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Process 145

CREDIT MANAGEMENT MASTER RECORD
The credit management master record is an extension of the customer mas-
ter record that includes data relevant to managing credit for that customer. The
data contained in this record are grouped into three segments: general data,
credit control area data, and an overview. The general data segment includes
data applicable at the client level, that is, across multiple credit control areas.
Examples of general data are address, communication data, and total credit
granted to the customer across the enterprise. The credit control area segment
includes data applicable to a single credit control area. An example is the
credit granted to the customer for companies in a particular credit control area
and risk category. Risk category is a classifi cation used to determine how risky
it is to extend credit to the customer. Companies use this classifi cation to assess
the likelihood that the customer will pay its invoices. Finally, the overview seg-
ment includes key data from the other segments from the credit master record.
Companies use the overview segment to access the most important data they
need to make decisions regarding extending credit to customers.

PROCESS

Figure 5-19 illustrates the steps in the fulfi llment process. The process begins
with presales activities and concludes with the receipt of payment from the
customer. Presales activities are optional and are designed to identify and
develop customer relationships. Very often, the process begins with sales order
processing, which is triggered by the receipt of a customer’s purchase order. As
the name suggests, sales order processing involves creating a sales order, which
is an internal document used to manage and track the order as it fl ows through
the process. After a company creates the sales order, it prepares a shipment
and sends it to the customer. The next step is billing the customer for the mate-
rials shipped. Finally, the company receives a payment from the customer. As
you can see in Figure 5-19, each step involves several tasks. Further, depend-
ing on the circumstances, additional steps can be necessary, including activi-
ties to be completed by other processes in the organization. Note that in this
example, we have not explicitly included credit management. We will assume
that the customer has suffi cient credit and that the order will be processed.
We will, however, consider credit management activities and their impact in
greater detail later in this chapter.
A variety of documents are created during the fulfi llment process. As
previously discussed, documents are categorized as material documents, fi nan-
cial accounting (FI) documents, management accounting (CO) documents, and
transaction documents. Recall that documents can be printed or can exist in
electronic form. The data contained in these documents are categorized as
organizational data, master data, and transaction data. Some data are provided
by the user, while other data are automatically retrieved from the relevant
master data and the exsiting transaction documents.
This overview of the fulfi llment process is highly simplifi ed. The follow-
ing discussion highlights each process step in detail in terms of its key ele-
ments: triggers, data, tasks, and outcomes.

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