External Workforce and Customer Role in New Employee Business Partner Data Model

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Update July 2023:

New Cookbook: Employee Business Partner Integration as of SAP S/4HANA 2020 with new data model

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As an addition to the SAP Blog New Employee Business Partner Data Model in SAP S/4HANA 2020OP, let’s take a closer look here on the External Workforce and the role Customer within the New Employee Business Partner Data Model. Both functionalities require the active Business Function /SHCM/EE_BP_1. Furthermore, the focus in this SAP Blog is on SAP S/4HANA on premise and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition.

External Workforce

In the first part we will focus on the External Workforce and the integration to the corresponding business partner objects. In general, there exist several ways how the External Workforce data can be created and maintained in a SAP system landscape:

Creation of External Workforce for new employee business partner model

Possible scenarios for creation of an external worker from outside a SAP S/4HANA system are shown on the left side of the graphic above with SAP Fieldglass, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP HCM on a separate instance or a 3^rd party system. The right side of the graphic shows the local creation scenario with a SAP S/4HANA system running SAP HCM embedded on the same instance.

For our integration scenario with the new employee business partner model, the External Workforce data is stored in the end in the corresponding HCM tables/infotypes of the SAP S/4HANA system and synchronized from there into the Business Partner data model. Usually, an external employee is differentiated in infotype 0001 (Organizational Assignment) with a special Employee Group (field PERSG) from an internal employee. In a standard implementation, Employee Group “9” (External Employee) is used to determine the external employee.
In case the customer business processes differentiate here, SAP provides BAdI /SHCM/B_EXTERNAL_EMPLOYEE to distinguish external from internal employees. Method SET_PERNR_AS_EXTERNAL provides the option to override the standard Employee Group and IS_PERNR_EXTERNAL determines if a personnel number is an external one.
To support the business processes around the External Workforce, infotype 3435 (Supplier) stores the supplier which is the external worker’s employer. Furthermore, newly introduced infotype 3406 (Service Cost Level) can be used to locally store the service cost level and is enabled for maintenance via transaction PA30.

During the BP synchronization process the role Service Performer (BBP005) is added to the BP representing the external employee and a separate Business Partner instance is created with role External Employment (BUP011) for each external contract. The external employment BP is linked to the leading BP instance via BUT050/HCM002 (External Employment) association. Therefore, it is handled like the synchronization process of internal employees.
Every external employment instance will reflect the external supplier’s belonging to that contract, associated via a newly introduced BUT050/HCM003 (Service Performer Contract) relationship.
The relationship category Service Performer (BUR025) links the external employee BP to the Business Partner of the external supplier. This ensures the compatibility as every consumer can access the data as before, and new consumers can access the external supplier in an improved way, using the new external employment object.

External Worker in new employee business partner model

During the employee lifecycle it could be that an external becomes an internal employee and vice versa. Depending on the business processes on the customer side, an existing BP instance with role BUP010 could also be reused to assign role External Employment. This is the case if for example, the employee keeps the personnel number over the employee lifecycle.

External Workforce in employee lifecycle

Concluding, with the external worker functionality available as of SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS0, a Business Partner employment instance can reflect

• Only internal employment with role BUP010
• Only external employment with role BUP011
• Or both, then the instance carries both roles BUP010 and BUP011 but sequentially without overlaps.

Business Partner Role Customer

Now, let’s focus in the second part on the functionality automatically assigning the role Customer to the employment Business Partner. This option is relevant for scenarios where goods and services are sold and/or delivered to employees. The customer information such as name, address, bank details, tax details and delivery/billing preferences is used in the context of sales orders, deliveries, and invoices.
This functionality is available as of SAP S/4HANA 2022 FPS0.

The assignment of role Customer during the Business Partner synchronization process is very similar to the functionality of assigning role Vendor. Role Customer is also assigned to the employment Business Partner object representing the contract. The main tables used for this are KNA1 (General Data in Customer Master) and KNB1 (Customer Master (Company Code)). During the synchronization process KNB1-PERNR will be filled with the personnel number of the employment.

