Assessing Ordering Processes Supported by Solution Business

Business partner is the generic term used to refer to the parties involved in your interactions with customers.

Business partner is the generic term used to refer to the parties involved in your interactions with customers. This term is used primarily in technical documentation and does not generally appear on the UI.

• A business partner contains central data, such as names, addresses, communication details, and bank details.
• A business partner represents a natural or a legal person with whom business relationships can be conducted.
• A business partner is used in the roles sold-to-party/contract partner.

A business partner role (for example, contact, sold-to party, or supplier) classifies a business partner in terms of 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. A business partner role is used for classification purposes during data exchange with SAP ERP.

The classification of a business partner as a natural person (for example, a private person), group or organization (a legal person or part of a legal person, for example, department) is called the business partner category. It can be a person, a group, or an organization.

A group specifies a shared living arrangement, a married couple, or an executive board.

The organization represents units such as a company, a department of a company, a club, or an association.

In addition to a legal person, parts of a legal person can be mapped as a business partner.

The business partner type refers to the classification of B2C customers and B2B customers.

As you can see from the previous graphic, multiple Contract Accounts can be assigned to a single business partner. A single contract account can be used in multiple provider contracts.

Contract accounts can also be used on an item level, as previously shown through "Contract Account N". Let’s see how you can use contract accounts to store controlling data.

You use a contract account to store controlling data for long-term business relationships with a business partner.

This data controls processes in Invoicing, Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (FI-CA), taxation, and correspondence processing.

You can define several contract accounts for each business partner, create one or more contract accounts for each of your business partners, and use them to save data relevant to business transactions with the respective business partner.

For a specific contract account, you can enter payment-related information, such as: Terms of payment.

For example, cash discount percentage rates and payment deadline: Bank details or card ID to be used for incoming and outgoing payments.

The customer can specify that a different bank account or card be used for incoming payments than the account or card used for outgoing payments.

Now that you have been introduced to Contract Accounts, it is time to learn about the Subscription Products that make up a Cloud Selection Service. Once again, we use the O2C Company and their customer CutAbove as examples of this.

Lena is an order management administrator for the O2C Company. Her main responsibilities in this role involve:

• Check subscription order (created by CPQ)​
• Accept subscription order​
• Check subscription order fulfillment

Once the preceding tasks are completed, depending on the service chosen by the customer, she must return one month later to:

• Change subscription contract​
• Change technical resource
• Change monthly price​
• Give allowances in a marketing activity​
• Cancel subscription contract​s
• Renew subscription contract​s
• Change product selection from silver to gold​

As you can see from Lena’s list of tasks as order management administrator for the O2C Company, she must be organized to ensure that customers receive the correct service order.

The following video shows the Contract BRIM data model.

Now that you know the data model of the BRIM solution , let’s return to our customer CutAbove. Their IT Department have decided to order the product "Cloud Selection Service" in the variant "Gold".

Before the O2C Company can set up the Contract Account, business partners must be identified by CutAbove so they can be assigned to the Cloud Selection Service.

The O2C Company has offered the preceding four cloud selection service infrastructure. Each product is a subscription and is paid monthly by CutAbove to the O2C Company. The product has a minimum duration for the subscription of 24 months, which is paid monthly.

CutAbove discussed the service levels offered to their staff and agreed that the Gold selection service satisfies their needs. Through this service, CutAbove receive free volume level Gold and Usage Tariff Gold. Here is a breakdown of the Usage Tariff Gold:

In Subscription Order Management, products can be either services or physical goods (such as a PC). You can use subscription products to subscribe to such a service, especially if this service is paid by a pay-per-use model.

You can use subscription products to define the following:

• Subscriptions to services with a payment model of recurring fees and consumption-based fees (pay-per-use).
• One-time services, like an activation or a change fee (one-off fees).
• Physical goods, such as a PC.
• Bundles modeling sales bundles or contract bundles.

The product master (aka material master) provides you with all information for the products your company purchases or sells. It is the central source from which product-specific data can be retrieved.

For subscription products, you can manage the terms of duration, billing cycles, discounts, and charges, among other core attributes. The product master can be maintained via the Manage Product Master Data app or the respective APIs.

However, not all product data required for subscription processing can be maintained in a product master, especially in the context of cross-catalog mapping (for example, to connect to SAP Convergent Charging). You can also use it to assign discount or charge keys used and processed in Convergent Invoicing, using the subscription product-specific data object.

Before you are shown how to create a solution order, it is important that you understand the definition of the solution quotation and subscription contracts.

Solution quotations are legally binding offers with fixed conditions.

With a solution quotation, you can offer your customers solutions that combine different types of products (physical goods, services, subscriptions). These combinations are modeled as product bundles in your master data. When you enter product bundles as items in a quotation, the bundle components are displayed automatically as subitems.

The end values for prices in solution quotation items for recurring fees are calculated dependent on quantity and contract runtime. Once a quotation is released and accepted, follow-up transactions are generated automatically and subscription items in the quotation are copied into a subscription contract. When you accept a solution quotation, the subscription items for one-offs creates a one-off BIT.

A subscription contract is represented by a main subscription contract item within a subscription contract document. A subscription contract document contains one or more subscription contracts, where the individual subscription contracts are not dependent on each other.

A typical subscription contract contains important information, such as technical resources (technical IDs/references of services), contract history (an overview of all the changes related to the contract and previously created orders), subscription contract options (subitems of a subscription contract, containing their own data), and business partner data (for example, alternative addresses for specific address types).

Contract-relevant data is copied from the solution quotation into the contract document. Solution quotation items become subscription contract items in the subscription contract document. You can only change a subscription contract using change processes.

A solution order is a special sales order that can be used to sell product bundles that consist of physical products and services. Subscription order has extra data structure, like technical data, billing cycle, contract start date, and contract duration. In connection with the subscription contract, it supports the sale of special products and services, in the way that they are assembled and offered.

When the subscription order has been released, a new subscription contract is automatically created, whereby items with a short lifetime, such as, sales items or one-time fees stay in the order and items with a long lifetime, become part of the contract. In the first step, you log on to the SAP Fiori Launchpad and go to the Subscription Order Management section. Here, you select the Manage Subscription Order app.