Describing the Business Partner and Organizational Structure

You're responsible for maintaining business partner master data in your company. You'll need to change an existing contract account for an existing business partner.

Business partner is the generic term used to refer to the parties involved in your interactions with customers. Business partners are created in the app, Manage Business Partner Master Data. In general terms, a business partner is called an account.

The term business partner 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, is used to classify a business partner in business function. The roles that are assigned to a business partner reflect the functions it has and the business transactions in which it's likely to be involved.

The classification of a business partner as a natural person is called the business partner category. Examples of this are, a private person, a group or an organization, such as a legal person or part of a legal person, for example, a department.

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

Business partner type refers to the classification of B2C customers and B2B customers. In our example, the company Headquarter is defined as Business Customer.

The business partner is created as a central object in SAP S/4HANA. Depending on the business requirements, different roles can be assigned to the business partner.

For Subscription Order Management (SOM), as a part of SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, using provider contracts in SAP Contract Accounts Receivables and Payable (FI-CA), the role MKK is required for the business partner. Business partners with this role will also be replicated to SAP Convergent Charging as subscriber accounts.

If processes in SD are involved, the Sold To Role is required. The SD customer is automatically created in the background by customer vendor integration in SAP S/4HANA. Business partners represent all parties involved in business transactions, such as persons, groups of persons, and organizations (customer, debtor, creditor, or supplier).

Create business partners using the Manage Business Partner app on the SAP Fiori Launchpad.

Using this business role, you can search for and create business partners on the master data page, using a corporate account, an individual account (for creation), and accounts (for searching). You must assign the appropriate roles to the account, as outlined here:

• For business partners who should be used as contract partners in subscription order processing, add the role Customer (FLCU01) or any other role belonging to this category.
• For business partners associated with sales processes executed in SAP S/4HANA, add the role FI Customer (FLCU00).
• For business partners working with provider contracts in SAP Contract Accounts Receivables and Payable (FI-CA), add the role Contract Partner (MKK).
• When working in a partner settlement scenario, add the role Vendor (FLVN00).

Customer Hierarchy Maintenance in transaction VDH1N.

The organizational structure represents your company structure. Billing relevance data and organizational determination setup is linked to this structure.

Organizational Structure for Subscription Order Management (SOM) – Steps to proceed:

• If no SD organizational structure is in place, define the sales organization.
• Define the service organization, for example, for solution quotation.
• Define organizational attributes, such as currency, distribution channel, division, and postal codes.
• Transfer sales and distribution organizational structure to SOM (Customizing).

This organizational structure represents the current training environment.

An organizational unit needs to be set up with different attributes, as shown in the slides. Mandatory attributes are: the distribution channel, the division, and the document currency. These enable the Sales Organizational view and the Organizational Determination for the overall SOM process.

The Service Organization for SOM purpose is necessary to set up the solution quotation process, as service orders are as a result of it.