Function documentationBusiness Partners

 

Business partners are parties in which your company has a business interest. You can create and manage your business partners centrally for different business transactions, and reflect the different roles they play, such as sold-to party and ship-to party.

A business partner can be any of the following:

  • Account

    An account is a company, individual, or group with which you have a business relationship. An account can be, for example, a customer, prospect, vendor, or competitor. Accounts are subdivided into the following types:

    • Corporate accounts (companies or organizations)

    • Individual accounts (private individuals)

    • Account groups (any groupings, such as households)

  • Contact

    A contact is a person with whom you have a business relationship, and is mostly assigned to a corporate account.

  • Employee

    An employee is a member of your company, and involved in the interactions between your company and customers, prospects, vendors, and other parties.

“Business partner” is the generic term used to refer to the parties involved in your interactions with customers. This term is used primarily in technical documentation and does not generally appear on the UI.

Features

The following basic concepts are relevant for business partner data:

Business Partner Role

A business partner can take on different business partner roles, reflecting the business transactions in which it is likely to be involved.

For more information, see Business Partner Roles.

Business Partner Relationship

A relationship connects two business partners and is characterized by a business partner relationship category.

For more information, see Business Partner Relationship.

Account Hierarchies

You can represent the structure of an organization using an account hierarchy.

For more information, see Account Hierarchies.

Functions

The following functions are available for working with business partners:

Function

Corporate Account

Individual Account

Contact

Employee

Life cycle

x

x

Account classification

x

x

Business hours

x

x

x

Business appointments

x

x

Buying center

x

Change history

x

x

x

x

Cleansing

x

x

x

x

Fact sheet

x

x

Rule-based employee assignment

x

x

x

Archiving

x

x

x

x