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Material vs. Products and Business Partner vs. Customer and Vendor

Former Member
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Hi,

Just wondering if there's any SAP recommendation for using 'Products' repository vs. Material repository. Similarly, is there any SAP recommendation for using 'Business Partner' repository vs. Customer and Vendor repositories.

Can anyone would like to shed some light on what is recommended with pros and cons? Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

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Answers (1)

Answers (1)

michael_theis
Active Contributor
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Hi Mins,

you can group the repositories in the following way:

Group 1

- Material

- Vendor

- Customer

Group 2

- Product

- Business Partner

Repositories of Group 1 are related to the corresponding R/3 (ERP) data models. The repositories cover a large part of the R/3 fields and can be used to integrate your R/3 systems with MDM as they contain import and syndication maps for R/3.

Repositories of Group 2 are related to the common CRM and SRM data model. Those repositories have been developed with the goal to integrate CRM, SRM and R/3 with MDM. Unfortunately the structure of the Group 1 repositories was not capable to fullfill this. Group 2 repositories contain import and syndication maps to all remote systems (CRM, SRM, R/3). But those repositories are not as large as the Group 1 as the first task of the Group 2 repositories was the data consolidation scenario.

There is no general recommendation which repository to use. It depends on the project setup on customer side:

- If you want to use MDM for R/3 only, it makes sense to use Group 1

- If you want to use MDM for R/3 only, but you want to consolidate your customers and vendors in one single repository, you should use the Business Partner Repository because this one can hold both object types

- If you want to use MDM for CRM and SRM, you should use Group 2

- ...

So a general recommendation could be to check the Master Data setup and landscape within your project and then to choose the corresponding repository.

Kind regards

Michael

Former Member
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Michael,

Thanks for your reply. It was really helpful.

Our scenario is that we are integrating R/3 with MDM at this point and we are going with Group 1. However, it is our client's desire to pick up SRM in a year or two and integrate that with MDM as well. So now we are kind of perplexed between the choice of Group 1 vs. Group 2.

Group1 makes more sense for now for MDM and R/3 integration. Also the material, vendor and customer repository structures are more rich for R/3 integration compared to product and business partner repository structure. But on the other hand Group1 might not be the ideal pick for future MDM-SRM integration.

So given this scenario what would be your advice, considering the client is looking forward to MDM - SRM integration down the road?

Regards,

M

michael_theis
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi Mins,

you're welcome.

The issue MDM has to solve when integrating R/3 and SRM (or CRM) is that the data models in R/3 and SRM are very different. In R/3 you have customers and vendors, in SRM you have the SAP Business Partner which might have the roles customer and vendor. Using Group 2 you have a smaller repository but you have the syndication content for R/3 and SRM. Group 1 delivers a rich repository but no syndication content to SRM. From my experience it is easier to enhance the repository with customs fields than to create all of the syndication content from scratch. The reason for this is that simply creating a syndication map is not sufficient because you need some structural mapping from the R/3 data models to the SRM data models. In Group 2 this is currently done on XI by XSLT mappings...

Hope that helps

Michael