Exploring Business Partner

The occupants of the new building are already known, so they can be created as contract partners in the system. One person has moved into the first floor while a consulting company has moved into the second floor. The person is also the owner of the company and should therefore be entered in the system as the contact person for the company.

• Business partner form the core of business transactions in SAP S/4HANA Utilities. All the information relevant to a business partner must be easily and quickly accessible, and must appear in consolidated form. It is therefore necessary to have a central view of a business partner.
• A business partner exists once only, regardless of the business transaction in which they are involved. For example, if a company acts as both a customer and supplier, it is represented in the system by one business partner.
• A business partner also comes into contact with other business partners. These relationships can be of different types, such as marriage, contact person, or corporate relationships.
• The SAP Business Partner takes these business conditions into account. A business partner exists in the system once only. However, it can assume different roles The various different relationships between business partners can also be defined.

A business partner can come into contact with the utility at a number of different points. Different information is required about business partners depending on the specific business processes in which they are involved. For example, the "goods delivery" process requires information about incoterms and delivery terms, whereas the "order" process requires information about delivery dates and terms of payment.

• The SAP Business Partner component enables you to manage business partners across components in a centralized and uniform way.
• The component models neutral data, such as the name, address, bank details and payment cards. The special requirements of persons and organizations are taken into account when business partners are modeled.
• The SAP Business Partner also provides an open infrastructure for integrating the application-specific attributes of the business partner. Business integration is provided by the role concept. Technical integration is provided in the form of predefined interfaces, using which the business partner attributes from the various different applications can be integrated. In this way, you can integrate SAP business partner models to the SAP Business Partner component.

• The SAP Business Partner is currently used by Industry Business Sectors in insurance, banking, utilities and telecommunications.
• The Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable component (FI-CA) is also based on the SAP Business Partner.
• SAP Customer Experience (CX) and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) have integrated the SAP Business Partner in their applications.

• When you create a business partner, the fields to which you have access are determined by the business partner category you have chosen. For example, if you choose the business partner category "organization", then the additional fields Legal Status and Industry appear in the overview. The relationship category "has contact person" is displayed on the Relationships screen.
• A business partner is taken to be a natural person or group of persons, or one or more organizations in which you have a business interest.
• Whether a business partner is a natural person, group or organization, is defined in the business partner category.
• A group can be people sharing an apartment, a married couple or the board members of a company.
• When you create a group, you must specify the corresponding partner group type (this enables you to model relationships within the group).
• The organization models units such as a company, department within a company, society, or association.

• When you create a contract partner or a prospective customer you can specify a reference customer. This reference customer is copied as a basis for the SD customer (standard customer in the Sales and Distribution application component).
• Why does an SD customer have to be maintained at all? The SAP business partner is a new SAP concept. It is flexible, and can be enhanced without modifications. Many SD transactions still use the SD customer. You must therefore continue to maintain an SD customer if you want to use SD functions, like billing for sales or service.

• The master record for a business partner contains the following data:
  • Name
  • Personal data
  • Search terms that are user-definable
• You can enter other addresses in addition to the standard address. Addresses are stored centrally in the Address Services component, and have a uniform structure. When you enter an address, this component checks whether the address complies with country-specific rules, and whether the city and street exist in the postal regional structure. It also assigns the business partner to a political regional structure and, if applicable, to a company regional structure.
• You can enter several sets of bank details (for example, one account for incoming payments and another for outgoing payments)
• General data (for example, social security number, creditworthiness)

SAP Fiori app. On Home page→User Profile icon→App Finder→SAP Menu→Search in SAP Menu→Customizing – Execute Project→SAP Reference IMG→Cross-Application Components→SAP Business Partner→Business Partner.

Integrated use of the Sales and Distribution (SD) component only allows for maintenance of the address data in the SAP business partner.

