So now we have seen one major type of data within SAP, that is the organization data. The organization data that is in charge of recording the structure of enterprises. The next major data type that we get to see in SAP is master data and master data is used to represent entities that are used in various business process. For instance, the fulfillment process that we are interested in seeing would involve the buying of materials from vendors and the selling of these materials to customer, and as a result in this fulfillment process, we will need to have master data to record customer attributes, material master data to record attributes of material, and also vendor master data to record attributes of the vendor. The views of master data rarely changes and as you could imagine, in the case of customers and vendors, the names of these two entities rarely changes, unless decided to change the name of the company. At the same time, the addresses of the customer and the vendor would also be the same for many, many years. Master data contains several attributes related to the entity it represents and these attributes are needed to make decision and set rules in a business process. Depending on what tasks needs to be completed, different users would be using different views of the master data. So, let's take a look at how that spans out in the example of material master. So, assuming that we are looking at the material master for a table, we would have this different views that is recorded. At the very top left corner, we see that as a view known as the basic data and within the basic data view, we would get to see things such as the dimensions of the table, including things like the length, the breadth, and also the height of the table. We'll also get to see attributes such as the weight and also the color of the table. For users, there are utilizing the material master in performing tasks related to logistics and material staging. They will need to know information that is related to where the table is stored and the amount of this table left in each plant. So, that information will be represented under the views for storage and warehouse management. Whereas, users sitting in the accounting and the sales and distribution department, would need to know if they're making a sales that's profitable. For that reason, they will need to know what is the cost of manufacturing the table and also the sales price of the table. Such information would be sitting in the areas of accounting, S and D, and even purchasing. At the same time, we should note that the information recorded in each of these views might only be accessible to particular groups of users. So in the example that I've given, the users who are related to logistics and material staging might not see the pricing information that the accountants and the salesperson would see through their views. At the same time, it's also note-worthy to know that the information for the same material can actually differ across different plants. Take for instance this material master for maple coffee table. It is the same table but if we were to look deeper into its values in different plants, we would see very differently times and standard costs. In the Milwaukee Plant, the lead time to construct and build this table is two days and it has a standard costs are $216. Whereas, the same table in the Saint Louis Plant would take a slightly longer time of three days to build and has a slightly longer standard costs. Now, you might be wondering why is it that SAP will allow different values in different plants. Well, a good reason for that is because dealing with different vendors, the plants might need different times to finish building its table. At the same time, different plants and different factories might have different efficiencies in building the same product. That's the reason why we see different lead times for different plants. At the same time, because they're sourcing these raw materials from different vendors located in different locations, the standard costs are expected to differ in different locations, and that's the reason why we get to see different values in different plants for the same table. Moving on, we also get to see an example of customer master. The customer master data is used to record general data of the customers such as the name, the address, and the account number associated with the customer. It also has the delivery preferences and sales policy associated with the customer. Things such as the preferred shipping plan will be specified. Also, the shipping method, the tolerance and the policy for dealing with partial shipment is also recorded within the customer master. The customer master is defined by the sales area itself. So, let us take a look at how that spans out in our next slide. So over here, if we were to focus on the very last row of the graph, we will find that the customer can be defined in three different ways. The customer in the US side are known to purchase through the US Eastern Sales Organization and also through the US Western Sales Organization when buying tables. The customer over here buy solely through the wholesale channel, but because they are buying through different sales organization, two separate records of the customer master would have to be created. In the Germany side of things, the customer is known to purchase through only the northern part of the sales organization using the Internet channel for tables. As a result, in total, we have three different definitions of the customer. The reason why we would need to have different definitions of the customer is to better serve the customer because the customer might have different preferences depending on the different sales organization, the channel in which they buy from, and also the product that it wishes to buy. Moving on, we also have a very unique master data which is known as the costumer-material info record. What this master data is is that it's very different from the customer master and also the material master in the sense that it's data is very specific to the purchases that a customer makes for a particular material. The values that we see within the customer-material info record would overwrite the values that we see from the material master and from the customer master. At the same time, it contains special attributes that are not found elsewhere within the SAP system. For instance, the customer material number that is used to match the product between the supplier and customer is only found strictly within the customer-material info record. If we were to take a look at the table below, we will find that for the same product, maple coffee table, we have a natural finish is known as MCT-1000 under CLSY's identification number. Whereas, for T of S, one of the customers of CLSY, they've decided to call this G1000NA. So, having this attribute is very helpful in facilitating conversations and facilitating the sales transactions between these two parties. The third type of data that we are interested in knowing and learning is transactional data. So, transactional data is being created when users are actually using the system. Transactional data tends to take components from organization data, master data, and situational data in formulating the records. So an example of a transactional data is a purchase order and a purchase order is being created when a sales representative is recording information on what the customer ordered. In this particular instance, the customer master will be taken to formulate the transaction data. At the same time, the material master also hosts an attributes related to the product that is being ordered. Finally, we have situational data or who is the user that entity transaction and when is this information recorded in the system. As you can recall from our very first session, we mentioned that ERP systems, SAP, are important tools to make sure that financial transactions are being recorded. For recording this financial transaction properly, it doesn't need to have an audit true. For that purpose of recording this audit true, it is necessary to know exactly when a transaction was initiated and who is responsible for this transaction so that we could actually trace back in cases where we need to know who is responsible for making the sales. Because of this purpose, it is important for users of SAP to make sure that their user account is secure and that they're not leaving the terminals unattended. If they were to do that, they might be in danger of having another user posing as them and making fraudulent transactions on a system. Here's a look at the example of a purchase order for transactional data, we see that they actually follow the format of two different segments, the header records information of the parties involved, the customer and also the seller, and also about the addresses as involved in the shipping process. In the line items, you get to see detail records of what is actually involved in this sales transaction. We would also get to see the quantities that is being needed to be delivered in this transaction. So now, we have learned about three different types of data, organizational data, the master data, and also transaction data. Now, we're at a good spot to learn about the actual business process of fulfillment.
