Historically, the customer data model was owned by Oracle Receivables (AR). However, as the data model changed and more complex relationships and attributes had to be tracked and monitored, the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) product was created. All applications within the E-Business suite that require interaction with a customer integrate with TCA.
Customer information is no longer stored in the individual applications but rather in a central repository/registry maintained within TCA. It is important to understand the following entities/concepts stored in TCA:
- Party: A party is an entity with whom you can have a potential business relationship. A party can be either a Person or an Organization. The Party entity is completely independent of any business relationship; this means that a Party can exist even if you have no transactions with it.
- Party Relationship: A binary relationship between two parties such as a partnership.
- Customer: A customer is a party with whom you have an existing business relationship. From an AR perspective, you can simplify the concepts by thinking of a Customer as a Party. In the Oracle Receivables Customer form, the information displayed at the Customer level is from TCA’s Party information record.
- Customer Account (also called Account): An account contains information about how you transact business with a particular customer. You can create multiple accounts for a customer. When you create invoices and receipts you associate it with a particular Account of a Customer.
- Location: A Location is an address. It is a point in space, typically identified by a street number, a street name, a city, a state or province, a country. A location is independent of what it is used for – you do not associate a purpose to a location.
- Party Site: A Party Site is associated with a Party. It is the location where a party is physically located. When defining sites for a Party, only one can be an identifying address. However, you can define other party sites associated with a party. You can define purposes/usage for Party Sites.
- Account Site: An Account Site is associated with a Customer Account. It is the location associated with the account you are transacting business with. You can define business purposes (also called site uses) for an Account site.
- Contact: A person related to an organization, this can be a relationship between an organization and a person as well as between two people.
- Contact Point: Your avenue of contacting a party i.e. a phone number, e-mail address, or fax number.
- Account Contact: A party contact that is used as a means of contacting the customer regarding his/her account.
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