Role Customer in new employee Business Partner data model

In the figure above you can see the new employee Business Partner data model including the role Customer (FLCU00) which is assigned to the employment Business Partner. The Business Partner carrying the Employment role can also have both roles – Vendor and Customer.

To provide the option of automatically assigning the role Customer to the employment Business Partner, the customizing was enhanced. Customizing view PTRV_VENDOR_SYNC (Synchronize HR data to supplier) contains now also the option to add role Customer as well as both roles Customer and Vendor.

New interface for customizing view PTRV_VENDOR_SYNC

The detailed interface of customizing view PTRV_VENDOR_SYNC (accessible also via transaction BUPASYNC) was changed to provide the possibility of assigning role Customer in a similar way as role Vendor.

New detailed interface for customizing view _PTRV_VENDOR_SYNC – Customer role

New detailed interface for customizing view PTRV_VENDOR_SYNC – Customer and Vendor role

Using a reference Business Partner as template for each company code helps passing the relevant customer and/or vendor information which cannot be provided by HR such as company code specific data like reconciliation account, dunning information, withholding tax data, general customer/vendor data, delivery and billing preferences, Business Partner group and Business Partner roles.

Also, the additional customizing table /SHCM/RECON_CUST for Reconciliation Accounts for Customer per Company codes was introduced.

The role assignment to employment Business Partners is then handled in reports /SHCM/R_EMPL_HANDLE_BPROLES (Assignment of Additional Roles to “Employment” Business Partners) for initial role generation and /SHCM/R_EMPL_HDLE_BPRLES_DELTA (Update of Roles of “Employment” Business Partners) for updates as a daily job.
These reports are executed after the initial synchronization of employee data to the Business Partner objects via /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_EMPL_SINGLE (S/4HANA BP Synchronization) and /SHCM/RH_SYNC_BUPA_FROM_EMPL for the delta synchronization as daily job.
Via new BAdI /SHCM/B_EE_BP_SYNC (Mapping of Employee to BP fields) it is possible to influence the to be synchronized employee data such as communication data, bank information and address data.

Definition of BAdI /SHCM/B_EP_BP_ROLE_SYNC

In addition, new BAdI /SHCM/B_EP_BP_ROLE_SYNC (Sync of roles ( customer, vendor, …)) was introduced to modify the vendor and/or customer data including general data, company code and group number, modify roles and tax numbers, as well as creating vendors/customers for employment Business Partners based on customer specific logic.
The existing BAdI BADI_FITV_VENDOR_SYNC cannot be used at the same time with this new BAdI. In case a customer is already using the old BAdI there is usually no need to switch to the new one as the old one still works and most methods are still supported.

Definition of BAdI /SHCM/B_EP_BP_ROLE_SYNC

Conclusion

The new employee Business Partner model covers the whole employee life cycle including the external workforce. Considering the external workforce in the synchronization process lowers the administrative tasks to distinguish manually between external and internal workforce as the different roles are assigned automatically via the report. The external workforce is considered with SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS0 for employment Business Partners in the new data model.

Role Customer assignment during the employee Business Partner synchronization for the new data model supports additional business scenarios where goods and services are sold and/or delivered to employees. This functionality is available as of SAP S/4HANA 2022 FPS0.
Like the Vendor role assignment to the employment Business Partner, assigning role Customer is optional.

Additional Information

For additional information please refer to the following sources

External Workforce

• External Resource in the New Employee Business Partner Model in S/4HANA on SAP Help Portal
• Integration Guides attached to SAP Note 2340095 – S4TWL – Conversion of Employees to Business Partners
• Further information about Workforce Management with SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass can be found in this SAP Blog

New Employee Business Partner Model in SAP S/4HANA OP

• New Employee Business Partner Model in SAP S/4HANA on SAP Help Portal
• SAP Blog New Employee Business Partner Data Model in SAP S/4HANA 2020OP
• SAP Note 3023906 FAQ – NEW Employee to Business Partner synchronization in SAP S/4HANA OnPremise (NEW MODE)
• SAP Note 2340095 – S4TWL – Conversion of Employees to Business Partners
• SAP Note 3073240 – Vendor generation for an employment BP in employee synchronization new function