Business Situation
Let’s introduce our new business situation. James Taylor works for a printing service provider Print2You. He has a new customer, ACME Incorporated, located in Atlanta, Georgia. His contact is Susan. James would like to create his new customer as a new business partner in the SAP system. Let's see how this works.
Distribution of the Business Partner Master Data in the Landscape
Let’s look at our process flow above. We begin with the creation of the Business Partner Master Data, followed by giving the roles of customer and financial customer to our created Business Partner. Business Partners are created in the app Manage Business Partner – Master Data and are distributed automatically to all relevant applications with an Event Mesh.
What is a Business Partner?
Business partner is the generic term in SAP S/4HANA and is used to refer to the parties involved in your interactions with customers.
It represents a natural or legal person with whom business relationships can be conducted. It contains central data, such as names, addresses, communication details, and bank details.
For example, ACME Inc. is a business partner and has a contract with Print2You company.
Business Partner Role Concept
The business partner can be associated with multiple roles. A business partner role (for example, contact, sold-to party, or supplier) is used to classify a business partner in a business function. The roles that are assigned to a business partner reflect the functions it has and the business transactions in which it is likely to be involved.
For example, ACME Inc. is a business partner and has a contract with Print2You. In our SAP context, we call ACME Inc. the "Sold-to Party". ACME Inc. is also the receiver of the invoice and the payer for the contract, therefore the role of a "customer" FLCU01 and a "financial customer" FLCU00 are needed. If you want to enable the management of collections for ACME Inc., the business partner role "collections management" UDM000 can be added.
Organizational Structure
The Organizational Structure represents your company structure in SAP S/4HANA. It is used to set up the master data and business processes. You can define Organizational Structure for Sales, Service and Finance. Sales organization controls the terms of sale to the customer. A division is usually used to represent a product line.
An example of an organizational structure is shown below.
Let’s return to our customer ACME Inc. who has ordered printing as a service from the Print2You Company.
Business Case: Company Print2You
The Print2You company offers printing as a service to their customer. They use SAP Public Cloud in order to manage their processes. The employee is James Taylor.
Business Case: Customer ACME Inc.
The customer, ACME Inc., needs a printer with advanced technical capabilities for their offices. The IT Department of the company decides to order the configurable printer PRT_HW_CFG with the Premium price model.
ACME have 15 users who want to print, fax, and copy.
General Information
Business Partner Name: ACME Incorporated
Organization (Person) Title: Company
Search Term: PRINTER
Contact Person: Susan Miller
Address: Sample Ave SE/House Number: 200/ Postal Code: 30315-1402/ Atlanta/ Georgia/ USA
Contact Details (Phone): 4003001
Email Address: acme@gmail.com
Creating a Business Partner Role
The following video shows how James at Print2You will create a Business Partner role for Susan, the contact person for ACME Inc..
Video Recap:
The process of creating a business partner in the Fiori app involves entering central data such as name, point of contact, address, communication, and bank information.
The business partner is initially created as an organization, with a business partner number grouping.
There are two types of number grouping - external (number specified by the user) and internal (number generated by the system). BP02 is the standard internal number in the system.
The financial company code FLCU00 needs to be selected for the first role.
Additional roles are added by selecting the company code FLCU01 for the second business partner role, and adding the role UDM000 for Collections Management as the third role.
The user (James in this case) can return later to complete the organizational structure company codes.
What Did You Learn in This Unit?
A business partner in SAP S/4HANA refers to the parties involved in business interactions, representing a natural or legal person for business relationships. It encompasses central data like names, addresses, communication details, and bank details.
A business partner can have multiple roles like contact, sold-to party, or supplier, which reflects its functions and likely business transactions.
Business partners in SAP are made in the app Manage Business Partner and are automatically distributed to relevant applications.
A business partner role can be created following a specific process in the Fiori app with various number groupings and roles.
The Organizational Structure in SAP S/4HANA represents a company's structure and is essential for setting up the master data and business processes. This structure involves Sales, Service, and Finance.
Sales organization controls the terms of sale to a customer and divisions usually represent a product line.
The business case instance provided illustrates how the Print2You company utilizes SAP Public Cloud to manage their processes, including creating a business partner role for their customer, ACME Inc..
In the next unit, our customer Susan at ACME Inc., would like to purchase printing as a service from James at Print2You. This example will help you understand the Solution Order Process.