A business partner is a business object that consists of a person, organization, group of persons, or group of organizations in which a company has a business interest. A business partner may also be a person, organization, or group within a company.

A business partner can have several functions at one time. Functions are characterized by function categories. A function category, for example, may be a sold-to party, interested person, payer, or payee.

A business partner can have relationships with other business partners. Relationships are characterized by relationship types. For example, relationship types can include the following: "is a subsidiary of," "is the contact person for," or "is identical to." A business partner can have several addresses. Addresses are defined by address types. An address type, for example, can consist of a delivery address or correspondence address.

A business partner can be assigned other business partners using the function determination. These business partners can then act on behalf of the original partner in their respective roles. For example, a business partner can be defined as a payee for another business partner.

For more information about business partners, refer to the documentation Basic Functions and Master Data in Sales and Distribution.

In a notification, you can record all partners who are involved with subject matter/problem described in the notification. This includes the person who reported the subject matter/problem, the persons responsible for processing the notification, and those responsible for processing individual notification tasks. The partner data that you can maintain in a notification is predefined in Customizing for each notification type.

The following graphic shows how partners are used for notification processing.

Partners can be:

• Internal partners (for example, internal employees or partners in the Human Resources component)
• External partners (for example, customers, vendors, or manufacturers)

The various partner types can be subdivided into partner functions. The partner function defines the rights, responsibilities and tasks of each partner when a business transaction is processed.

The partner determination procedure specifies whether partners can be assigned to a notification and which partner functions can be used to process various business transactions. Your system administrator defines the partner determination procedure in Customizing.