• For each business partner, you can maintain any number of addresses. One address must be defined as the standard address.
• Postal data and modifications to various communication types are allocated to the address. For each address you can maintain different communication types (telephone, fax, e-mail address, cell phone, pager service, printer, remote mail, Secure Store & Forward, telex, telex URI, X.400).
• You can use address management to allocate additional addresses to the respective business functions. The addresses are classified by address types, such as delivery and correspondence address.
• You can configure each address type so that you can allocate several addresses of the same address type to one business partner.
• You use the SAP Business Address Services to maintain the addresses.
• CAM is a central tool for managing addresses. It is used everywhere within SAP where addresses must be maintained.

• A business partner can have several addresses. Addresses are classified according to the address type. You can maintain new address categories yourself in Customizing.
• The Address Overview function allows you to view all the addresses already defined for a particular business partner and add further addresses, if necessary.
• The addresses are especially important in Customizing for move-in/out processing. Here you have to specify whether the standard address needs to be adjusted when a business partner moves into a new connection object. You define the use of the address in the Customizing settings for move-in.

• A relationship can exist between two business partners. The business partner relationship category describes the nature of the relationship and defines its characteristics.
• The system differentiates between a uni-directional and bi-directional business partner relationship. In the case of a uni-directional relationship category, the relationship runs from one business partner to the other but not in the other direction. In the case of a bi-directional relationship category, the relationship functions in both directions.
• Examples:

• The cardinality of a business partner determines whether at a given time, the business partner can have a maximum of one relationship of a given relationship category (such as a marriage), or whether the relationship category allows multiple relationships (1:n), for example as a contact person relationship.
• You can also model an alias relationship. In this case, there are two different business partners but they name the same business partner. In other words, they both refer to one person who was created as two business partners at some time in the past (duplicate problem).

• In addition to the attributes of the business partner, the SAP Business Partner manages relationships between business partners.
• A business partner relationship models the business connection between two business partners. You define the period over which the relationship is to be valid. You must therefore enter the start and finish dates of the relationship. This provides you with an overview of the periods in which, for example, given business partners act as the contact person for a company.
• The attributes of a business partner relationship correspond to the business partner relationship category.
• Examples:
  • The contact person relationship is a relationship between one business partner (the organization) and another, the natural person.
  • The partial owner describes a relationship between two business partners that represents persons and/or organizations.

• Relationship categories model business relationships between business partners

• You can use relationship categories to define the contact persons of a company, as well the data of the members of a shared living arrangement or married couple (required for liability reasons). If a relationship category contains real business partners then this counts as a relationship. The business partner category and role determine possible relationship categories. The following relationship categories are predefined by SAP:

  • Contact person of (connects a business partner that has the contact person role with a business partner that has the organization category)
  • Married to (connects two business partners that have the natural person category) You may need to define this relationship to ensure business partner liability and to retain an overview of the contracts of each marriage partner.
  • Activity partner for (connects a person with a business partner. For example, a business partner can have a contact person, however, an additional party looks after the business partner's interests. This party can be entered in the system under the activity partner relationship category).
  • Belongs to shared living arrangement (used to define the individual members of a shared living arrangement for liability reasons. Note that to model this relationship category, you must have created a business partner that has the group category beforehand).

• The definition of a business partner role is based on a business process.
• The business partner role is an enhancement of a business partner by additional application-specific attributes.
• A role describes the business context-specific view of a business partner and defines the number of entities that appear on the screen (user interface).
• The following business partner roles are predefined by SAP:
  • Contact person
  • Prospect
  • General business partner
• In addition, there are industry-specific business partner roles, such as:
  • SAP S/4HANA Utilities: Contract partner, installer
  • PS-CD: Contract partner
  • BCA: Account maintenance officer, account holder, authorized drawer, bank statement recipient
  • Creation of customer-specific roles should be carried out by experienced ABAP developers and only makes sense if the customer has developed their own application, for example, and therefore requires functions for the business partner that are not covered by the standard role categories.

