Segmentation of Data from External List Management 

Use

In External List Management (ELM), address data acquired from data vendors is imported into the CRM system and made available to subsequent processing (such as campaigns) in the form of target groups. As well as the option to import smaller data packages directly into CRM as complete target groups, address data can also be loaded beforehand into an SAP BI system. With Segment Builder, you can access the address data in the BI system from the CRM system. Every selected data record then becomes a business partner in the CRM system.

You must bear certain things in mind during segmentation of data with the data source category External List Management. These are listed in the section below. From a business perspective, some of the standard functions of the Segment Builder are not practical for data from external lists (such as samples). These are listed under Constraints.

 

Activities

·         Create an ELM data source

Start the transaction Edit data sources for Segment Builder and define a data source of the External List Management category. When doing this, you must make the following entries:

RFC destination: Enter the RFC connection to your BI system.

Name of InfoSets: SAP provides Infoset ELM_INFOSET. Provided no changes are made to the structures of the ELM objects in BI, enter this InfoSet.

Business partner: The InfoSet field containing the GUID for a BI address data record. For InfoSet ELM_INFOSET, this is field ELM_INFOSET_STRUCTURE-ITEM_GUID.

List format: SAP provides format 0ELM_I, which matches all the fields contained in ELM_INFOSET with the business partner structures in CRM.

Remember that the InfoSet, the list format and the implementation of BAdI CRM_MKTLIST_BW_FIELD must match. Changes to one of the three objects normally mean that you must also adjust the other two objects accordingly. For further information, see the documentation for the BAdI: CRM_MKTLIST_BW_FIELD.

The structure ELM_INFOSET_STRUCTURE contains the header and item data of an address list when data from the BI system is transferred to the CRM system. If one of the ELM objects is enhanced, this structure must also be enhanced to enable complete retraction of all data contained in these objects. Since the structure contains several fields, new structures must be included carefully. For more information about restrictions to allowed lengths, see SAP Note 355898.

 

·         Create an attribute list

Create an attribute list using fields from the ELM data source.

·         Segmentation

In Segment Builder, model a profile using your attribute list. If you now set up the target group for the profile, the system runs through the following steps:

o        Selection of address data in the BI system: data transfer to the CRM system and saving to an intermediate table

o        Conversion of data to the business partner structures in CRM

o        Creation of the business partners. A check is performed for every data record to determine whether that business partner had already been created during an earlier selection

Even addresses that have been identified as being incorrect or duplicates are transferred to the CRM system by default. To exclude these business partners from the selection, you must explicitly set the filter value to 0 for the attributes Indicator for Duplicate (DUPLICATE) and Wrong Postal Address (POSTAL_ERROR) when creating the attribute list for data sources of type External List Management.

o        Set up a target group with the business partners created

Unlike the remaining data source categories, another selection principle applies to data sources of the External List Management category: because these are purchased/rented addresses, the selection is made as “non-business partner data”. Business partners are only created from the selected data records during the selection procedure.

Constraints

When using ELM data sources, the following constraints apply within the Segment Builder:

·         It is not possible to work with samples or master sets.

·         It is not possible to use filter conditions.

·         A profile can contain ELM filters only or non-ELM filters only.

·         It is not possible to build a target group in the dialog. It is only possible as a background job.

·         Where a profile set contains one or more ELM profiles, it is also only possible to build a target group based that is based on the entire profile set as a background job.

·         It is not possible to determine the distribution of an attribute with data source category External List Management.