ATP): Provides comprehensive capabilities for checking product availability and making reliable delivery commitments to customers.
Demand-Driven Replenishment: Supports modern, demand-driven inventory management strategies to optimize stock levels and reduce out-of-stocks.
Procurement: Simplifies procurement processes, from sourcing and purchasing to invoice management and payments, enhancing efficiency and compliance.
Central Procurement: Enables centralized management of procurement processes across the organization, improving visibility and control over spending.
Asset Management: Enhances the lifecycle management of physical assets, from acquisition through decommissioning, optimizing their performance and value.
Projects: Supports project planning, execution, and analysis, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within budget, and according to specifications.
Sales: Streamlines sales processes, from order and contract management to billing and revenue recognition, improving customer satisfaction and sales efficiency.
Additional SAP Products
S/4 HANA Public Cloud has a variety of target users and the list of companies that are capable of using the platform is constantly expanding as the product adds more customers, innovation and capabilities.
Companies that are new to SAP ERP products should probably start by looking at S/4 Public.
Organizations with 200 employees and sometimes less have been proven to successfully adopt and implement SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition through to multinationals.
Public Cloud is suitable for a number of industries including discrete and process manufacturing, retail, wholesale and distribution, professional services and more.
Typically the only companies not suitable for SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud are those in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace and defence and government.
Fast growing organizations with venture backing that have fast growth trajectories are often a great fit for SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud.
The solution offers a faster implementation cycle than other SAP ERP products such as S/4 HANA Private Cloud or On-Premise, as well as market leading features and capabilities that can grow with your organization as your needs change.
Many scale-up companies have the ambition to sell to larger multinationals and implementing SAP often makes your scale-up more attractive to potential acquirers who already run SAP or want to see that your organization is running a Tier 1 ERP.
JV's or joint ventures that are associated with SAP customers are often a good fit for SAP S/4 HANA Public Edition.
Typically JV's require their own ERP systems for financial reporting and compliance reasons, however may need to pass data to a group consolidation system.
If your parent company is running SAP S/4 HANA or ECC 6.0, running SAP S/4 Public at JV level makes the import and export of data easy and fast.
Many SAP ECC 6.0 customers are considering moving to S/4 Public ahead of the 2027/2030 end of life support date for the legacy ERP product.
S/4 HANA Public Cloud is the lowest cost S/4 HANA product available and the easiest to maintain but doesn't have a direct brownfield migration route from ECC 6.0. This means that SAP ECC6 customers who wish to move to S/4 HANA Public Cloud need to go through a greenfield implementation of the system to successfully make the transition.
Companies divesting from parents that use SAP S/4 HANA or ECC 6.0 often choose to migrate to S/4 HANA Public. This is a good choice for companies who want to benefit from SAPs leading products and have in house skills in the product, whilst benefitting from faster data migration and having a fresh start with their new system.
We often find that companies who are divesting from a larger S/4 HANA system or ECC6 platform inherit processes and systems that aren't fit for the target state of the divested business.
S/4 HANA Public gives them an oppurtunity to reset and implement the solution from scratch whilst benefitting from SAP Best Practice processes.
SAP S/4 HANA Public is the lowest cost option when it comes to implementing SAP S/4 from both a license and implementation perspective, vis a vis S/4 HANA Private or On-Premise. When assessing the total cost of ownership of S/4 HANA Public, you'll need to consider license subscriptions, implementation and ongoing maintenance of the solution.
License for S/4 HANA Essentials are paid for on a subscription only basis as the solution is only available in the Cloud. The specific cost will depend upon the number of users you require as well as how many additional engines you need.
'Engines' are typically access to advanced functionality. For example, if you are focussed on heavy commercial project management, you may need access to the advanced projects module within S/4 HANA which comes at an additional cost.
The implementation costs of S/4 Public can vary wildly depending on your specific requirements, however the solution is easier, faster and cheaper to implement than other SAP S/4 products due to the focus on fit to standard implementation.
The minimum cost of implementing S/4 HANA we have seen in the market place is around $100,000 however typically projects will range from $500,000 - $1.5M.
The cost of your S/4 Public implementation will depend upon the scope, number of legal entities, localizations, integrations, blend of onshore and offshore resources and level of configuration that is required.
The cost of maintaining SAP S/4 HANA Public Edition is much more predictable and typically lower than the On-Premise or Private Cloud Edition.
Technical managed services and application management services are performed by SAP, which means you don't need to manually perform upgrades or worry about uptime as this is outsourced.
Typically, the solution can be maintained by just one inhouse SAP Application Manager once implemented, or shared amongst a group of power users and internal product owners.
We have heard of some organizations implementing S/4 Public in as little as 4 weeks, however in our experience, most implementation projects can take anywhere from 6-12 months.
Implementing S/4 HANA Public is considerably faster than other S/4 HANA products due to the multitenanted nature of the system, as well as the implementation methodology.
SAP implementations are often associated with high costs and high risks and there are often horror stories of failed implementations.
In the past, this is often because SAP partners and customers wanted to reinvent the wheel and customize the system to mirror the existing business processes of the target company.
With SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud, this has changed dramatically with the use of the SAP Activate implementation methodology.
SAP now offers out of the box business processes to eliminate the blue printing phase of your ERP implementation. These out of the box business processes are also known as 'SAP Best Practices' and are used in the first phase of the S/4 HANA implementation process.
Rather than design your S/4 HANA Public Cloud processes from scratch, these processes are available out of the box and your organisation can begin configuration with 70% of the work already done.
Get pricing and detailed analysis on SAP S/4 HANA Public:
In short, yes. SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud has proven integrations with various other SAP products that provide enhanced capabilities for sales and service, purchasing, human resources, analytics, database and devops. You can see some of the integrations available from SAP themselves here, however the list does not include the integrations which have also been prebuilt by other third parties and SAP implementation partners.
This is one of the core strengths of selecting SAP as your core ERP plaform.
Let's take a deeper look at SAP's wider product offering below:
A suite of solutions designed to modernize the sales-only focus of CRM to support customer experience. It includes SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, and SAP Customer Data Cloud.
A comprehensive procurement and supply chain collaboration suite. It helps manage everything from contracts to payments in an integrated platform, improving procurement processes and supply chain efficiency.
An HR solution offering tools for core HR and payroll, performance and goals management, learning and development, and more, designed to enhance employee engagement and performance.
Provides travel, expense, and invoice management solutions to help businesses manage spending with greater visibility and control.
A vendor management system (VMS) for finding, engaging, and managing all types of flexible resources, including contingent workers and services.
In our independent guide to SAP S/4 HANA Private Cloud (PCE), we explore the service offering, pros and cons, costs and more.
Read our independent guide to SAP vs Workday, the pros, cons and functionality. Understand the difference between S/4, SuccessFactors and Workday.
Learn how to kick off an SAP S/4 HANA ERP implementation project independently. Understand the flavours of S/4 HANA, best practices and partners.
The Ultimate Guide to SAP Cloud ERP including SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign, S/4 HANA Cloud Extended, Private Cloud, Single Tenant and Rise.
In our independent guide to SAP for manufacturing, we discuss the various ERP systems available in the SAP portfolio, the costs, benefits and risks.
Read out guide to completing an SAP carve out, divestiture or SAP divestment and understand the implications of target ERP systems like SAP S/4 HANA.
