Business Partner Graduation

'Business Partner Graduation' objects classify business partners according to their importance within supplier relationships.

Standard predefined business partner graduations are:

A - High Impact
B - Medium Impact
C - Low Impact

For each graduation, an evaluation period is specified. For instance:

Graduation: A - Evaluation period: 6 months
Graduation: B - Evaluation period: 12 months
Graduation: C - Evaluation period: undefined

Specifying a graduation for a business partner thus provides an 'importance label' for the partner and determines the frequency of evaluation calculation performed on the business partner's evaluation inputs.

Use case: Create or edit a business partner graduation

In the 'Supplier Manager' sidebar, locate folder 'Administration' and open catalog 'Businesspartner Graduations'.
Call action 'Edit' to open an existing graduation for editing. Call action 'Create' to create a new graduation for use in the 'Business Partner' editor
In the 'Businesspartner Graduation' editor, specify 'Graduation Key' (For instance, use 'D' if the new graduation should expand the range of existing graduations at the bottom end.) Provide a brief explanation in the 'Comments' field and select the 'Evaluation Period'. Note that the evaluation period selection is not mandatory, business partners whose graduation has no evaluation period will not be evaluated on a scheduled basis but can still be evaluated manually. Use the 'Business Partner' reference catalog at the bottom of the graduation editor to assign business partners to the graduation.

Use case: Specify graduation for a business partner

Two ways of setting graduation for individual business partners exist:

To specify graduation of one business partner, open the business partner for editing and select a value in the 'Graduation' field.
To set a particular graduation to multiple business partners, open the graduation object (e.g. 'A - High Impact') for editing and use the 'Business Partner' reference catalog at the bottom of the graduation editor to assign business partners to the graduation.