CRM project insights from Oxygen

Oxygen’s CRM Service Line Lead, Jens Tonn, discusses the complexities surrounding the configuration of the integration between SAP ERP6 and CRM

Customer Master Replication between CRM and ERP6
By Jens Tonn

One of the standard tasks to be completed on every CRM project is the configuration of the integration between ERP6 and CRM. The standard BDOC interfaces between ERP6 and CRM allow the replication of the customising objects, the customer master, the customer master relationships, the product master and sales transactions.
This article focuses on the set-up for the replication of the customer master from ERP6 to CRM. The complexity revolves around ensuring that the customer records are mapped correctly between ERP6 and CRM to ensure that a customer record is created with the identical number in CRM.

Prerequisites
Before the required configuration can be set up, the technical system configuration needs to be completed by the assigned Basis consultant. This covers tasks like setting up the RFC connections, RFC users, realignment queues, BDOC queues, subscriptions and so on. The replication of the customising objects from ERP6 to CRM must also have been completed and executed.

Configuration
The business partner concepts of the ERP system and the CRM system are different. Therefore you have to define a mapping when exchanging business partners from ERP to CRM and vice versa. On the ERP system, every business partner has to be assigned to an account group that determines the properties of business partners, especially which fields are shown and in which number range the customer records are being created in. In CRM, however, the business partners are grouped by using so-called ‘classifications’ which determine which fields are shown, but don’t influence the number ranges. The number range in CRM is determined by the so-called ‘grouping’. This grouping has to be assigned manually or automatically when creating a business partner.

There are only five different classifications:

  1. Consumer: Organisation
  2. Consumer: Person
  3. Customer
  4. Prospective customer
  5. Competitor

The mapping of business partners can be defined for both directions: from the ERP system to the CRM system and vice versa. Thereby you have to map the account groups to classifications and make sure that the required fields in both systems are identical, and map the number ranges.

The following steps are involved to configure the customer master replication from ERP6 to CRM:

  1.  Identifying relevant ERP account groups.
  2.  Defining number ranges for CRM business partners.
  3.  Defining CRM business partner groupings.
  4.  Mapping ERP account group to CRM classification.

The mapping between the ERP6 account groups and the CRM classifications is thereby performed in the ERP6 transaction ‘PIDE’.

The following table describes all relevant elements that have to be maintained for the mapping of ERP account groups to CRM classifications. It is also mentioned at which activity the element is maintained. It is recommended to maintain this table to keep the overview when running the following activities.

ERP       CRM        
Step 4       Step4 Step3 Step2 Step2 Step2
Account group Number range Interval Number Assignment Classification Grouping Number range Interval Number assignmnet
0001 01 0000100000-0000999999 Internal or external Customer R001 R1 0000100000-0000999999 External

For the above example, the mapping runs as follows:

  1. A business partner for account group 0001 (sold-to party) is created in the ERP system. 
  2.  The account group has the number range assignment 01 and internal number assignment, i.e. a number is automatically created from the interval 0000100000-0000999999 for this business partner, e.g. 100001.
  3.  The business partner is replicated to the CRM system.
  4.  The account group is assigned to the classification Customer with grouping R001. Grouping R001 is assigned to number range R1 that is identical to the ERP number range 01. The ERP customer that is replicated to the CRM system automatically is created with classification Customer and gets the same number because external number assignment is chosen for the CRM number range.

Replication
Once the configuration steps have been completed, you start the initial replication via transaction ‘R3AS’ for the load object ‘CUSTOMER_MAIN’. You check the status of the replication via transaction ‘R3AM1’. It is highly recommended to restrict the first initial load to a small number of records to eliminate any potential errors. This can be done by setting a filter in transaction ‘R3AC1’. The below shows an example for a filter based on customer number:

Filter Settings in R3AC1:

Table/Structure Field OP Low High Incl./Excl.
KNA1 KUNNR EQ 0000065543 0000065545 Inclusive defined set/array


Conclusion
The integration for the most common objects between R/3 and CRM has been around for years now and is very stable these days. However the daily monitoring of the BDOC queues is still a bit of a tedious task for every customer once they are in BAU mode.

I hope the above provides a bit of insight into the specifics of customer replication from ERP6 to CRM, if you have any questions please feel free to get in touch using the contact details below.

Until the next issue
Jens

Jens Tonn is CRM Service Line Lead for Oxygen Business Solutions.


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