| external procurement relationship (SCM-APO-MD) |
Master data in SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO).
An external procurement relationship represents purchasing info records, contracts, and scheduling agreements from your OLTP system (for example, an ERP system) in your APO system and provides all the necessary data for planning material procurement activities.
It links the transportation lane with information from your OLTP system as follows:
The transportation lane represents the business relationship between a source location (such as a supplier) and a destination location (such as a plant).
The external procurement relationship enhances the transportation lane information by establishing a link to a specific contract that exists in your OLTP system for the source and target locations, for example.