The importance of business roles for authorizations in SAP systems

Business roles make a decisive contribution to the organization and administration of user authorizations in SAP systems. They are predefined collections of authorizations and functions that are tailored to the requirements of specific job functions or positions within a company.

Does your role concept meet current requirements?

What are business roles characterized by?

As higher-level, cross-system constructs, business roles combine various technical roles or authorizations. They therefore do not belong to a single application or system, but combine several technical roles or authorizations from different applications.

Ideally, a business role represents the entirety of all authorizations for a task or function. The term “task/function” refers, for example, to the activity of an employee in a company, a department or a project. In this way, an organizational reference to the business role can be established if this is intended.

Business roles facilitate the administration of authorizations by simplifying the assignment of rights to users. Instead of assigning each authorization individually, administrators can assign a complete role that contains all the required authorizations.

Different types of business roles

Whether there are different types of business roles depends primarily on the existing authorization concept and the associated definitions. In principle, different types of business roles are conceivable, for example to summarize the entirety of an employee’s activities (job roles) or to describe the tasks in a project (project roles).

A business role is an abstract construct that can be used to map a person’s activities. The business role encompasses everything that an employee does that is directly related to their tasks at work.

A single business role does not necessarily correspond to a person’s entire activity. Particularly in lean organizations or at smaller locations, some people may be responsible for several business roles.

Mapping the relevant functions in the company

Business roles are elements of a role concept that represent typical jobs/functions in a company (e.g. chief accountant). A business role can be understood as a kind of shell to which the required sub-processes that each employee needs to carry out their activities are assigned.

Furthermore, so-called “optional rights” and “rights for managers” are defined for a business role. Optional rights are only assigned to certain employees, as these are special sub-processes that not every employee is allowed to perform.

Conclusion: Central element in the SAP role concept

Business roles combine all authorizations required to perform the tasks of a job. They form an essential part of the role concept of SAP systems by simplifying user administration, ensuring standardization and consistency, increasing efficiency, supporting compliance and security and enabling flexible adjustments. Depending on the specific needs of an organization, business roles can be created, modified and deleted to better meet changing business requirements.