Some characteristics of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud are that it is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) plus managed services, that services include provisioning, patching, and upgrading, and that customers can bring their own licensed SAP applications. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is a private cloud offering that provides a dedicated and secure environment for running your SAP applications on SAP HANA. It is an IaaS plus managed services, meaning that SAP provides the infrastructure and the management of the hardware, software, network, security, and backup. Services include provisioning, patching, and upgrading of the SAP applications and the underlying infrastructure. Customers can bring their own licensed SAP applications to SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Suite, or SAP BW/4HANA. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is not a Platform as a Service (PaaS) plus managed services or a shared environment. These are characteristics of other cloud offerings, such as SAP Business Technology Platform or SAP S/4HANA Cloud. [Reference]

Based on the SAP Activate methodology, you must perform two activities in the Explore phase: conduct the Fit-to-Standard analysis to identify fits and gaps, and conduct the Digital Discovery Assessment to identify fits and gaps. The Explore phase is where you validate the fit of the SAP Best Practices content to your business requirements and identify any gaps that need to be addressed by configuration or extensibility options. The Fit-to-Standard analysis is a collaborative session between the customer and the SAP team where they use the starter system to demonstrate and evaluate the standard processes. The Digital Discovery Assessment is a tool that helps you assess your current business processes and compare them with the SAP Best Practices content. You do not define the organizational structure and chart of accounts or use the quality system to demonstrate SAP Best Practices processes in the Explore phase. These activities are done in other phases, such as Prepare or Realize.

You can perform budget availability control for cost centers and internal orders. Budget availability control is a function that monitors and controls the budget consumption of cost objects based on predefined tolerance limits and warning messages. You can use budget availability control to prevent overspending and ensure compliance with your budget plan. You can also use budget availability control for other cost objects, such as projects, funds, or functional areas.

When creating an account for costs of printing marketing materials, you should choose the primary cost account type. A primary cost account is an account that records the costs that are directly incurred by a business process or activity, such as materials, labor, or services. A primary cost account is usually assigned to a cost element category that defines how the costs are posted and analyzed in Controlling (CO). For example, cost element category 1 is used for primary costs or revenues that are posted from Financial Accounting (FI).

Before legacy G/L account balances can be completely migrated in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system, you need to have the following objects available: fixed assets and internal orders. Fixed assets are long-term tangible assets that are used in the operations of a business, such as buildings, machinery, or equipment. Internal orders are temporary cost objects that are used to monitor and control costs for specific projects, events, or activities. You need to migrate the fixed assets and internal orders before you migrate the G/L account balances because they affect the balance sheet accounts and require additional data migration objects.