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Customer Group usage to establish customer relationship

Former Member
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Hi SAP SD Guru's,

Can we use customer group field to establish relationship of customers . Example Apple - US and Apple Australia

Can we map customer relationship ( as Main Group and Sub Group) using customer group field?

Is there any other way to map customer relationship in SAP SD apart from customer Hierarchy?

Thanks in advance for your advises.

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

former_member182378
Active Contributor
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Brahm,

Like Glenn and santosh, please explain the business need.

One way of looking at partners is grouping customers, a customer has a SH, customer where unloading takes place etc. Can you use partner functions?

TW

Former Member
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You can use Customer group to create   differentiate apple us apple Australia ,  if  sales group is not used for any other  purpose  you can sales group to differentiate.

Best practice would be  go for customer Hierarchy

Former Member
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Hi TW, Santosh & Glen,

Thanks for your feedback. My requirement is simple

Requirement:

Business Background: My company supply parts to Consumer Electronic companies.

Example ABC Thailand, BAC Malaysia, OEM China, OEM - Taiwan ,

(Apple OEM's) these Subsidiary companies gives sales orders to my company and further supply to Apple which uses my parts. So I assume Apple as Main Group and These subsidiary companies as Sub group.

I dont deal directly with Apple but i know my products finally used in Apple Products

Requirement: I need to establish relationship in customer master between main Group and Sub Group. Here Sub group is customers who gives me sales order and Main Group is company name where my products finally being consumed. In this example Apple is final Consumer.

At end of each month , I want to run a sales report to see how much sales i did for Apple ( main Group) through its Subsidiary companies ( As i don't deal directly with Apple).

Proposed Solution:

As i need relationship just for sales reporting and not for any PRICING, so i was thinking if there is any simple solution apart from customer Hierarchy.

Other solution i was thinking of creating Partner Function as End Consumer and can include in Sales order. Then run sales report based on End customer partner function?

Please advise if there is any other solution to achieve this sales reporting requirement

Thanks in advance for your expert advise.

Regards

Brahm

Former Member
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Hi Arun,Are you proposing customer group or sales group? If sales group then how can i establish relationship between customers through sales group. As sales group values can be defined in customizing.

I am looking for a field in customer master where user can put group name and this field is being used in sales reporting.

Former Member
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Hello Bramhm

This is my understanding on your requirement .

Proposed solution -

1. Customer 1, 2,3,4 add Apple in partner function as  main partner .

2. Ensure apple is copied up to billing as partner when user creates sales order.

3. Develop a report to see in how many billing document is available for partner Apple.

4. Sum the quantity of all Invoice the Invoice at Item level .

5. This will give you total quantity sold to sub Group OEM.

Hope this helps

Regards,

Santosh

Former Member
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Hi Santosh,

Many Thanks for quick help.

The challenge in given solution is, I need to create dummy customer master record for Apple ( Main Group) and extend it to all possible sales area. As Apple does not deal with us so its not actual customer. While OEM of Apple are our actual customer and we maintain customer master data in our system.

The another challenge is if my OEM - Thailand and OEM-Malaysia are created as customer master with seperate sales organizations then how can i assign Apple ( Dummy customer code) in all OEM customers with different sales area.

OR can i create Customer with General Data for Main group and assigned this as partner function to all my OEM customer master?

Please confirm.

Is there any other option?

Former Member
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Hello Brahm,

  1. 1.The challenge in given solution is, I need to create dummy customer master record for Apple ( Main Group) and extend it to all possible sales area.

Yes you have to do that .

  1. As Apple does not deal with us so it’s not actual customer. While OEM of Apple are our actual customer and we maintain customer master data in our system.

You have dummy customer - Apple (Main group). You are not dealing directly with this customer. You need to ensure when sales Order created ,Apple (Main group ) added as partner or copied from customer master (customer Master must have Apple as main group) in partner function as partner.

  1. 3. The another challenge is if my OEM - Thailand and OEM-Malaysia are created as customer master with separate sales organizations then how can i assign Apple (Dummy customer code) in all OEM customers with different sales area.

I guess this should not be problem .Create Dummy customer Apple (main group). Maintain the General data and one sales area data. Ensure you have Apple partner function. (Example - MG) added in apple customer master.

Assign the partner function –MG & dummy customer code to all OEM, I have tested it works fine. It is not necessary to have Apple & OEM should have same sales are. Purpose is to develop a report and calculate total sale.

OR can i create Customer with General Data for Main group and assigned this as partner function to all my OEM customer master?

System will not allow you and only for general data .You will get an error “Partner XX has not been created” Because there is no Partner data for apple (main grp)

Other Option:-

Identify if your requirement is sales area dependent or general data dependent.

Example for Sales area dependent:-

Regards

Santosh

former_member182378
Active Contributor
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Brahm,

Does an actual customer (one from sub group) for example OEM China sell to many "main group customers"? (or is it always only to one main group customer?)

TW

Former Member
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Hi TW,

Technically one OEM can supply to many main companies.

Example: OEM manufacturer can supply parts to Apple & Samsung both. But if this is the case the challenge is how to establish relationship at Customer level, which flows to Sales order level and later can be used for Sales reporting

former_member182378
Active Contributor
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Brahm,

I had initially suggested to look at partner functions, for main group customers (customer of customer - Samsung, Apple) but partner function comes with customer creation and maintaining these for required sales areas which is lot of work.

You need customer's customer for reporting purpose. I suggest you create a custom field, in Tab Additional Data A / B, in the sales order. For data in this field, have a drop down, so that user can choose only from the F4 options. In a custom table maintain the list of customer's customer. Make this field mandatory. Code in USEREXIT_SAVE_DOCUMENT, program MV45AFZZ.

This custom field should be at header or item level in the order depends upon the business process.

This design will not "intrude" in the customer master, with unnecessary partners. Speaking strictly these "main customers" aren't your customers per se.

TW

moazzam_ali
Active Contributor
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Hi

This discussion is closed and I liked the solution. I just want to add one input from my side.

On my current project I am also doing something similar to this. I have created sales employees as partner function Z1 and maintained in customer master partner tab. For partner Z1 I have only maintained general data and system is copying this from customer to sale order to delivery to billing.

In short I think you don't need to maintain sales area data for dummy customer Apple. Only general data should work here.

Thank$

Answers (3)

Answers (3)

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Brahm,

In the case that you want to create relationships between different types of business partners, you have two options:

1.     Create a new account group for Apple-like types of business partners in SD.

     Create a new partner role for your OEM customers and enter the "aplle" BP number as that type of      partner.

2. The second (and best) option is to start using transaction BP to create and maintain business partner. This is a single transaction that will allow you to create and maintain all different types of business partners, but will also give you much more functionality. One of these functionalities is that you can create relationships for you business partners (e.g. "is OEM supplier to -"). That way you can have exactly what you need. The downside to this is that starting to use transaction BP has quite an impact on the way of working in the company and will also require new skills from yourself since customizing the funtionality is completely different from customizing for regular Business Partners.

Regards,

Sjaak van den Berg

former_member186385
Active Contributor
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Hi Sharma,

You cannot establish relationship between two customer groups unless otherwise you write a code.

As rightly said by Mr Glenn, you have a customer Hierarchy to establish relation between two customer, what is refraining you to use customer hierarchy and thinking for some other solution ? Just brief us your complete requirement so that we can give an apt solution

thanks

santosh

Former Member
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Brahm,

Customer groups are typically used for setting the same pricing and statistical reporting on customers in the same group.

Can you help us understand why you don't want to use customer hierarchies to map customer relationships since that's what customer hierarchies are for?

Thanks!

Glenn