Participating customers have different Industry key (KNA1-BRSCH)

The system issues an error message and will not allow you to continue with this transaction until the error is resolved.

What causes this issue?

According to the mapping, you want to merge two or more old customer
records into one target customer record. However, not all the old
records have identical master data settings: It was found that old
customer records have different values for Industry key. (This is
determined by the indicator Industry key, field KNA1-BRSCH).
This may lead to inconsistencies in some applications related to target
customer data.

System Response

<ZH>Error</>
From a technical perspective, this message can be ignored. This may make
sense in the following cases:
No postings to the respective customer records have been made.
The respective customer records are not used any longer and are meant to
be merged into a dummy record.

How to fix this error?

Analyze the situation, and either change the mapping so that only
customer records with identical master data settings are merged, or
decide to ignore the message because one of the special cases described
above applies.
If you decide to ignore the error even though none of the special cases
described above applies, consider that <ZH>the target customer record
will get the Industry key of the old customer record for which priority
indicator is set. </>Make sure to evaluate the impact of this decision -
for example regarding potential inconsistencies and required follow-up
activities - <ZH>before</> you continue with the conversion.

Procedure for System Administrators

Error message extract from SAP system. Copyright SAP SE.