How SAP’s S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can help boost sales

The public cloud edition offers agility, twice-a-year updates on exciting new features, embedded capabilities for AI and machine learning, faster implementation cycles and more. And that is not all: as a seasoned process and implementation expert within Expertum’s Sales line of business, Ilse Brock is a big fan of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition. Here is why…

Stating the obvious, sales departments are always striving to reach the best possible experience for its customers, improve revenue growth, ensure operational efficiency and empower their sales workforce. In all those areas, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can make a real difference. For Expertum’s Ilse Brock, the following features stand out when it comes to boosting sales.

Companies are increasingly transforming their business and no longer sell products or services individually. Today, they prefer to offer solutions to their customers as they sell physical goods together with services, projects, contracts and even subscriptions. The robust solution order management process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud enables the combination of all those components into one quotation, one sales document and consolidated invoicing.

Needless to say this smoothly streamlines the best possible customer experience, exactly what sales are all about. The solution order management process not only serves as a central point towards customers, but also provides a profitability overview for the complete solution and its individual items and deals with revenue recognition better than ever.

If you use S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, you always have the latest technology at your fingertips, including powerful machine learning and AI capabilities. In sales, it provides particularly useful out-of-the-box models for delivery delay predictions and sales performance predictions, for example.

The embedded predictive analytics feature allows your sales people to predict future sales without wasting hours of analysing lots of spreadsheets. The system helps to forecast whether sales targets are aligned and proposes follow-up actions. It also allows to compare currently achieved sales (for example, in terms of sales volume) with predictions on your revenue growth, which are based on predictive modelling.

Thanks to its efficient situation handling, your business sales people are warned in real time about any situation that needs their attention. This includes, for example, upcoming deadlines, delays, expiring contracts, and so on. These notifications appear at the top in the SAP Fiori Launchpad or in the business app itself, as shown below.

Fiori Launchpad:

In-App:

There are numerous types of alerts that can be activated within the sales line of business, such as expiring contracts or quotations, changing or late delivery dates in sales items, solution order items which are not delivered … Situation handling is one of SAP’s S/4HANA Cloud key features to support users in reaching the best possible operational efficiency. As users are informed on any specific situation, they can swiftly act upon it.

Sales empowerment all starts with modern, flexible and state-of-the-art technology. That is why we at Expertum particularly like the embedded flexible workflows. More flexible and user-friendly than ever before, approvers are notified of any approval actions they needs to take.

Whether it concerns an approval of sales documents (such as quotations, credit memo requests, preliminary documents) or of adjustments to sales prices, the embedded workflow functionality has you covered. Rules can be set to define when an approval is required (preconditions), who needs to approve (recipient), in which circumstances, in one or multiple steps. The approver receives a notification and approves it in the central ‘My Inbox’ application in S/4HANA Cloud, also easily accessible from any mobile device.

These features are just the tip of the iceberg. No wonder our Expertum specialists rave about SAP's S/4HANA Cloud, public edition when it comes to boosting sales. Intrigued? Feel free to contact our SAP experts and find out if your company is already taking full advantage of S/4HANA Cloud, public edition to improve sales!


* This blog is part of a series focusing on the advantages of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition. Following the introductory Is the public edition of SAP S/4HANA cloud the right fit… | Expertum, we dig deeper into five functional domains: sales, procurement, warehousing & transport, operations (production & maintenance) and finance & controlling. Stay tuned!