Managing Business Partners in SAP CPQ

The Business Partners is the default functionality for managing customers and other involved parties in quotes in the Quote 2.0 engine.

Business partners of an organization are the entities that have business relationships with the organization. A business partner can be one of the following:

• Organization
• Person
• Group of organizations
• Group of persons

Typically, the business partners of an organization or company are customers, vendors, employees, contact persons, organizational units, and others.

Partner functions determine how a business partner is related to a transaction. The most common partner functions include the following:

• Sold-To Party is the entity that purchases the goods. Ship-To Party is the entity receiving the goods. Payer is the entity responsible for making the payment.
• Bill-To Party is the entity receiving the invoice.

Partner functions are assigned to quotes. Business partners are assigned to partner functions based on their involvement in the transaction made via quote, sales order, contract, opportunity, and more. By assigning a business partner to a partner function, the SAP CPQ user creates an involved party. From a legal and business perspective, this approach makes it possible to track the parties that have participated in a business transaction. Partner functions essentially show how a business partner is involved in a transaction.

The Involved parties tab allows users to select a partner function and add business partners to create an involved party. An involved party on a quote is a business partner matched with the partner function they perform on the quote.

The prerequisite for managing involved parties on the quote is to create the Involved Parties tab following procedure of adding a tab. The tab is empty if there are no partner functions selected to be added by default on the quote.

The icons on the right allow users to manage the involved parties with the following options:

• Add an involved party.
• Delete the selected involved party.
• Choose from a list of available columns displayed.

Create Involved Party with an Existing Business Partner

A partner function is a mandatory minimum field in an involved party. An involved party must contain a partner function but will not need to have a business partner. An involved party can be created with a business partner already defined by the administrator.

Create Involved Party with a New Business Partner

A partner function is a mandatory minimum field in an involved party. This means that an involved party must contain a partner function but will not need to have a business partner. An involved party can be created with a new business partner created locally.

Search, Edit and Delete Business Partner

If you add only a partner function without a business partner in the Involved Parties tab, you can later search and add a business partner directly from the grid.

Let's add a new business partner in the next exercise!