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Unique business partner data sets for the whole data space.

Vision & Mission​

Basis for the integration of value-adding services in the area of business partner data management.

The BusinessPartner KIT provides high-quality data records of business partners called golden record including a unique identifier and the business partner number (BPN). The BPN provides a standardized and unique identifier on legal entity, site and address level. The connected backend service removes duplicate data, adds missing information, and improves data quality from different data sources so-called sharing member.

  • Legal Entity Level (BPN L): Search for a legal entity and get the high-quality data set.
  • Site Level (BPN S): Get the site information of a legal entity. A legal entity can have one or more sites.
  • Address Level (BPN A): Each legal entity and site has an address to find the company. One address can belong to several sites.

The KIT provides a homogeneous semantic with an open data model, enables the access to high quality data and provides one access point to the business partner data sets.


What a Golden Record Carries​

Beyond the data of a single business partner, a golden record carries:

  • Relations: a legal entity can be managed by, majority-owned by, the alternative headquarter of, or succeeded by another legal entity; sites and addresses can be succeeded by another site or address. Every relation has a validity period and a reason code.
  • The ultimate owner: the top of an ownership chain, resolved from the shared ownership relations and readable directly.
  • Confidence criteria: how many sharing members share the record, whether its owner shared it, whether an external data source checked it, and when it was last and will next be checked. A confidence level is derived from these.
  • Script variants: names and addresses in further scripts alongside the invariant data.

BuildApps

Business Value​

One open data model Application and service providers reduce investments to integrate due to one data model / API specification and open interface. The pool API enables the integration and offering of value-added services and innovation based on high-quality master data.

Access to new market potentials Potential to scale customer group and access new market potentials via Catena-X marketplace and shared service network. The BP KIT enables an interoperable foundation for value-added services.

The unique identifier BPN is the unique number to identify and find partners in the Catena-X network. It will also provide high quality data sets from business partners, their legal unit, sites and addresses.

The industry’s largest golden record collection as a shared and cost-optimized service (quality tested by the biggest players).


Use Case​

Status Quo Todays challenge for automotive companies

Most of today’s automotive companies have to invest a significant amount of resources to keep their individual partner master data updated and correct, since outdated or incorrect data records result in federal fines and wrong claims / billing processes. The industry spends a vast amount into an area that is non differentiating, regulated and executed redundantly across the partners.

For this, cutting individual company costs by offering the golden master data record as a shared service is the mission. And proactively reduce Business Partner risk via collaborative value-add services. More insights to the business partner data management use case here: Catena-X | Business Partner Use Case

OEMs and small-medium enterprises:

  • Reduce today’s individual investments in master data management
  • Re-allocate freed-up resources to differentiating / critical tasks
  • Time to value within 6 months, due to standard interfaces and mapping tools (e.g. SAP)
  • Increase data quality and use industry collective wisdom to act pro-actively (e.g. fraud alerts)
  • Take part without a master data management system: the Gate also accepts a business partner data set as a CSV file and offers a template for it

Solution Provider:

  • Reduce investments to integrate due to one Data Model and open interface.
  • The KIT enables the offering of value-add services and innovation based on golden record and collective wisdom.
  • Potential to scale customer group and access new market potentials via marketplace and shared service network.

Standards​

Our relevant standards can be downloaded from the official web page Catena-X Standard Library. The versions below are those valid in the current Catena-X release CX-Titan, which this KIT release targets.

The standards the golden record process itself implements:

Standards for value-added services built on business partner data:

NOTICE​

This work is licensed under the CC-BY-4.0.

  • SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 ZF Friedrichshafen AG
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft (BMW AG)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 SAP SE
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 Volkswagen AG
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 Robert Bosch GmbH
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 Mercedes Benz Group
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 BASF SE
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 Schaeffler AG
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023-2026 Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation
  • Source URL: https://github.com/eclipse-tractusx/bpdm