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Exploring Master Data

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

Explain how the master data elements Business Unit, Cost Center, and Site define an organization within the SAP Fieldglass application.

Master Data

Every organization that uses SAP Fieldglass is different. Each has different functions, produces different products or performs different services, has different operating structures and different locations, and so on.

In short, each has unique needs.

The specific configuration of SAP Fieldglass that an organization uses to meet its worker procurement needs is called a tenant. Each tenant is built on foundational data called Master Data.

Watch the video to learn more about how master data defines and drives an organization’s worker procurement workflows in SAP Fieldglass.

Business Units, Cost Centers, and Sites

Just as transactional data cannot exist until master data exists, a company’s tenant cannot exist without three independent foundational master data elements:

Business Unit
Cost Center and
Site.

Business Unit

Business Units represent logical divisions within an organization, usually by functional areas. Typically, when you hear about a specific department within a company, that department is a business unit.

For instance, WorkingNet, like any larger organization, has several departments tasked with specific functions, such as finance, IT, marketing, sales, and so on. In fact, Mavis’ network engineering team constitutes a business unit. So does Brian’s Program Office.

In SAP Fieldglass, Business Units are represented in a hierarchy.

So, WorkingNet’s hierarchy would have WorkingNet as a whole represent the Parent Business Unit, Network Engineering, the Program Management Office, Human Resources, and Finance represent the first functional level.

Network Solutions, Network Design, and Network Implementation might represent second-level functional areas under Network Engineering.

Cost Center

The Cost Center, like a business unit, can also be considered a logical division within an organization but is used strictly to allocate and track financial transactions. So, cost centers depend more on the financial tracking structures an organization has in place rather than the hierarchical reporting structure of a business unit.

In SAP Fieldglass, Cost Centers are used to allocate the costs of temporary workers and other related expenses to the appropriate departments within the organization. So, where the worker is assigned to work in a particular business unit, the worker’s costs are charged to that unit’s cost center.

So, if Mavis hires Joe for six months to cover for an absent worker on the Network Design team, the costs are charged to the Network Design department’s cost center.

Site

Site, the third required Master Data, is where the work is to be performed. Site defines regions or geographic areas where an organization operates in order to reflect the conditions of those areas.

For example, WorkingNet has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, Sao Paolo, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. Each of those is in a different time zone, uses different currencies, procures workers from local suppliers, pays different tax rates, and so on.

Site provides a data reference to help keep track of those local conditions and applies them accordingly when transactions are created in the SAP Fieldglass application.

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