Using single repository for Customer and Vendor

[Former Member]

Hi All

Has anyone worked in scenario where a single repository was used to store both Customer and Vendor records? The source and Target systems are SAP ECC and MDM will have both Basic as well as contextual data.

I would like to know the likely challenges. Anyone who has worked on similar grounds can please share his viewpoints.

thanks

Ravi

[Former Member]

Thansk everyone.

[Former Member]

Ravi,

Its a dependent scenario on ECC, means how account groups are maintained in ECC system. If Customer and Vendor have similar account groups then yes these are similar entities and can be maintained in single repository. As mentioned earlier BP is suited to this scenario. But if Account groups are different then, according me the answer is no. You should consider Vendor as separate entity and Customer as separate. and these should be maintained in different repositories.

BR,

Alok

[Former Member]

Thanks All for the replies.

Just to reiterate- scope includes storing both Basic and contextual data like Sales org, Company code purchasing data etc for the entities.

Alok - vendor and Customer account groups are not same and evn fields for different account groups are not consistent. Why do you suggest to go for different repositories if account groups are not same? Can you please give some more details?

Simono-Going forward with BP repository will not work as it contains only the basic data attributes.

We are talking of 500K Customers and 40K Vendors out of which 15K are also Customers.

Thanks again-

Ravi

[Former Member]

Hi Ravi,

If you are maintaining both the customer and vendor records in same repository then if you merge them,

the entire record wil get merged, including the account mgmt part that you mentioned.

You may also loose the data specific to either one as you can select only one value at a time when merging.

However if you dont want to merge specific details, the best solution would be put those fields as a part of qualified look up wherein you have the option of appending the values while merging.

Hope it helps.

Thanks,

Minaz

[Former Member]

Ravi,

As account group differs for customer and vendor, their number ranges and control data will differ. For the account groups some fields will vary and some fields will be mandatory for customer which are not present in vendor and some will be mandatory for vendor which are not present in customer. You should consult with a functional before finalizing your repository/ies.

BR,

Alok

[Former Member]

Hi Ravi,

Why dont u use "Business Partner" standard Repository?

Its for both Customer & Vendor.

U can then modify it as per ur requirement.

U will get it on Market Place in Business Package.

Thanks,

Maheshwari

[Former Member]

Hi Ravi,

As you want to manage both Cutomer and Vendor data in MDM you need to consider the following points:

- If you are seeing the Customer and Vendor master as a combiantion satisfying some common criteria,then you can go about using the SAP delieverd Business partner rep which is designed keeping the ECC customer and Vendor details to an extent.You can unarchieve the BP rep in MDM and have a look at its data modelling if it serves your purpose.

- As of MDM 5.5 we do not have provision of holding two master records in a single rep as we can use only 1 main table.So if you want to fit in your customer and vendor masters in one rep you will have to accomodate the combined fields under a single rep with proper data modelling.

- You need to store your two masters in two separate rep and perform data modelling in such a way that your one rep hold those common fields which you wish to use for finding duplicates as mentioned in your above req and then store this information with the complete rest in a dfferent rep.So its a 2 rep concept as possible with teh current MDM version.

- I am not very sure of this method but i think we have a provision of calling and linking data from two rep and display them as one to work upon them through EP.

Hope It Helped

Thanks & Regards

Simona Pinto

[Former Member]

Hi Ravi,

I have not worked on such a scenario in MDM, but it can be easily done using MDM 7.1. It comes with special feature that now repository can hold more than one main tables. Thus you can define customer & vendor as main tables both sharing same set of reference data. With MDM5.5 also it would be possible but with lots of limitations, where in you would be defining one object in main table & other in supporting table.

Regards abhijeet.

[Former Member]

Thanks Abhijeet.

we are planning to use MDM 5.5 for this and 7.1 is out of scope now.

regards

Ravi

[Former Member]

Hi Ravi,

As for MDM5.5 you need to model either customer or vendor master data as main table data, while depending upon the relation ship you can create/associate main table master data with other master data using either qualified table or simple text table.

What is your exact requirement? You can explore options of using relationship tables also. Or if your enduser is not goint to work directly on MDM Data Manager you can consider handling screnario through customized screens developed using dynpro applications. Where your data actually resides in two different repositories but through dynpro application end user would see it as single entity.

Regards,

Abhijeet.

[Former Member]

Requirement is to consider Customer nad Vendor as accounts. generally for a company we have same entities as both Customer and Vendors which is supported by SAP also.

There will be a single repo storing customer/Vendor as separte records and should support merging of two, account management etc.

regards

Ravi

[Former Member]

OK!

Understood, you would be considering customer & vendor as accounts. If they have most of their field information/types common you can model them in single repository. As your sending system is ECC system you might need to send data using iDocs. You might need to develop customized iDocs for that which would send data to MDM system in desired format. Again if you are using SAP PI as middleware you need to create interface mappings as per the requirement.

Lots of development man! ...

regards,

Abhijeet.