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142 CHAPTER 5 The Fulfi llment Process

In contrast, the customer in Germany deals only in the northern part of the
country and purchases exclusively via the Internet. Therefore, only one set of
sales area data is defi ned for that customer.
Customers can play different roles or partner functions in the fulfi ll-
ment process. The four required partner functions are sold-to party, ship-to
party, bill-to party, and payer. One customer may fi ll all four roles, or each role
may be fi lled by a different customer. The customer who submits the order is
the sold-to party. This is the primary type of business partner. The order may
indicate that the materials should be shipped to a different location or that
the invoice should be sent to someone else. These are the ship-to party and
bill-to party functions, respectively. For example, the customer may request
that the material be shipped to one of its customers. In this case, the party that
actually receives the shipment is considered the ship-to party. However, the
invoice will be forwarded to the customer that ordered the materials—that is,
the bill-to party. Alternatively, the bill-to-party may be another company that
processes invoices for the customer. As another example, a large enterprise may
be comprised of a number of companies, such as franchises. An order may be
placed by headquarters, the sold-to party, with instructions to deliver the mate-
rials to numerous franchises, the ship-to parties. The invoice may be sent to
headquarters, which also serves as the bill-to party. Finally, the payment may be
outsourced to another company, which will be the payer of the invoice.
GBI US has 12 customers, and GBI DE has 7. These customers are
listed in Figure 5-17. Additional details of the master data for each customer
are provided in Appendix 5A. Rocky Mountain Bikes (RMB), the customer
used in our example, is located in Denver, Colorado, and therefore is serviced
through GBI’s Western US sales organization. In addition, RMB purchases via
the wholesale channel. Therefore, it is associated with the sales area made up
of the Western US sales organization (UW00), the wholesale channel of distri-
bution (WH), and the bicycle division (BI) (look back to Figure 5-6). Further,
because RMB is a small company, its partner functions are usually all located
at the same address. However, it is not uncommon for RMB to request that
materials be shipped directly to various racing events or to its retail custom-
ers. In our example, RMB has requested that the materials be delivered to the
RMB booth at the racing location in Colorado Springs, not to its head offi ce
in Denver. In this case, RMB is the sold-to party, bill-to party, and payer, but
the ship-to party is the racing location. Finally, because the materials are to be
delivered in Colorado, they will be delivered from the San Diego plant.

Figure 5-17: GBI customers

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