SAP Lines of Business (SAP S/4HANA LoB or SAP LoB for short) are the structural elements in SAP S/4HANA.
The best way to translate “Line of Business” is “business area”. This translation also describes very well what a Line of Business is: Each SAP LoB comprises business processes and functions for a specific business area of a company. An SAP LoB is therefore a logical structural unit or grouping of S/4HANA. However, SAP does not limit the use of LoB terminology to the SAP S/4HANA software.
In the SAP ECC system, a module was a functional building block. With SAP S/4HANA, SAP has now organized the entire product portfolio into Lines of Business. Accordingly, all SAP products are assigned to one or more LoBs. This applies both to the functions that are available in the SAP S/4HANA basic system and to licenses that can be purchased. However, cloud services or standalone systems such as SAP Ariba or SAP CX are also organized in LoBs. The Lines of Business are therefore structural elements that structure not only SAP S/4HANA, but the entire SAP product portfolio.
Important to know: In SAP ERP and ECC, the structural elements were referred to as modules. Although the term persists, it is no longer part of the software manufacturer's official terminology in SAP S/4HANA.