Business Partners 
SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) uses the SAP business partner concept. An internal or external business partner is created in SAP SRM for every person, organization, or group of people that could be involved in a business transaction, such as a bid invitation or a purchase order. Within the context of business transactions, business partners can adopt various partner functions, as long as they have fulfilled the relevant requirements.
Business partners aggregate the master data of a person, organization, or group of people.
Prerequisites
The organizational structure exists. See SAP Solution Manager
<project name> 
Configuration SAP SRM <release> Basic Settings for SAP SRM Organizational
Management User Management Organizational Structure Define Organizational Structure 
.The business partner functions have been created in partner processing. Here you can enter your own description for the partner function, within a partner function type. These texts are then displayed in the appropriate documents of a business transaction.
For more information, see Customizing for SAP Supplier Relationship Management under
SRM Server Cross-Application Basic Settings Define Partner Functions .
Features
A dynamic structure of partner functions is defined for the different business transactions in SAP SRM. For example, an internal employee can adopt the partner function Requester or Goods Recipient, when creating a shopping cart.
The system automatically performs a semantic and syntactic check of data entered in partner processing. Among other things, the system checks whether the business partner may adopt the assigned partner function.
Through the partner function, the corresponding business partner is assigned to the relevant documents of the business transaction. See also Addresses.
External Business Partners
The following table lists the partner functions for external business partners:
External Business Partner Function |
Description |
|---|---|
Bidder |
Company that can submit bids in response to a bid invitation |
Supplier |
Business partner from whom goods and services can be obtained |
Contact person |
Specific contact person from the bidder or supplier company |
Ship-from address |
Outbound delivery address of the company from where the goods are shipped |
Invoicing party |
Business partner that sends the invoice |
Note
During invoice creation, you can enter an invoicing party that differs from the supplier. The invoicing party is a mandatory partner function. If you do not enter an invoicing party, the system uses the supplier.
When you create a supplier or bidder, you can also define a contact person. A user is then created for the contact person in SAP SRM in the Maintain User transaction (SU01). The user ID and password are then sent to the contact person via e-mail. For every employee of a supplier or bidder, a contact person can be created in addition to the business partner for that company.
Internal Business Partners
The following table lists the partner functions for internal business partners:
Internal Business Partner Function |
Description |
|---|---|
Requester |
Employee in a company that requests a requirement. A requirement coverage request can also be created on behalf of another employee. |
Purchasing company |
Company that uses SAP SRM for procurement |
Goods recipient |
Employee in a company that confirms goods receipt or performance of service |
Ship-to address |
Address of a company to where the goods are delivered |
Invoice recipient |
Business partner to whom the invoice is sent |
Location |
Business partner that represents a delivery address or a plant in the back-end system |
Employee responsible |
Employee in the company who is responsible for the contract |
Internal business partners, with the exception of locations, are created for an organizational unit or an employee in the organizational structure. When a business partner is created for an employee, this business partner is assigned to the relevant organizational unit within the organizational structure.
A relationship is defined between the employee business partner and the business partner of the associated organizational unit. For example, when you create a sales employee's business partner, the employee relationship to the business partner of the organizational unit SALES is defined. The employee relationship includes the employee's business address that is used when goods are delivered, for example.