Differences in the Organizational Data in SAP ECC (SD) and CRM

Organizational management in SAP CRM offers a flexible tool for maintaining the company structure for different scenarios (Sales, Service and Enterprise Buyer Professional).

You can maintain the company structure including the positions and employees in an application and assign specific data (attributes) to the organizational units.

This new maintenance makes new functions possible, for example, you can set the automatic determination of organizational data for the transaction using the organizational model display in Customizing.

The following overview lists the main differences in the maintenance and use of organizational data between the SAP ECC component Sales and Distribution (SD) and the SAP CRM component Organizational Data.

Features

Function /  Feature	In SAP ECC (SD)	In SAP CRM
General	You maintain the sales organization in Customizing under Organization Settings. You maintain the organizational plan for HR and Workflow independently in Business Management (Basis).	You maintain the organizational model once for all applications in CRM. Scenario-specific data in the structure is assigned by attributes to the organizational units. These attributes are passed onto subordinate organizational units.
	Organizational data in Sales and Distribution is static, changes in organizational data result in major changes  in Customizing.	Organizational models can be maintained and adapted dynamically.
	Responsibilities are proposed from the sales area-related data from the customer master	Responsibilities are defined independently from the business partner master and are determined,  if required, from the organizational model.
Sales area	when creating a sales document entered manually or determined using the customer master for the sold-to party	when creating a transaction document entered manually or determined using organizational data determination
		In Customizing you set whether you wish to have a division at  header level of a document in the sales area. If you decide not to use a header division you need  to use a dummy division (see SAP ECC dummy division).  A business partner master must therefore have data for at least one sales area with an “empty”division, so that it can be used at the header level of documents (see IMG for  Customer Relationship Management Master Data   Organizational Management  Division Settings ).
Distribution chain (sales organization and distribution channel)	is mandatory in sales documents	can be flagged as mandatory in Customizing (org. data profile)  RECOMMENDATION We recommend that you flag the distribution chain as mandatory for sales documents
Sales organization	only one sales organization can occur in a sales document.  This organization is responsible for the processing of the business transaction.	The organizational unit responsible for the document need not be a sales organization. It can also be, for example, a sales office. You can assign business partners directly to the sales organization
Distribution Channel	is an organizational object	is not an independent object. It is an attribute that can be assigned to an organizational unit.
	is defined in Customizing	can be replicated from the SAP ECC (during the initial download), or, can be defined in SAP CRM in Customizing.
Division	must be used. If a company does not use division  schedule lines, a general division (“cross-division”)  must be set up and used.	Use of the division can be switched off throughout the system
	is defined in Customizing	can be replicated from SAP ECC (during the initial download),  or, can be redefined in SAP CRM in Customizing.
	is an organizational object can be assigned to only one distribution chain and not to a sales organization.	The division is not an organizational unit, but an attribute.  Several divisions can be assigned to a sales organization independent of the distribution channel.
	Sales document has a sales area, therefore also a  division at header level (header division).	You set in Customizing whether there is a header division.  If you do not use a header division, the division only exists at item level and is always derived from the product. If you do use a header division, the header division  is valid for the entire business transaction. See  IMG  Customer Relationship Management  Master Data   Organizational Management  Division Settings
Sales office	is assigned to a sales area	The sales office can be directly assigned to a sales organization.
	can be assigned to a customer in the customer master.	Business partners and other attributes (for example,  postal code area) can be assigned to the sales office,  independent of the sales area.
Sales group	can be assigned in the sales data of the customer master to a customer as a responsible group	Business partners and other attributes can be assigned to the sales group.
	Assignment of an employee to the sales group, sales office and/or sales organization takes place in personnel master via Info type 900, an employee  can only be assigned to one organizational unit (sales group)	Assignment of employees to an organizational  unit using positions in the organizational model This makes it possible to assign an employee to  different positions and organizational units.  RECOMMENDATION We recommend you assign only one employee  to a position, if you are also using CRM Territory Management.
Service organization	displayed as maintenance planning plant	own entity, comparable with sales organization in Sales scenario, is responsible for processing service transactions
Determination of  employee responsible (ER)	via customer master for sold-to party (or another partner in accordance with partner determination procedure)	via the sales area-dependent partner function Employee responsible in the BP master via the BP relationship defined in the business  partner master via assignment in the organizational model
Organizational unit as business partner (cross-company)	not possible; a customer master record must be created for the organizational unit	possible; when creating an organizational unit, a business partner master (organization category) is automatically created.
Sales district (customer district)	is defined in the customer master and copied  from there into the document	is assigned to an organizational unit in the organizational model as an attribute and, if required, is copied from the responsible organizational unit into the document.

Activities

Get to know the procedure for maintaining the organizational model. You can find further information under working with screen areas.

Get to know the concept for automatically determining organizational data. You can make the necessary settings for organizational data determination in Customizing for CRM under  Master Data  Organizational Management.