SAP S/4 HANA Research and development are one of the key traits of any successful business. This is a process where a business leverages different practices and processes to generate new knowledge. This knowledge is further used to aid the growth of the business by driving extensive innovation and creating new and appealing offerings for customers.  

Conventionally, businesses use manual and time-consuming processes to carry out effective R&D. However, times have changed, and digitization is as widespread as possible. This calls for a more efficient and modernized approach toward R&D. This is where the research and development capabilities of the SAP S/4 HANA solution come in handy. So, continue reading to learn more about the R&D capabilities of SAP S/4 HANA.

Key R&D Offerings from SAP S/4 HANA

The SAP S/4 HANA Solution has four primary products to offer in the sphere of R&D. These capabilities are designed to help an organization augment their R&D and drive amplified results. This includes:

• SAP Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management    
• SAP S/4 HANA for Product Compliance
• SAP Innovation Management
• SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM)

It is further worth mentioning that customers need to acquire additional licenses beyond the SAP S/4 HANA for each of these products. So, let’s dive deeper into each of these products and see how they can benefit your business. 

SAP Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

This is an on-premise solution that can either be integrated with an ERP solution or also be used as a standalone solution. The unique characteristic of this software is that you can even integrate it with other third-party financial or human resource management solutions.

The remote function calls (RFCs) feature of the solution allows users to facilitate this integration with third-party solutions. You can use the solution to manage different project portfolios created after comprehensive conceptualization and evaluation.     

One can use this solution to realize the following objectives of the business that include:

• Gain enhanced visibility into all key performance indicators (KPIs) and portfolios
• Keep your portfolios aligned with the strategies and goals of the business.
• Support varied implementation models such as the phase gate, Six Sigma, product and cycle time excellence (PACE), and critical path.
• Manage the resources of your business with no hassle whatsoever. 

SAP S/4 HANA for Product Compliance

The product compliance feature offered by the SAP S/4 HANA solution is suited for industries where chemical compliance is a must-have for the product. This feature allows businesses to classify products in accordance with the international dangerous goods regulation. Create safety labels and data sheets as per the chemical requirements and regulations. Furthermore, this allows businesses to track and record their inventory of all regulated substances in the storage facility.

Furthermore, the product compliance feature from the SAP S/4 HANA solution can help your business in many other ways. Some of these ways include:

• Determining the relevant type of compliance information and the way the system propagates this information flow to relevant transactions.
• Determining the purpose of compliance as well as the regulation to be followed for all chemical and hazardous substances.
• Assessing the product’s readiness for marketing while ensuring unmatched compliance with the relevant chemical international or region-specific norms.
• Seamlessly support all international and region-specific compliance requirements.
• Customers can use the software to produce safety data sheets from the master data of all products.
• Users can even integrate this solution with different processes that include processes associated with delivery, sales, and even shipments.       

SAP Innovation Management

Powered by the SAP HANA, the SAP Innovation Management can be operated either in the on-premise or cloud version. You can integrate the platform with other ERP solutions such as the SAP S/4 HANA solution or SAP Jam, SAP Portfolio and Project Management, and other similar solutions. Besides that, you can even use the platform as a standalone solution.   

The SAP Innovation Management solution comes with a highly interactive user interface for both mobile devices as well as computers. The functionalities offered by this solution are ideally designed to support conceptualization or idea-generation phases across the business. Some of the most valuable features of the solution include:

• Boosting employee engagement in innovation processes by incentivizing them with rewards.
• Facilitate a pipeline of effective ideation and ensure hassle-free idea-collection.
• Enhancing the collaboration of all employees in the idea generation and innovation processes.
• Leverage stage-gating processes to evaluate some of the most exemplary ideas for hastening the turnaround of ideas into concepts.
• Supporting attachments and URLs to complement and sustain any idea
• Carry our detailed similarity to detect similarities between ideas with minimal hassle
• Commenting and discussing the idea

SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM) 

The sphere of business is changing with time, and currently, customers have unmatched control in deciding the features or specifications of a product. All that businesses can do is use their demands and deliver products that meet the requirements and preferences of customers. However, this requires unmatched control over the release, review, and even the cross-functional definition.

Besides that, businesses need to facilitate robust collaboration with manufacturers and suppliers and integrate customer services for better results. This will help customers keep track of different stages of their orders in cases of returns, repairs, and support processes. All in all, the SAP Product Life Management (SAP PLM) feature of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud will help you transform your most exemplary ideas into a reality. Additionally, some of the prevalent features of the SAP PLM solution include:

• Robust backbone in the form of standard attachment to help you use any SAP Fiori app to attach documents on the SAP S/4 HANA solution to give you unmatched flexibility.
• The approval and tracking mechanism alter different technical aspects of primary objects in a product, such as the recipes, bills of material (BOMs), design documents, and even materials.

Final Thoughts

These are the four pillars of the SAP S/4 HANA R&D module that will help you manage every single aspect of R&D in your organization. Thus, get in touch with our experts and discuss your SAP S/4 HANA migration to facilitate unmated R&D and drive augmented innovation.