SAP CRM Partner Processing

Overview of Partner Processing

Business partners are important within a business transaction in all business scenarios. SAP CRM provides a comprehensive solution where you can configure settings to maintain business partners and use them in business transactions. With SAP CRM partner processing, you can set properties for the different business partners involved in a transaction.

• Control how the system works with business partners.
• Make a particular business partner mandatory.
• Let the system determine the involved business partners automatically.

What is Partner Determination?

Partner determination is the process the system uses to automatically find and enter the partners involved in a business transaction. Using various sources of information, the determination procedure finds the relevant partners. The business partner master data and the organizational data are the two most important sources.

In a business transaction, partner processing is controlled by partner determination. You can define partners in the CRM system using your company’s terminology and specify exactly how partners are handled. Partner processing also lets you define how partner data is exchanged between SAP CRM and SAP ERP.

The following can be configured as part of the Partner Processing configuration in the application:

• Mandatory partner
• Automatic partner search (see the example below)
• Manually changeable or alternative partners
• Partner determination at item level as well

Partner determination is possible at the header level as well as the item level, and it also controls:

• The partners that must be involved in the business transaction.
• Whether partners are determined automatically.
• Whether partners are manually changeable.

Customizing for Partner Processing

Partner processing is configured within SAP CRM Customizing. The path is: SAP Implementation Guide > Customer Relationship Management > Basic Functions > Partner Processing.

The Partner Determination Procedure is then assigned to the Business Transaction Type within the Profiles section of the SAP CRM business transaction type definition.

Following is the partner determination procedure assignment to the ‘Standard Order’ (TA) business transaction type in SAP CRM customizing:

Setting Partner Determination Procedure for a particular Business Transaction

Following are the elements of Partner Processing defined with Business Transactions and Business Partners in the customizing:

Partner Function Category

• It is a classification of responsibilities used as a system key to identify the partner function and the business partners who take on those responsibilities.
• Partner function categories are predefined within the SAP CRM system and cannot be created or changed.

• Sometimes a partner function and the category to which it is assigned have the same name, but this is not always the case and they can have different names.
• Partner function categories often correspond to business partner relationship categories.

Partner Function

• The persons with whom you do business are described using partner functions.
• These are configured within SAP CRM and can be named freely as per your organization.
• A business partner relationship category can be assigned when a partner function is defined.
• Following is an example of a few SAP standard (pre-defined) partner functions from customizing:

A partner determination procedure is to be assigned to a transaction type and an item category.

Partner Determination Procedure

• The partner determination procedure defines system behavior, with business partners, during partner processing.
• The following example of a partner determination procedure displays a few tasks that it can perform:

The partner determination procedure combines partner functions and access sequences and contains additional information.

Access Sequence

• It is a search strategy that defines the data sources the system uses to determine a partner, along with the order in which those sources are checked during partner processing.
• Each partner function defined in the partner determination procedure can be assigned an access sequence. An example of using an access sequence in business partner processing:

If no access sequence is defined for a partner function in the partner determination procedure, you can enter the partner manually.

How the Settings Fit Together

The settings for SAP CRM partner processing in customizing come together as shown below:

This image shows that a partner determination procedure is assigned to a business transaction definition. The procedure consists of partner functions and their properties, like access sequence, which is a search strategy to determine the business partner involved.

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