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Unit 1: Overview and Master Data

can be recorded correspondingly and that the business partner can be used for the respective
functions (such as sold-to party).
From a technical perspective, the Customizing object that is used to control customers and
vendors in SAP ERP, the account group, still exists in SAP S/4HANA and is still needed for
specific tasks, such as controlling partner functions.

Customer/Vendor Object Model Limitations in SAP ERP

● Only one single address

● No relation between a vendor and a customer for the same real world entity (no role
concept)
● No persons (B2C)
● No time-dependency

SAP Business Partner – SAP Strategic Object Model

● General data shared across different roles

● One BP could perform multiple roles, for example, customer and vendor (supplier)
● One BP could have multiple addresses
● Time-dependency object attributes and relationships
● Harmonized architecture
● Contact Persons have to be created as separate business partners and linked with
relationships

Discovery Edition.
Discovery Edition.

The Customer/Vendor Integration (CVI) component ensures the synchronization between

the BP object and the customer/vendor objects. The customer and vendor master data
tables are updated automatically after a business partner is created or changed.
As a prerequisite of an ECC-to-SAP S/4HANA conversion project, all customers and vendors
in the ERP system have to be converted to business partners. It is recommended, but not
mandatory, that the business partner ID and the customer/vendor ID are the same.

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Lesson: Describing the Business Partner Approach

Steps in Customer and Vendor Conversion

Figure 9: Steps in Customer and Vendor Conversion

To execute the conversion from customers or vendors to business partners, multiple steps
are necessary, as follows:

1. Preparation

● Implement SAP S/4HANA pre-checks according to the SAP S/4HANA Conversion

Guide, chapter Pre-Checks.

Discovery Edition.
Discovery Edition.

● Activate the CA_BP_SOA business function.

● Check CVI customizing and trigger necessary changes, for example, the missing BP
role category.

● Define number assignments according to the SAP S/4HANA Conversion Guide,

chapter Introduce Business Partner Approach (CVI).

First, a number of pre-checks have to be implemented. Next, the business function

CA_BP_SOA has to be activated, the CVI Customizing has to be checked, and any
necessary changes have to be triggered. Number assignments according to the
conversion guide have to be defined.

2. Synchronization
The synchronization cockpit (transaction MDS_LOAD_COCKPIT) is then used to
synchronize the data (data load) (according to the SAP S/4HANA Conversion Guide,
chapter Introduce Business Partner Approach).

3. Conversion
The conversion step is part of the system conversion from the ECC system to SAP S/
4HANA, on-premise. No additional CVI action is required.

4. Post Processing and Test

Finally, the postprocessing direction, business partner to customer/vendor has to be
activated.

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