Business Partner Role (BP Role)

Definition

Rights and obligations for which a business partner can assume responsibility in various business transactions.

Use

You can use the business partner role to classify a business partner from a business perspective.

A business transaction is used as the basis for defining a business partner role. The attributes for the BP role are tailored to the requirements of the respective business transaction involved. Data that is available for a transaction is also dependent on the business partner category.

Example Example

Transactions and the associated roles

Transaction

BP Role

Order

Sold-to party

Goods delivery

Ship-to party

End of the example.

In addition to the central BP roles, application-specific roles are also available, such as:

  • Contract partner and installer for utilities companies

  • Sold-to party and goods recipient in CRM Enterprise

You can create a business partner in one or more BP roles. The central data, such as the name, address and bank details is only created once here.

The BP role General Business Partner is assigned to a business partner automatically. You can also select the following BP roles according to the function of the business partner involved:

You can combine roles in a role grouping, which you can then select in dialog processing. For more information, see BP Role Grouping.

The following function are available to you for displaying and processing BP roles in dialog processing:

  • Overview of all the roles that have been assigned to a business partner.

  • Deletion of a role assignment

  • Validity period for a role assignment

  • Where-used list for a role (for example in an application)

    You can use the where-used list to check whether it is possible to delete the assignment of BP roles to business partners, which are part of a business partner relationship. If the corresponding role categories are assigned to the relationship category and constitute a prerequisite for creating a relationship, the assignment cannot be deleted.

The following diagram gives an overview of the various elements in the role concept and how they interact with one another.

Structure

For more information about the BP role concept, see Customizing for the Business Partner.

Integration

An extensibility of BP roles using customer-specific attributes is possible. For more information about this, see the Business Data Toolset.

Make the required settings for the BP role in Customizing for the Business Partner under Start of the navigation path Basic Settings Next navigation step Business Partner Roles End of the navigation path.

Example

You are employed in the sales department at the company Smith Ltd. You make contact with Mrs Jones at Hansen Ltd. You want to send her information about existing products. You create the following business partner master data:

  • A master data record for a business partner with the name "Hansen Ltd" with the BP role Prospect, for which you define the requested validity data. You create the central data and the address.

  • A master data record for a business partner with the name "Mrs Jones" with the BP role Contact Person, for which you define the validity. You create the central data, address and the relationship "Is Contact Person For" at Hansen Ltd.

Three months later, an order is received from Hansen Ltd. The invoice is to be sent to the parent company Hansen and Sons for billing. You create the following new business partner master data:

  • You delete the role Prospect and assign Hansen Ltd the role Sold-to Party. This is valid as of the order date. You create the sales and shipping data for a specific sales area.

  • A master data record for a business partner with the name "Hansen and Sons" with the BP role Bill-to Party and Payer. You create the central data, address, bank details and billing data.