Business Partner Maintenance

This function allows you to create and update business partners after external data is mapped successfully to SAP standard structures. After you create business partners, you can assign marketing attributes to them if necessary.

Note Note

You can create business partners for the successfully mapped records only if the records do not contain any postal errors or are not marked as duplicates.
If you create business partners for a rented external list, then they are flagged as Rented Addressin the business partner master data. This flag is deleted once the business partner is acquired successfully. For more information, see Customizing for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by choosing Marketing External List Management Actions in External List Management .

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Prerequisites

To create business partners in the consumer role:
You have made settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by choosing Marketing External List Management Define List Origin . If the consumer role is selected, business partners are created under the role Consumer.
To create business partners in other roles:
You have implemented the Business Add-In Define Execution of Steps and inserted the code to create business partners in other roles under the method CREATE_BUSINESS_PARTNERS. For more information, see Customizing for CRM by choosing Marketing External List Management Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) Define Execution of Steps .
You have executed the Upload List and Map Data steps, or selected the steps for execution.

Activities

To execute this step, select the Maintain Business Partners option in the Process Steps assignment block and set the start data.

Data Processing During Business Partner Maintenance

Note Note

If the following conditions are satisfied, you can update business partner data directly:
- The person ID (PER_NUMBER) and organization ID (ORG_NUMBER) columns are mapped to the corresponding file columns.
- The data is known to be completely accurate and up-to-date.
You can check for duplicate records only by using the Duplicate Check option and not while creating business partners. If you have not executed the Duplicate Check step, then none of the data records are marked as duplicate. Standard APIs are used to create business partners during the execution of the Business Partner Creation step. During the processing of these APIs, no duplicate check is executed internally in these APIs.
For successful execution of the step business partner creation, the country ISO Code must contain valid data. The mapping format must also contain a valid mapping for the fields ORG_COUNTRYISO (for B2B data) and PERS_COUNTRYISO (for B2B and B2C data).

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An external list file can contain either B2B data (organization and contact person data) or B2C data (person data), depending on the fields mapped in the mapping format used for an external list.
In a B2B context, if more than one contact person must be created for an organization, the data file must have the same number of records for an organization as the number of contact persons. Each of these B2B records must contain information about the same organization as well as information about different contact persons.
The default implementation class is CL_DEF_IM_CRM_MKTLIST_BADI. If there is no active implementation for the Business Add-In Define Execution of Steps (CRM_MKTLIST_BADI), then the default implementation for the method CREATE_BUSINESS_PARTNERS is used to create business partners.
This method calls the following methods to create business partners:
- A private method, CREATE_ORGANIZATION, in the default implementation class is called to create a business partner with the partner category Organization.
  - A check is carried out to ascertain if the organization data was mapped successfully:
    
    In the case of B2C data, the check is unsuccessful and the organization is not created.
    
    For B2B data, the check is successful and the business partner is created with the partner category Organization. The business partner is created in the Consumer role. For more information, choose Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Marketing External List Management Define List Origin .
    
    The international address version is added to the organization in addition to the standard address if the international address version is maintained in the mapping format ((Field ORG_NATION) and if it contains a valid value. In such a case, both the standard address and the international address version contain the same address information.
    
    If separate address information is available in the file, you must:
    
    Enhance the structure CRMT_MKTLIST_ADR_EXT with additional address fields
    
    Create a new mapping format that also has mapping information of these additional fields and
    
    Implement the BAdI Define Execution of Steps (CRM_MKTLIST_BADI), method CREATE_BUSINESS_PARTNERS to put separate address information in standard address and international address version.
    
    The identification number is added to the business partner if:
    
    The identification number is maintained in the mapping format (Field ORG_ID_NUMBER) and
    
    A valid identification type is maintained in the customizing for the list origin. For more information, see Customizing for CRM by choosing Marketing External List Management Define List Origin .
    
    If the external list is rented, the indicator Rented Address is selected in the classification data of the business partner. For more information, see Customizing for CRM by choosing Marketing External List Management Define List Type .
- A private method, CREATE_PERSON, in the default implementation class is called to create business partners in the partner category Person.
  - If the person data is mapped successfully, a business partner is created in the partner category Person. This business partner is created in the consumer role. For more information, see Customizing for CRM by choosing Marketing External List Management Define List Origin .
  - The international address version is added to the organization in addition to the standard address if the international address version is maintained in the mapping format ((Field PERS_NATION) and if it contains a valid value. In such a case, both the standard address and the international address version contain the same address information
  - If separate address information is available in the file, you must:
    
    Enhance the structure CRMT_MKTLIST_ADR_EXT with additional address fields
    
    Create a new mapping format that also has mapping information of these additional fields
    
    Implement the BAdI Define Execution of Steps (CRM_MKTLIST_BADI), method CREATE_BUSINESS_PARTNERS to put separate address information in standard address and international address version
  - The identification number is added to the business partner if:
    
    The identification number is maintained in the mapping format (Field PERS_ID_NUMBER) and
    
    A valid identification type is maintained in Customizing for CRM, by choosing Marketing External List Management Define List Origin .
  - If the external list is rented, the flag Rented Address is selected in the classification data of the business partner. For more information, see Customizing for CRM by choosing Marketing External List Management Define List Type .
  Note
  You can create persons only if the Person field is part of the chosen mapping format. If the mapping format contains fields for both person and organization, then both organization and person are created and the relationship has a contact person between the organization and person.
  
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In a B2B scenario:
- A contact person relationship is created if :
  - The organization and person is created successfully and
  - The contact person relationship data is provided and maintained in the mapping format (Fields CP_FUNCTIONNAME and CP_FUNCTIONKEY).
- The organization address data is added to the relationship address data and the person communication data is added to the relationship communication data.
- The International Address Version is added to the contact person relationship if the International Address Version is maintained in the mapping format (Field PERS_NATION) and if it contains a valid value.
Errors may occur in the process due to erroneous address data or other system-related problems.
Errors occurring during the execution of the maintain business partners step are logged. These errors can be identified by the traffic light icon next to Maintain Business Partners on the Process Steps assignment block. Error details can be viewed by clicking this button.
Note
- If any errors occur during the creation of organizations or persons in any of the steps under data processing – business partner creation, addition of the international address version, selection of the Rented Address indicator, creation of contact person relationships – then all changes are rolled back.
- In the case of B2B data, if there is an error in the creation of either the organization or the person, both organization and person are rolled back.
End of the note.

More Information

External Lists in SAP CRM