Understanding Business Units

A business unit is an operational subset of an organization. Each business unit has its own way of storing information and has its own processing guidelines. You can use one business unit for all situations, or you can divide operations based on whatever criteria make the most sense. For example, you can create business units for different product lines or regions or even entry source. Order Capture transactions use business units as key identifiers. Once you determine how many business units you need and how to organize them, define them in the Order Capture system.

In Order Capture, business units drive the business process of creating and tracking orders that customer service representatives (CSRs), sales representatives, and self-service customers create. To implement Order Capture, you must create order capture business units. These business units define processing rules to capture orders and enable the integration with other PeopleSoft applications, such as Order Management.

For integration purposes, ensure that business unit definition records are synchronized across all systems. Business unit definitions that you create in PeopleSoft CRM are available in PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management. You must make PeopleSoft Order Management and Inventory business unit definitions available to PeopleSoft CRM. To synchronize business unit records across your business enterprise, use the business unit enterprise integration point (EIP).

This is the process for defining business units:

1. Define global PeopleSoft business units, if you run multiple PeopleSoft applications.

2. Define PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (PeopleSoft CRM) business units.

3. Link PeopleSoft business units and PeopleSoft CRM business units to Order Capture.

   Note: For example, you can create a business unit in Order Capture, and connect that business unit to Sales later.

Before you create multiple order capture business units, ensure that you understand tableset controls, which you use to determine values for fields on transactional pages.