How Master Data Governance helps the transition to S/4HANA
To efficiently manage Master Data, it is essential to have consistent and high-quality master data that forms the backbone for operational processes across your company. Traditional ERP systems often include redundant data such as those for customers and suppliers. This leads to unnecessary duplication (think address data, for example). This is inconsistent with the principles of effective Master Data Management. SAP has launched the "Business Partner-first" paradigm with S/4HANA to eliminate such redundancy.
Although the concept of the SAP Business Partner (ZP) or Business Partner (BP) in itself is not new and was not originally developed just for S/4HANA - it was already present in the classic SAP ECC systems for interfacing with CRM and SRM systems - it now acts as the central access to master data management of Business Partners, customers and suppliers.
Principles of the Business Partner (BP) concept
General data sharing: Information is shared across different roles within the same BP object, reducing duplication of data.
Categories: A Business Partner can be categorized as an Organization, Person, or Group, allowing different types of entities to be managed within the same framework.
Multiple roles: A single BP can fulfill multiple roles, for example, be a customer and supplier at the same time, which increases flexibility in relationship management.
Time-based addresses: Business Partners can have multiple addresses, each with their own time specifications and uses, allowing for accurate historical and future address management.
Time-Dependent Attributes and Relationships: The system supports time-dependent attributes and relationships for Business Partners, allowing changes over time to be accurately tracked.
Maintenance of multiple relationships: It is possible to maintain multiple relationships with the same Business Partner, allowing the management of complex networks of interactions inside and outside the organization.
Link-based business data: Rarely does a BP contain business-related data directly; rather, it is managed through links to other objects such as roles and contacts, providing a clear separation between personal and business-related information.
Harmonized architecture: The BP concept provides a unified architecture for managing business relationships across all SAP applications, promoting integration and consistency.
Customer/Vendor Integration (CVI): CVI provides seamless synchronization between the BP object and the customer/supplier objects, ensuring data consistency throughout the system.
In addition to the mandatory Business Partner approach in S/4HANA, this is also the approach used in both SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) versions: MDG on S/4HANA and MDG on ERP.
SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) is an advanced, out-of-the-box master data management solution with domain-specific master data management for centrally maintaining, modifying and distributing master data. All your master data across your IT landscape can be consolidated. SAP MDG ensures data integrity in both SAP and non-SAP systems and thus optimizes business processes. This will lead to higher productivity, process consistency and time and money savings.
Implementing an SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) on S/4HANA as a master data hub in your SAP landscape forces you to think about migrating your supplier and customer master data towards Business Partners. This exercise should be performed in due course anyway when you migrate to S/4HANA, it simplifies the transition if you have already completed this step.
Navigating through master data management in SAP S/4HANA
When moving to SAP S/4HANA, users experience a significant change in the way they work with Business Partner master data. A Business Partners (BP) is now the central entity for managing master data for customers and suppliers. This replaces the traditional customer and supplier maintenance transactions that users were used to in SAP Business Suite.
In SAP S/4HANA, several transactions are not available or are redirected to the central transaction BP (Business Partner).
Transactions diverted to transaction BP: FD01, FD02, FD03, FK01, FK02, FK03, MAP2, MAP3, MK01, MK02, MK03, V-03, V-04, V-05, V-06, V-07, V-08, V-09, V-11, VA01, VD01, VD02, VD03, XD01, XD02, XD03, XK01, XK02, XK03
Transactions no longer available in S/4HANA: FD06, FK06, MK06, MK12, MK18, MK19, VD06, XD06, XD0, V+21, V+22, V+23, MAP21, VAP2, VAP3, FD0
The way to maintain Business Partners in S/4HANA is through transaction BP. However, this transaction does not offer the possibility of centralised governance, ensuring optimal data quality, monitoring and remedying potential data quality problems or consolidating Master Data for downstream use in business processes or accurate analytics.
Suppliers, Customers and Business Partner: the CVI concept
The use of the Customer/Vendor Integration (CVI) framework is essential and mandatory when using the Business Partner as the main object in S/4HANA.
CVI provides data exchange between Business Partner, Customer and Supplier. This data exchange can be customized so that dependent objects are automatically created or modified; for example, a Business Partner record is immediately created when a new customer record is started. Technically, CVI manages both general Business Partner data and specific Customer and Supplier data.
For the sake of technical continuity, specific ERP tables for customers and suppliers are maintained (such as data retrieved from a Customer IDoc from the ERP customer tables). Once a Business Partner change occurs in S/4HANA, CVI ensures that the corresponding Customer (KNxx) and Supplier (LFxx) tables remain up-to-date.
For pre-existing customers and suppliers, a conversion needs to be set up to create corresponding Business Partner data. This conversion process includes the following steps:
Configuration of Business Partner and CVI
Running the report for Mass Data Synchronization.
Troubleshoot problems within the Synchronization Cockpit, such as data cleansing.
Repeat synchronization until all objects are fully synchronized
After synchronization, it is still possible to both process master records of Customers/Suppliers from the maintenance of the Business Partner, and maintain data from the processing of Customers/Suppliers to the Business Partner (only on ERP system).
More information
For further questions or information on this subject or for other questions in the field of SAP Workflow, Fiori or SAP Invoice Management (SIM), please contact Sander van der Wijngaart.
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