In S/4 HANA, Sales And Distribution have been vastly simplified. It has been incorporated into S/4 HANA Line Of Business (LOB) which has a distinct perspective on the master and transactional data and how it is handled in SAP. The ambition is to simplify and thereby improve the efficiency with which trade is conducted.

The changes can be understood in three different areas – business, master data and data model.

The first major difference is in how the business process is handled. Certain areas are simplified and redesigned to have a more holistic approach towards business processes in SAP. Example – Foreign Trade is replaced by GTS (Global Trade Service). GTS has a significant coverage in areas of Compliance, Customs and Risk Management when compared to FT. It also resolves some open gaps to make it a more robust system. Similarly, Credit Management is scaled by and Rebates have been replaced by Settlement Management. In this new paradigm, database tables are simplified, the code is optimized and existing functionalities are made more interactive.

In the context of master data, Business Partner (BuPa) will replace the existing system. BuPa aspires to be the single point of entry of master data for all relevant stakeholders – vendors, customer, and business partners. Apart from eliminating redundancies, it also improves the performance of the data access and consumption. Similar changes are evident in the changes in the Data Model. Many transactional database tables, along with master data ones, are removed. More focus is being laid on CDS Views which is expected to provide a significant edge in the performance.

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