MDG BP(role=Customer) vs MDG Customer

Question

Hi All,
         As I understand,using the Supplier MDG,it can  create a BP either as a Vendor or a Customer depending on the Supplier role chosen.
When EHP6 MDG comes with a Customer object,what will be the overlap between MDG-Supplier(role=Customer) vs MDG-Customer.
My questions:
(1) I am unable to understand the difference between creating a customer only and creating a customer via a BP(using BP-Customer CVI Integration)
(2) If I can create BP as a customer in the SAP provided MDG-Supplier package(ERP6 EHP5) ,why its always referred to as Supplier in SAP documentation.
Regards,
Premjit

Answer 1

Hi Premjit,
First, if you use MDG, you'll always create a business partner record (table BUT000) on your MDG hub. If CVI is active and you've chosen the appropriate BP roles for creating a customer and/or supplier, the system creates entries in the ERP specific customer (KNA1) and/or supplier (LFA1, LFB1, LFM1) tables, too. So you're right, choosing the customer role in MDG Supplier in EhP5 can create a customer record via CVI, too. But there are some impacts if you do this that you should keep in mind:
1) Checks
EhP5 does not yet support the checks for the Customer (e.g. required fields and so on). This can cause some trouble when CVI tries to save the data. Saving a customer might fail due to invalid data!
2) Data Maintenance
You cannot maintain customer specific data in EhP5. The out-of-the-box UI supports supplier specific fields (general data, company codes, purchasing organization) only. This features comes for the customer with EhP6 in a customer specific UI.
The data that a customer would receive in EhP5 is the common data that customers and suppliers share with the Business Partner (addresses, bank details, and so on). Customer specifics like general data, company codes, sales orgs, cannot be maintained in MDG EhP5 (without custom enhancements).
Best regards
Michael