A business partner relationship maps the business-relevant connection between two business partners.

In order to create a relationship between two business partners you have to assign a business partner relationship category to the business partner relationship. If the relationship category has been assigned, then the two business partners are said to have this relationship.

You can assign attributes to a relationship, meaning that redundant data retention is avoided.

You can limit a relationship in time by entering the start date and end date of the relationship. This means that it is possible to get an overview of the periods in which certain business partners were contact persons for a company, for example.

If a business partner is both the purchasing manager of company A and also the MRP controller of company B, the attributes that this business partner has as purchasing manager and as MRP controller (such as department, function, power of attorney) can be defined in the relevant relationships. If you were unable to assign any attributes to a relationship, you would have to create the business partner twice so that you could uniquely assign the corresponding data to the business partner.