Partners in Business Transaction
Partners play a very important role in any business transaction, creating a business transaction (like Leads and Opportunity), without any partner, is meaningless. Hence, there are multiple partners, that are involved in business transactions, some of them are external like Client (to whom you are selling your Products or Services) and Client Contact (is the person from Client side, to whom you are contacting for the business), and some of them are internal like Employee Responsible, responsible person from your company side.
You might have noticed that when you start creating a business transaction, let say, an opportunity, some of the partners (like Employee Responsible) are automatically determined, even before you enter any detail in opportunity document. There are some partners that are dependent on other partners and determined automatically when you enter Partners, on whom they are dependent. In this blog, I am trying to explain you the same scenario, with all the configuration and customizing in detail.
Business Scenario
Let’s understand the business requirement in detail, there is a person type business partner, called Senior Account Manager (SAM), who plays a very important role while dealing with Client, apart from Client Contact. This partner is maintained with Client data via a Z relationship called 'Has the SAM'. Now the requirement is, whenever any Opportunity is being created for this Client its SAM should be automatically determined in the Opportunity and should be available in All Parties Involved assignment block.
We'll address this requirement in step by step mode.
Step 1: Create a Z relationship category ZSAM01 with the following details
From BP1's View Has the SAM
From BP2's View Is the SAM for
Title Senior Acc Mgr
Additional Data
Differentiation Type 0 General Data
Data management app. BUB BP Relationship: Admin. Table
Screen sequence BUB1 BP Relationship/BP Role Definition: Standard
Check the checkbox one way rel.ship cat.
Check the checkbox Standard Reltnshp
Business Partner Categories
Partner1 Partner2
Organization Person
Step 2: Maintain Business Partner Data
Maintain some BPs (in BP Role Client) that have Senior Account Manager (SAM) in their relationship data with relationship category ZSAM01. These BPs (in Client BP Role) would be used to test the required functionality.
Step 3: Create a Z Partner Function 'Senior Account Manager' (ZSACCMGR)
Refer the following location to create a new Z Partner Function:
SPRO->Customer Relationship Management->Basic Functions->Partner Processing->Define Partner Functions
Details of the this partner function
Function: ZSACCMGR
Text: Senior Account Manager
Abbrev.: SAMG
Function Category: 0007 Contact Person
Usage: CRM
Relatshp Cat.: ZSAM01
Block: Checkbox checked
Most important thing here is to select ZSAM01 as a Relationship Category. Function Category depend on the business scenario and may be as 0005 Employee if your Client is internal to your company.
Step 4: Create a Z access sequence for Partner Function
Following path would help in creating the Z access sequence
SPRO->Customer Relationship Management->Basic Functions->Partner Processing->Define Access Sequences
Enter the following details in the access sequence
Sequence Description
Z001 Access Sequence for SAM
Select the access sequence Z001 and double click on Individual Access
Details
Batch Sequence: 10
Dialog Seq.: 10
Source: COM_PARTNER_A Preceding document
Check the checkbox Mapping / Definition of Partner being searched
PartFunct in source: 'Senior Account Manager' (ZSACCMGR)
Batch Sequence: 20
Dialog Seq.: 20
Source: CRM_PARTNER_C Business Partner Relationships
Check the checkbox determination as Business Partner
Details on the source:
Partner Function: 00000021 Client
Check the checkbox Mapping / Definition of Partner being searched
Step 5: Extend the PDP with Partner Function 'Senior Account Manager' (ZSACCMGR)
In this step you need to update the Partner Determination Procedure, that is assigned to the opportunity transaction type for which the above functionality is required, by including this newly created Partner Function 'Senior Account Manager' (ZSACCMGR) with access sequence (Z001), created in previous step. Other details of PDP like No. of Occurrences (Lowest) and No. of Occurrences (highest) could be set according to the business requirements
After completing Step 5 you are done with all the customizing and configuration changes required for the above described functionality. To test the functionality, now a create an opportunity by selecting the required transaction type, as soon as you enter the value for Client (i.e. BP maintained in BP Role Client and with relationship data for Senior Account Manager), system would automatically determined the Business Partner for Senior Account Manager Partner Function in the opportunity document.
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