SAP S/4HANA Cloud organizes data into three fundamental categories. Master data is the core, long-term data representing business entities like customers, materials, and suppliers, which remains relatively static. Transactional data is dynamic data generated from daily business processes, such as sales orders, purchase orders, and financial postings. Configuration data (also known as customizing) defines the system's structure and behavior, including organizational structures, business rules, and process settings, which are established during implementation to align the system with company-specific requirements.

A. Business: This term is too generic. While all data in the system is related to the business, "Business" is not a formal SAP classification for a type of data alongside Master or Transactional.

E. Organization: Organizational data, which defines the enterprise structure (e.g., company codes, plants), is a specific and crucial subset of Configuration data, not a primary data category itself.

1. SAP Help Portal

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Public Edition 2402

"Data Migration to SAP S/4HANA from Staging": This official documentation clearly distinguishes between the migration of Master Data and Transactional Data using specific migration objects. Configuration is handled separately through tools like SAP Central Business Configuration (CBC). The entire framework is built on this data classification.

2. SAP Activate Methodology for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Public Edition

"Data Management" Workstream: The methodology details tasks for data migration planning which are explicitly categorized. For instance

the task "Identify and Map Master Data" and "Identify and Map Transactional Data" are distinct from the system Configuration activities performed in the "Realize" phase. This confirms the three distinct data types.

3. Saueressig

T.

et al. (2022). SAP S/4HANA Cloud: An Introduction. SAP Press. Chapter 4

"Implementation with SAP Activate

" describes the process of setting up the system. It implicitly and explicitly separates the activities of system Configuration (customizing) from the loading of Master Data and historical Transactional Data

reinforcing this fundamental three-part data model.