With the introduction of the SAP Business Partner, SAP has made it possible to map relationships between individual business partners within the ERP system. A business partner relationship represents a relationship between two business partners created in the system. These can be different business partner categories that have a relationship with each other, such as a business partner of the category Organization that maintains a relationship with a business partner of the category People. By creating and maintaining relationships in the business partner master, SAP emphasizes the centralization of the master data maintenance of the business partner or the creditors and debtors. On the one hand, this enables SAP to quickly maintain relationships directly in the business partner master, and on the other hand, it provides an overview of the different relationship constructs between the individual business partners.
SAP already provides various relationship types in the standard system for mapping relationships, such as the relationship type "...is contact person of..." or "...has sales partner...". This makes it possible, for example, to store the contact person of a supplier in the system.
In addition to the SAP standard relationship types, custom relationship types may be necessary - these can be maintained accordingly in Customizing and then selected when creating a relationship between two business partners. The creation of a user-defined relationship category requires a clear definition of the functionality so that it is later available in the expected way. For example, the cardinality or even the business partner categories that can be stored in the relationship must be defined in Customizing.
THE FOLLOWING ARE THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BUSINESS PARTNER RELATIONSHIPS:
1. Master data management: business partner relationships enable companies to maintain comprehensive master data for their partners. This includes basic information such as name, address, contact information, bank details and more. By linking business partners, master data only needs to be maintained in one central location in the system rather than in each vendor/customer. This reduces the effort required to maintain master data while improving master data quality. This data then serves as the basis for all business transactions and can enable efficient communication and collaboration between business partners, as contact persons or sales partners can be accessed, for example.
CONSILIO implemented the Business Partner in a very short time, so we had hardly any impact on our internal resources.
2. Rights assignment: rights can also be assigned within the system with a relationship. The relationship type "...is supported in credit management by..." can be used to assign employees who are maintained as business partners to companies. The stored employee is thus assigned credit cases in the documented credit decision and can subsequently release or reject them. With this relationship, SAP thus implements the business partner-dependent assignment of rights and at the same time facilitates the assignment of rights.
3. Mapping of relationship constructs: As mentioned at the beginning, different relationship types can be used to map the relationship constructs in the master data between individual business partners. Below are a few examples of SAP standard relationship types and their function:
- Employee relationship: This relationship is created between a company and an employee. This allows the individual business partners to be placed in a unique relationship.
- Parent-subsidiary structure: This relationship is used to represent the relationship between a parent company and its subsidiaries. It helps to depict the corporate structure and the financial relationships between the companies.
- Sales relationship: This relationship is also maintained between a company and an employee. With this relationship, the sales partner of a company can be maintained and can thus facilitate communication as well as cooperation in sales activities.
- Contact relationship: This relationship is used to manage the relationships between, for example, a company and the contact persons such as contact persons, sales employees or customer service representatives. This can facilitate supplier and customer support, as contact persons are named who can support the cooperation in case of queries or various problems.
By maintaining the relationships in SAP Business Partner, the business partner master data can be enhanced with valuable information for the business department and thus support and improve the business processes in day-to-day business, for example by maintaining a contact person.
Summary
With the implementation of the business partner relationship, the business partner can be supplemented with further valuable master data and thus also with relevant information for the respective specialist area. The business partner relationship provides a comprehensive view of the relationship construct between business partners and can thus improve day-to-day business and communication. The degree to which business partner relationships are used depends on the required scope of a company as well as its demand for completeness and quality of the business partner master data. While some relationships represent a clear use case and thus have their raison d'être, other relationship types can in turn be seen as a supplement. Ultimately, each company must ask itself how detailed the relationships are needed in the system.
