In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, professional services companies are under increasing pressure to adapt to new client demands, optimize their workforce, and facilitate better internal project management.
SAP, a global leader in enterprise software, offers a suite of intelligent enterprise solutions designed specifically for these challenges. SAP Professional Services offers a comprehensive portfolio tailored to help any professional services business streamline operations and enhance customer satisfaction.
This article explores the key capabilities of the SAP Professional Services platform and how our senior-level SAP consultants can help you maximize your technological investment.
What are SAP Professional Services?
SAP Professional Services is an industry solution module available only in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Essentials. It’s most useful for companies that provide services like outsourcing and consulting to ensure profitable projects.
Organizations can fully scale their operations by leveraging SAP’s professional services industry software to transform business models and become intelligent enterprises. To achieve profitable growth, professional services firms must ensure that their critical operations are managed effectively to deliver high-quality, value-added services to their clients.
To address constantly evolving and increasingly complex client needs, businesses depend on professional services to sustain critical day-to-day operations. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, can assist in planning, executing, and managing these comprehensive business services, further improving efficiency and productivity.
Professional Services and Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management (EPPM) offer similar functionalities, typically using the same database tables: PRPS for Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) elements and PROJ for projects. Both support internal and customer projects and can be integrated with other SAP functionalities such as time recording, purchasing, and financial reporting.
Key Features of SAP Professional Services
What are the primary differences in business functionality between the two modules? Let’s explore some key features of Professional Services and how they differ from EPPM.
1. Simple and advanced resource management
In the Professional Services platform, users can easily allocate resources to WBS elements by selecting the role (activity type), employee record, and service organization. The system then automatically calculates planned costs and revenue based on scheduled hours and corresponding rates.
Tasks will automatically appear as an assigned resource in the ‘My Timesheet’ app. The project manager can determine whether non-assigned resources can book time on a project by using the ‘Restrict Unstaffed Posting’ option.
Advanced Resource Management is not included in the default solution but can help optimize project staffing. This feature provides better visibility into utilization rates and resource requests, allowing users to identify overbooked resources and those with available capacity quickly. This way, users can make informed decisions based on current assignments, open resource requests, and individual skill sets.
2. Fiori apps for project management
The Professional Services platform includes support for specific Fiori apps that are not available in EPPM, including the Plan Customer Projects and Plan Internal Projects apps.
These apps provide a wide range of project management features, including the creation of project and WBS structures, resource allocation, status management, cost planning (both baseline and current), billing plan maintenance, and project status. For customer projects, users also have the option to access the billing app directly.
3. Project billing
In the Professional Services application, the billing plan is managed within the ‘Plan Customer Projects’ Fiori application. A sales order with the specific order type SO03 ‘Sales Order Service’ is automatically created and updated in the background. The module supports multiple billing types, including fixed price, time and expenses, periodic service, and usage-based billing.
The billing process begins with dedicated apps, which are used to create a debit memo request, a preliminary billing document, and the final billing document. For projects billed on a time and expense basis, users can defer or write off amounts.
It’s important to note that a transition to a new billing process has been underway for several releases. This new process is already available for fixed price and time and expenses billing options and offers flexible material determination for time and expenses based on the DIP profile configuration. In the original billing process, this customization is not available, and the activity/expense types are limited to the standard options provided.
Top Benefits of SAP Professional Services
The SAP PSA software can help users:
- Effectively manage workforce operations to increase capacity
- Automate and digitalize business processes to maximize resources
- Equip teams with cutting-edge technology to empower better performance
- Explore and implement new Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) business models
- Leverage data analysis to gain insights into past, current, and future trends
- Accelerate project delivery and revenue recognition through real-time data insights
How Can We Help?
Whether you’re looking for a new addition to your SAP product family or just getting started with SAP applications, Surety Systems can help.
Our senior-level SAP consultants have the functional knowledge and experience to guide users through successful cloud ERP implementation, integration, migration, or upgrade initiatives.
Contact Us
Ready to learn more about SAP Professional Services and how our expert SAP consulting team can help you maximize the value of your digital transformation projects? If so, contact us today.
