Business Partner Integration

[Former Member]

We have an issue with Business Partner integration in FS-BP. We have a separate system for employees, agents, and contract partners.

Currently, we are planning to integrate them with Business Partner. And then we'll assign their role such as  employee(BUP003), commission contract partner(CACSA1), or Contract Partner(MKK), because they can be a same person.

I am wondering if it is the right approach to use Business Partner in SAP Insurance.

Thank you in advance.

[former_member185321 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Dont see any problem in this as a BP ( from BUT000) can be assigned to multiple BP roles (customizing table TB003) via BUT100.

In addition you may need to enable activation in activation switch for functions for the following;

BUT100    Time Dependency BP Roles

If you are using ext number range you may need to define grouping and assign number range.

You may need to check for duplicates in BUT000, and for the BPs in employee roles you may need to create user ids and assign these BPs to the organizational model ( PD Org).

Since you are migrating from legacy system(s) to SAP and if the SAP BP number is known under a different number in the legacy system you can make use of "Business Partner Number in External System" in the identification tab under Identification numbers (BUT000 - BPEXT) for info / mapping. As far as standard SAP system is concerned you can use one ext number for a BP.

Sagar

[jochem_schueltke]

Hi Lee,

As Sagar already answered, it's possible to assign different roles in parallel to a Business Partner. With regards to the Business Partner concept, I kindly ask you to consider chapter 3.1 in my document http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-56196.

Best regards,

Jochem

[Former Member]

Hi Jochem,

Thanks for your useful document.

Please let me know any disadvantages in FS-CD or other SAP Insurance software components if we create different Business Partners for the same Business Partner and assign each role to the business partner such as employee, agent, or policy holder.

Employee is also an insurance policy holder. We would have him/her in FS-BP as a policy holder, but we don’t need to know that this person is also an employee or agent.

Regards,

Lee

[jochem_schueltke]

Hi Lee,

You are welcome.

Overall there are different significant disadvantages cross our SAP for Insurance software applications (FS-BP/CA-BP, FS-PM, FS-CD, FS-ICM, FS-CM, and Fraud Management), if one and the same Business Partner - e.g. one identical person - is created and has to be maintained several times in parallel as doublets ... multiplied by his or her roles.

A 360 degree overview of this Business Partner won't be possible anymore (out of the box). If this Business Partner moves for instance, all doublets have to be maintained accordingly in parallel several times, especially to keep them in sync (e.g. address change) - same for changing bank betails or payment (credit) card details.

If a Business Partner is a policy holder, an insured, a premium payer, a beneficiary, an insured employee, or an agent related to different policies - but for whatever reason exists two or more times (as doublets), you can't manage a central view or an extended where used-list, you can't recognize automatically that it is one and the same person (or Company), which - for example - a) "misbehaves", or b) is affected in different benefit/Claims cases, or c) died and all contractual relationships have to be processed (e.g. terminated). Additionally it will get quite challenging to 'discover' potential fraudulent activities.

The results of a usual Business Partner search (in Standard) will be very confusing for many people/users ... "oops this person exits three times ... why? Which one should I use?"

Business Partner search can cause drastic errors, if "the wrong" Business Partner doublet is utilized and assigned to a particular participant role, when the process starts in FS-PM, FS-CM, FS-ICM, or FS-CD as a leading system/software application. Please have a look at many dialogue transactions for creating and processing policies, claims, commission contracts and so on. If you simply select "the wrong" doublet you will get in trouble.

I expect a lot of unneccesary extra implementation effort and user training and error postprocessing, if you want to support doublets just for separating roles - instead of the other way round: differentiating the roles, while using one and the same Business Partner, and providing role-specific attributes (fields) as well as role-specific user authorizations.

Exception: If a natural person is the owner of a small company, which has the same name as the person, and this company can act like a 'corporate body' or a 'legal person', it is okay, if there a two Business Partners: (1) representing the natural person, (2) representing the company. In addition a meaningful Business Partner relationship between (1) and (2) would be helpful.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Jochem