This lesson is a general overview of SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration with a focus on business partners and the concept of sharing assets, as well as the process of sharing a data object with a business partner and the capabilities surrounding that.
SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, formerly SAP Asset Intelligence Network, is a crucial part of the SAP Intelligent Asset Management suite of products. The main purpose of SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration is that within its platform, it contains a pool of master data and transactional data that can be easily shared between business partners. For example, an asset such as a motor or a pump can be shared between the organization that is using the object, the manufacturer of the object in question, technicians who may need to service those objects, or any other relevant party. The master and transactional data can either be created locally in the cloud via another integrated solution, asset central foundation, or can be brought over from a back-end SAP S/4HANA or ECC system.
The benefit of this solution is the ability to have a single source for the data between all partners. Objects such as documents and failure modes can be attached to items in SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration and can be referenced by all partners to construct a better overall picture.
For data to be shared between the different asset collaborators, they must be present within the SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration tenant as a business partner. The main account users, or premium users of the SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration tenant, must first invite the company in there before they can become a business partner. Once added, premium users can share data with the specified business partners at either a read or write level. Business partners can also share data they create with the premium users and other business partners in the tenant as well
Overall Process for Sharing Data
The process of sharing master and transactional data to the different business partners within SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration is relatively simple, assuming all the necessary prerequisites are completed. These would be that the appropriate data already exists within the system and the necessary business partners are already present. In addition, all necessary roles for the user to perform this process are assigned.
Some examples of the object data that can be shared to other business partners are as follows:
- Equipment
- Functional location
- Work order
- Notification
- Model
- Spare part
To share an object within SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, simply access the object to be shared and click on the share button within it. After selecting the appropriate group to share the object with, configure the various share options to determine what data is shared with the object and confirm the share option there.
General Notes for Sharing Data Between Business Partners
When these objects are shared, users can determine what sub objects within the main object they wish to share with the business partner. For example, a user may determine that when sharing a work order, they would like to share the associated equipment underneath the work order but not any of the notifications attached to it.
If the user sharing the data is a premium user, then they will have the ability to specify, for some of the sub objects, whether the receiving business partner has read or write access to the data. Premium users will have automatic read access to all published items from the business partners in the SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration tenant. Business users can share write access to the premium users however, if desired. If a business user wants to share a data object with another business user however, they can only share it on the read level. For some objects, users can also determine if they want to grant the receiver the ability to share the object with other users as well.
After an object and the selected sub objects are shared, that user can reconfigure what they have shared with the other business partners. This includes which objects have been shared, their read or write access, and if they are given the grant to share with other business partners. They can also revoke access as well to the shared partner.