Integrated Object Model: Business Partner
Master data governance provides a directory of Business Partners (organizations, persons, groups of persons). This directory contains data primarily used for identification (for example, name, address, ID numbers, and so on). The master data governance objects like Customer and Supplier will be based on this directory and offer seamless integration with customer-specific data and supplier-specific data.
Integrated Object Model: SAP Business Partner
The entity type Business Partner is a generic application for business partner management (maintaining organizations, persons, and groups of persons).
Integrated Object Model: Solutions for Customers, Suppliers, and Business Partner Fundamentals
A business partner typically consists of attributes (general data), which are relevant for all roles. But the business partner also has role-dependent attributes, which you maintain in customer governance or supplier governance.
All solutions use the SAP BP as the central anchor for identifying data:
Business Partners that are both a customer and supplier are represented by one Business Partner (BP) only.
Business Partner governance as the basis for:
- Customers limiting their governance scope to BP data only
- Solutions only being based on SAP BP (for example, service industries)
Transition from Business Partner Governance to Supplier Governance / Customer Governance without disruption.
The BP Governance Data Model
The following figure illustrates the data model of the Business Partner Governance.
The Customer Governance Data Model
The following figure illustrates the Customer Governance data model.
The Supplier Governance Data Model
The following figure illustrates the Supplier Governance data model.
Customer/Vendor Integration
CVI complex partner data contains:
- Business partner data
- Customer data
- Vendor data
Business Partner/Customer/Vendor data are partly redundant (name and address data). The customer and vendor data are synchronized with central business partner data using CVI - Customer/Vendor Integration. When you save your created or changed Business Partner, the corresponding customer and vendor data are updated automatically.
When you create a customer or supplier, SAP Master Data Governance always creates a Business Partner.
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 persistencies. Customer- or Vendor-specific data is routed through the Customer/Vendor- specific interface and combined with the Business Partner central data. On commit, the Business Partner and corresponding Customer and/or Vendor is maintained or created.
General data is stored in business partner tables (BUT000, BUT100, BUT020).
Application data is stored in already used customer/vendor tables (KNA1, KNVV, LFA1).
CVI synchronizes and distributes all data into general tables and application-specific tables.
The following figure shows some related tables of the vendor master record explaining what their purposes are as a simplified data model.
