Highlights of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud 2408 Release

A complete overview of all innovations can be found on the SAP website and on the SAP Community pages:

• on a general overview page: New Product Releases
• as a PDF document online or for download: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2408 Release Highlights
• with interactive selection function: What's New Viewer - SAP S/4HANA Cloud
• in the Release Navigator for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

Since the beginning of 2022, SAP no longer publishes four releases per year, but two releases: in February and August each year.

New additions are SAP S/4HANA Cloud Updates and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Hotfixes. Hotfix Collection 2408.1 will be released on 21 September, Hotfix Collection 2408.2 on 19 October 2024.

The releases for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud each contain the year and month (YYMM) in the name - currently ‘2408’ for the new release of August 2024.

The next release for the public cloud will appear in February 2025, the release SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2502.

SAP has raised the service level agreement for system availability for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and Integrated Business Planning from 99.7 per cent to 99.9 per cent - a sign of SAP's investments in technology and hardware, among other things, and a plus in reliability for customers.

SAP already expanded the scope of GROW with SAP (premium subscription) in mid-July. It now includes the SAP Sales Cloud and Concur Expense solutions. In addition, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for contracts and accounting is now part of GROW with SAP with release 2408.

The AI assistant Joule is expected to be part of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition from Q3 2024. Joule is a voice assistant and basically works like Alexa or Siri. With its help, many tasks can be completed more quickly and easily in future.

The new release also includes functions that enable companies to better monitor their CO₂ emissions and promote sustainability in their business - for example, automated ESG reporting or the AI-supported calculation of the carbon footprint with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management.

Finance

• New audit booklet for cost centres (the app provides a clear presentation of actual and planned costs and organises several predefined reports on the ‘Actual values’ and ‘Planned/actual values’ pages)
• Service profitability review booklet (interactive insight into service-related financial performance metrics such as invoiced sales, realised sales or sales adjustment)
• Manage operational G/L accounts (execution of actions with the app on the master data of operational G/L accounts, depending on role and system)

Procurement and purchasing

• Versioning of purchase contracts (automatic tracking of different contract versions each time an active purchase contract is changed)

Manufacturing

• Additional columns in the SAP Fiori apps ‘Monitor material coverage’ (the columns show the number of replanning proposals for a material in the apps ‘Monitor material coverage - net segments’ and ‘Monitor material coverage - net and individual segments’ to avoid supply bottlenecks or excess stock)
• Integration of extended variant configuration in quality management (transfer of the characteristics defined in the configuration of a sales order or purchase order to the inspection characteristics of an inspection lot)
• Mass processing function ‘Process production versions’ in the production engineering area (carrying out mass processing for existing production versions and selecting up to 100 production versions for simultaneous updates)

Supply Chain

• Warehouse-controlled splitting of the delivery order (more flexibility and improved logistical options by splitting packed and unpacked items, quantities or handling units from an existing delivery order into a new delivery order)

Sales

• Automatic activation of the intelligent scenario for sales order entry recommendations (the system uses an automatic training mechanism that regularly trains the machine learning model based on the previous year's business data)
• New SAP Fiori app for displaying the change log for sales documents (enables the display of change logs for sales documents)

Service

• Insertion of maintenance plan templates in service contracts (addition of maintenance plan templates to service contract items during the creation process of service contract templates)

Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)

• Internal US tax configuration with Joule (natural language prompt via Joule to retrieve information from the AI and verify, simulate and save the configured tax location codes and records)

Professional Services

• Shared risk-based revenue recognition for professional services projects (more accurate revenue recognition when additional work is required; in customer projects that exceed the original scope)
• More integration and extensibility options in the area of project costs, forecast quantity and locked functions (more CDS views and an API)