SAP SD Enterprise Structure

Company
GE Medicals is the name of the company. This company has presence across the world. And when GE Healthcare declares profits in the US, it is not just including the US company but the entire world. In SAP parlance, GE Medicals is a Company.

Company Code
GE Medicals in the US will be run through a legal entity. A company code is an entity that has to report its financials to the government on a timely basis. For example an Incorporated entity can be called a company code. In this case, GE Medicals in the US is being called as a legal entity.

Sales Organization
Since the company has presence across the US, there will be sales organizations across the united states responsible for selling goods. For example, the Western division is responsible for selling goods in the Western states. The same organization is also responsible for handling returns, credits, availability of materials etc.

Distribution Channel
Just as the name speaks, a distribution channel is the sales channel through which products are distributed. In this case, the medical equipment could be sold through the direct channel or through an agency. Each of them will be represented as a distribution channel. A more common example could be Retail or Wholesale.

Division
Division is purely related to the product/service we are selling. Its a grouping of our products. For example all different types of X-Ray machines would fall under the X-Ray division.

Sales Office
The western division of the company might be having multiple sales offices in california. For example there could be one in the bay area and another in Los Angeles

Sales Group
Each sales office contains multiple sales groups who have a fixed set of responsibilities. It could be based on the products that they sell or the type of sales that they perform or the role they play in the actual sale. For example, a sales group could be responsible for selling consumables used in the X-Ray while the field-apps will be responsible for selling the software used in the machines.

Plant
A plant is where goods are manufactured. Sometimes, you might not even manufacture anything – Just trade goods. Still you would need a plant. So a plant could be a physical or virtual place where goods are manufactured or stored at a high level. For example, there could be a plant in New Jersey.

Storage Location
Each plant could be associated with multiple storage locations – A place where goods are stored before being sold. For example, the new jersey plant could have storage locations in Edison and Iselin.

Warehouse
A warehouse is an extension of the storage location. While a storage location represents a location where goods are stored, a warehouse goes much further and describes how the goods are sold, the topography of the storage, storage conditions etc. Goods can still be sold without using Warehouse Management, but a sales cannot happen without a storage location.

Sales Office

A combination of the sales organization, distribution channel and division is called the sales area.

Sales Organization + Distribution Channel + Division = Sales Area

Configuration

The configuration for the enterprise structure is very simple. The Menu path is [ SPRO -> IMG -> Enterprise Structure ]