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Governance of application-agnostic legal business-partner hierarchies

Mark63
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎2024 May 21 5:00 PM
1,394

Introduction

When you decide to do business with a specific supplier or not, it is useful to know about the organizational set-up of the company group. And if this knowledge is based on high-quality data, it is even better: this is where governance of legal business partner hierarchies comes in. The same holds true for customer information. If you have corporate group information about a new customer at hand, starting business is a lot easier.   

A unified, trusted view of your business enables you to work more efficiently and make better decisions. SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition helps customers to pull together master data and manage it centrally using a master data management layer based on SAP Business Technology Platform. SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition lets customers:  

  •  Centrally consolidate and manage an application-agnostic legal hierarchy to represent complex organizational and cross-organizational ownership structures of your business partners.
  • Replicate the centrally governed hierarchy information for consumption across lines of business such as SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle Performance.  

Generally, the future target state looks as follows:  

Hierarchyblog1.png

How the current process looks like in detail

Key processes in governing legal business partner hierarchies include: 

Manage core attributes and hierarchy structure, featuring: 

  • Fuzzy search for business partner hierarchies using various criteria. 
  • Create or change process for core master data attributes and structure of business partner hierarchy.  
  • Workflow-based governance process including dual control and email notification to requestor about the progress of the request. 
  • Integrated duplicate check to avoid creation of duplicate hierarchy nodes. 
  • Tracking of changes (who changed what and when). 
  • Automatic replication of activated data to other applications. 

Hierarchyblog2.png

Fig.: Legal BP Hierarchy

Import of core attributes of business partner hierarchy data, featuring:

  • Loading business partner hierarchy data from files.
  • Automated validity checks with optional expert intervention.

Integration of business partner with hierarchy nodes, featuring: 

  • Streamlined integration process enabling the assignment of existing business partners to hierarchy nodes. 
  • Real-time validation checks to ensure the accuracy and integrity of assigned business partners. 
  • Automated success or error notifications to stakeholders. 

Hierarchyblog3.png

Fig.: Assigning a business partner to hierarchy node

Replication of managed hierarchy data to consuming applications, featuring: 

  • Integration with SAP Master Data Integration services providing a unified sharing layer.
  • Automatic replication of activated data at the end of the process to applications such as SAP Ariba Supplier and Lifecycle Performance (SLP).

The initial focus of goverend legal business partner hierarchies is on procurement, but further LoB applications are planned to be integrated, too. For planned timelines for upcoming innovations in SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition and other MDG versions, see the SAP Roadmap Explorer.

To stay on track, simply follow the SAP Community Topic Page for SAP Master Data Governance, read the  MDG-related blogs, and join the  Q&A forum.

Best,

Markus

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