Business Partners 

Use

Business partners are any 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:

●      Accounts

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)

○       Groups (any groupings, such as households)

For more information, see Accounts in the business user documentation.

●      Contacts

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

For more information, see Contacts in the business user documentation.

●      Employees

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

For more information, see Employees in the business user documentation.

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 elements are available to you within the business partner data:

Business Partner Roles

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

For more information, see Business Partner Roles.

Business Partner Relationships

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

For more information, see Business Partner Relationship.

Account Hierarchy

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

For more information, see Account Hierarchies.

 

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 Cases	x	x	x
Fact Sheet	x	x
Rule-Based Employee Assignment	x	x	x
Archiving	x	x	x	x

 

See also:

Specifics for Mobile Sales/Service (Laptop): Business Partners