The first thing to create in ERP5 is the persons. Every person who has interaction with our company has to be entered based on different roles such as staff, clients, suppliers, etc. Then they can be assigned duties, linked to organisations, set relations to marketing campaigns, etc. In this way, the persons are managed according to our company's needs.
In our example, VIFIB has staff (role "Internal") - engineers in the field of software development who run the production environment, technicians in the field of computer hardware who install PC hardware, company managers, accountants and HR who manage the company, etc. VIFIB has clients (role "Client") who purchase hosting capacity for their own use or for retail through their own SlapOS platform, and clients who are software developers and need to receive software certification. VIFIB has suppliers (role "Supplier") of computer capacity and hosting space, and suppliers of software licenses and software integration service. VIFIB is also in relation with journalists (role 'Media') and social insurance center (role "Administration").
In ERP5, there are two principles in identifying the person. First, the roles of a person should be differentiated. Through configuration, we must be able to differentiate a client from a supplier and from a staff, as shown in the example above. But we also must be able to attribute many roles to the same person. For example, a VIFIB client who purchases large amounts of capacity for retail use can also provides computer capacity to VIFIB through their SlapOS platform, thus becomes a VIFIB supplier. So this person is at the same time a client and a supplier. Second, a person must be unique. We must create the person once into the system then be able to use it everywhere it is needed. If we create false persons (as Person 1 – Customer; Person 1 - Client) we are getting far from the reality which we try to represent within our system.