• In the role concept, a role belongs to an application, such as a policy holder belongs to SAP for Insurance, a borrower to Treasury, and so on.
• Each application can add roles or enhance the roles of other applications.

• A contract partner is linked to the company through contract accounts and contracts. This makes it possible to allocate contract accounts to a business partner and bill for services if the business partner was created with the role of contract partner.
• Installers can already be linked to companies via other roles. This role is specific to SAP S/4HANA Utilities.
• A contact person does not necessarily have to have a contract with the company. This person may be a contact person for questions regarding the contract of another contract partner.
• A prospective customer can already be a contract partner. This person might be a potential customer for other products or services, however.
• The general business partner is only stored for information purposes. This person is neither a contract partner, contact person, nor prospective customer.

• The preceding example shows that a business partner can assume several business partner roles (account holder, contract partner, borrower) depending on the business processes in which they participate.
• Business partner roles are composed on modules (attributes) called datasets; these are represented above by black boxes.

• Central business partner

  You can maintain central business partner data in the different layers. This does not entail any application modifications. That means that company-specific data can be stored in the user-defined name space.

• Uniform central data maintenance
  • Names
  • Addresses
  • Bank details
• You can make enhancements and changes without having to modify central business partner objects
• Enhancements or changes via
  • Core components
  • Industry Solutions
  • Development partners
  • Customers

• The screen structure differentiates between the following entities: field groups, views, sections, and screens.
• A field group comprises fields whose attributes are defined together.
• One or more field groups make up a view. A view comprises all the attributes that are displayed and validates together.
• One or more views form a section. A frame is automatically drawn around each section, with the exception of the first section of a screen, which contains the header data.
• The screen is the largest element of the screen structure. It is composed of several sections.

• Screens are assigned to sections, which are in turn assigned to views.
• Views are made up of field groups, which are themselves made up of individual fields. The smallest unit in the IMG is the field group. You cannot change the composition of a field group in Customizing.

Menu: BUPT→Business Partner→Control→Screen Layout

Menu: BUPT→Business Partner→Control→Screen Layout→Screen Sequences

You can use the visual configuration tool (VCT) to change the predefined screens and screen sequences (even in Customizing). You do this by drag and drop. As with all other Customizing activities, these changes are dependent on the transport system. Any changes made by the customer are release resistant, meaning they are not overwritten when the customer upgrades to a new release.

• Each business partner role can be configured.
• In the IMG, the business partner roles can be selected.
• The customer can use the VCT to:
  • Change the structure of screen, by merging several screens, for example:
  • Change the screen sequence
  • Change the title of screens
  • Change the title of frames
• The predefined configuration provided by SAP is retained in the system and can be reactivated at any time.

• A Business Partner is always created when a customer or supplier is created.
• The complex interface of the CVI (Customer-Vendor-Integration) contains Business Partner specific data as well as Customer and Vendor specific data
• Partially, the data of the Business Partner and Customer/Vendor are redundant (BUT000 against KNA1 & LFA1 data). For instance ‘Name and Address specific attributes’ are available in both persistences.
• Customer or Vendor specific data is routed through the Customer/Vendor specific interface and mixed up with the Business Partner central data.
• On commit, the Business Partner and corresponding Customer and/or Vendor and CVI Link tables are maintained/created.

The strategic object model in SAP S/4HANA is the Business Partner (BP). A Business Partner is capable of centrally managing master data for Business Partners, Customers, and Vendors. With current development, BP is the single point of entry to create, edit and display master data for Business Partners, Customers, and Vendors.

To use the SAP Business Partner as leading object in SAP S/HANA, the Customer/Vendor Integration (CVI) must be used. The CVI component ensures the synchronization between the Business Partner object and the Customer/Vendor objects.

CVI is an automated procedure supported by the Master Data Synchronization Cockpit tool. It is used to synchronize Customer Master and Vendor Master objects with SAP Business Partner objects. CVI assigns every Customer and Vendor master data object to a newly created SAP Business Partner object and vice versa.