Introduction
To relate different partners (e.g. individuals, organizations, external companies, etc.) to accounts, Partner Functions are established between both entities. Similar to the concept in ERP, Partner Functions are specific to sales info/area (sales org, distribution channel and division) and can also be evaluated as part of the security concept (refer to ‘Role Management’ and ‘Read Restriction Rules’ for more details).
Partner Function Types whether the related entity is an account (e.g. a Bill-to account, or a partner account, etc.), a contact or a user.
Usage
The concept of Partner Functions caters to many use cases. The following table lists a few examples on how Partner Functions are mostly being used for:
|
Use Case |
Additional Information |
Impact |
|
Security |
An user is assigned as a partner function user to partner function ‘Employee Responsible’. |
If in the read restrictions access is only granted to a partner function user, the account will only be visible to the users actually assigned to the account (refer to 'Role Management' and 'Read Restriction Rules' for more details). |
|
Search |
A search for accounts that have a certain partner function maintained is carried out. |
When performing a search for a specific partner function, only these accounts will be returned that have the respective partner function maintained. |
|
Sales Partners / Competitors |
To indicate whether a distributor, dealer or competitor is associated to the account, the relationship can be defined by assigning a respective partner function. |
No impact; this is just for visualizing the relationship between the respective partners. |
|
Other Account Related Partner Functions |
To associated e.g. Bill-to, Ship-to, Payer partners to a Sold-to account. |
No impact; this is just for visualizing the relationship between the respective partners and would mostly be replicated from ERP. |
In the following example, the below account has two (2) sales areas maintained (also refer to ‘Organization Unit, Distribution Channel and Division’ for additional information):
Partner Functions that are maintained in these two (2) sales areas will be synced:
Configuration Partner Function
Under ‘Administration’ -> ‘Master Data Management’ → ‘PartnerFunction’, an administrator can review existing and can create new Partner Functions:
The details of a Partner Function are explained in the following figure (as an example for the Partner Function ‘Bill-to’:
The most important definitions are:
- Partner Function Type; to determine whether the assigned partners can be of type account, user, etc.
- Has Partner Role; as additional verification that only partners with a respective role are assigned.
Configuration Partner Function Type
Under ‘Administration’ → ‘Master Data Management’ → ‘Partner Function Type’ the administrator can define respective types of partners that can be assigned to a Partner Function, e.g.:
Configuration Partner Role
Under ‘Administration’ → ‘Master Data Management’ → ‘Partner Role’ the administrator can define respective roles that partners need to have when assigned to a Partner Function, e.g.:
The partner function also has a main indicator in schema which can be used to indicate the primary partner, for the case when multiple partners are maintained in same role. The header field ‘Owner’ has a unique function as it gets synchronized with the partner function ‘Owner Party’; updates are bi-directional, meaning that if the main Owner partner function is changed, the header field is updated accordingly.
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