Partnerships 

Definition

A partnership in Incentive and Commission Management (ICM) is a grouping of commission contracts that participate jointly in commission cases. There are two forms of partnerships:

·        Partnerships without time restrictions

A grouping of commission contracts where, for instance, the commission contract partners may use any synergy effects for their business

·        Partnerships with time restrictions

Commission contracts that are grouped together for a defined period and purpose, where the commission contract partners have exactly defined roles, such as senior contract partner or junior contract partner. In this grouping, there may be a transfer of expertise, responsibilities and in particular portfolios from the senior to junior member within the fixed timeframe.

Unlike the participation determination of indirect participants within the organizational hierarchy or in the framework of a contractual participation, partnerships consist of members of equal status.

Use

You use partnerships in Incentive and Commission Managementto map direct, non-hierarchical relationships between commission contracts. These relationships are evaluated in commission cases and serve as the basis for distributing remuneration resulting from valuation splits. You can use the group contract to map contractual agreements for the partnership as a whole.

Partnerships support assignment processes, the transfer of responsibilities and expertise as well as the transfer of portfolio from one partner to another.

Integration

You use the contract bundle to group together the commission contacts of a partnership in the system. To use a contract bundle as a partnership, you must have created the contract bundle with the contract bundle type for partnerships. You can create several contract bundle types of this category, which means you create several partnership types.

The major settings for partnerships are made in Customizing for Incentive and Commission Management under Basic and Master Data ®

·        Partnerships

·        Contract Bundle

·        Standard Commission Contract ® Participation Agreement

Structure

Partnerships are contract bundles with special characteristics:

·        Members of a partnership

Members of a partnership can only be commission contracts, and never the business partners themselves. A business partner can have several commission contracts. Depending on whether the setting for dedicated commission contracts has been made or not, a business partner can be represented with one and the same commission contract either in one single partnership or several partnerships (see also Dedicated Commission Contracts). A partnership cannot be a member of another partnership.

·        Participation of a Partnership in the Remuneration

Partnerships are treated as direct participants in the commission case; they cannot act as indirect participants.  The participation in the remuneration is handled by the activity participation.

The memberships of the partnership are remunerated according to their individual share of the valuation.  When you create a partnership, you define distribution ratios for the partnership types with determination type 42 or 43, and customer-specific functions for determination type 44. In the commission case, the share of the valuation that is assigned to the partnership is distributed to the members or determined in customer-specific functions according to these distribution ratios.  The calculation of the remuneration uses the commission contracts that have been defined for the members in the partnership.

Also the remuneration of the indirect participants is based on the corresponding shares, if the function of the standard delivery is installed and switched on.

·        Determination of Indirect Participants in Partnerships

Partnerships can be used to determine indirect participants. 

You make settings in Customizing for Incentive and Commission Management for each partnership type to specify if the determination of indirect participants is based on the group contract or on all member contracts of the partnership, or on both; in each case the determination can be made both through the organizational hierarchy as well as through the contractual participation in ICM. The following determinations are possible:

¡        Determine indirect participants for the members of the partnership only

¡        Determine indirect participants for the group contract only

¡        Determine indirect participants for the group contract and the members of the partnership

¡        Do not determine indirect participants in the framework of partnerships

The determination of indirect participants for contracts that participate in a commission case in the framework of a group business can only be made if a suitable determination method for the (source) entitlement category partnership/group has been defined.

For more information on determination types, see the documentation in the Implementation Guide (IMG) on the IMG activity Configuring Partnership Types under Incentive and Commission Management ® Basic and Master Data ® Partnerships.

In the entitlement group Activity of Participation, there is no search of indirect participants for the contract that represents the partnership to avoid indirect participants being found twice, in other words by the entitlement group Activity of Participation as well as by the entitlement group partnership/group.

·        Start and end of partnership

A partnership cannot be automatically created or ended (see Creating Partnerships or Changing Partnerships).

Likewise the automatic reassignment of portfolio at the end of a partnership is only indirectly possible.