You can maintain all the master data, such as items, business partners, central purchase contracts, general ledger and related data in one company and share this data with the other companies. This master data company can be one of the operational companies, but you can also assign a separate company only to be used for the master data.
The advantages of having a separate master data company are:
- Clarity: Having a single company as master data company is clear for all users.
- Authorization: In general, only a few people in an enterprise can maintain the master data and, particularly for this maintenance, the authorization is important. If one dedicated master data company exists, you can use the company authorization to maintain this authorization very easily.