A business partner can be any of the following:
● Accounts
An account is a company, individual, or group with which you have a business relationship. An account can be, for example, a customer, prospect, vendor, or competitor. Accounts are subdivided into the following types:
○ Corporate accounts (companies or organizations)
○ Individual accounts (private individuals)
○ Groups (any groupings, such as households)
For more information, see Accounts in the business user documentation.
● Contacts
A contact is a person with whom you have a business relationship, and is mostly assigned to a corporate account.
For more information, see Contacts in the business user documentation.
● Employees
An employee is a member of your company, and involved in the interactions between your company and customers, prospects, vendors, and other parties.
For more information, see Employees in the business user documentation.
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Account Classification
An account classification enables you to classifying accounts using freely configurable criteria. This is particularly useful for large companies where, for example, you want to classify different business units based on different criteria.
For a certain combination of country, sales organization, and business unit, for example, the attribute role has the one value, and for another combination of the same criteria, a different value. A company could be a customer in the business unit "Automation", but a competitor in the business unit "Mobile Phones".
Similarly, a customer could have the ranking "Gold Customer" in a certain country, and the ranking "Silver Customer" in another country.
● The account classification is available as a separate assignment block on the Account page and as a search criterion in the search function. The account classification data is available in addition to the data that normally exists. This means that the roles in this assignment block are independent of those in the Roles assignment block, and the rating likewise is independent of the overall ranking of the account.
● The criteria you require can be flexibly combined. Each classification category consists of a maximum of five criteria, and any number of attributes.
You define these in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management, by choosing Master Data ® Business Partner ® Define Account Classification:
○ A classification category, such as account management or partner management, enables you to define the business scope in which the account classification is used.
○ Predefined criteria and attributes can be assigned to the category, or you can define your own. You can assign a maximum of five criteria to a category, and any number of attributes.
Once data has been created for the combinations, the combination of criteria and attribute cannot be changed.
● Integration is provided with SAP NetWeaver BI and enables reporting to be performed based on the account classification.
Example
The example shows the classification of an account using the criteria "sales organization", "distribution channel", "division", and "country", and the attributes "role" and "rating" (可以理解为在不同的条件下，该account的相应的属性所对应的值是什么)
Marketing Attributes
Using the data contained in the attribute sets, profiles can be created for business partners in the context of business partner segmentation in marketing. These can be used in turn to form target groups for certain marketing activities, such as mailing campaigns, where the target groups consist of a number of business partners who have the same attributes or fulfill other selection criteria.
● You create the attribute sets and attributes you require in marketing on the Marketing Attribute page.
● You assign attribute sets to the business partner concerned directly on the Account page, and assign the attributes the relevant values.
Example
The example shows the attribute set for an Internet bookstore.
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