Solving the Catalog Hosting Challenge for eProcurement
Posted by Integration Man on September 30, 2009
Anyone who has been around the procurement block a few times knows that one of the first decisions you have to make when automating the buying process is who will host the product catalogs. Essentially, there are three options:
1. Catalogs will be hosted internally by your eProcurement system
2. Catalogs will be hosted by suppliers themselves
3. Catalogs will be hosted by a 3rd party (like our partner SciQuest)
It goes without saying that there are some inherent advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and some companies prefer one over the other. You, for example, may be a fan of the control you get when you host catalogs yourself. After all, employees can only buy items at prices you have approved, and they get a consistent buying experience across all your suppliers when the catalog data is displayed within your system. However, you also must maintain these catalogs and manage the overall process yourself.
You may not be such a fan of the manual processing required when buyers submit orders with inaccurate pricing, because the catalog was not updated before pricing changed. What’s more, buyers are frustrated when items they order are out-of-stock because they have no visibility into availability when they submit the order.
Allowing corporate buyers to directly purchase from the vendor eStore typically provides a better shopping experience; however, the downside of supplier-hosted catalogs is that you loose the controls built into your purchasing system, including workflow and business rules for approvals when employees buy directly,
Clearly, a hybrid approach, which enables you to leverage the best of each option, would be ideal. This is where the Hubspan Price & Availability Connector for SciQuest comes in. The Hubspan Price & Availability Connector ensures that buyers who access internally hosted product catalogs have access to accurate price and availability information before they send an order to the supplier. This reduces processing costs and increases satisfaction as buyers create a higher percentage of valid orders that require no manual processing.
How it works
A user selects a vendor’s catalog within their eProcurment system and adds items to a requisition. Prior to submitting the requisition for approval , the buyer initiates a real-time Price and Availability call to the supplier’s eCatalog. The supplier is able to respond with information on availability, price, estimated ship date, substitute part number as well as a myriad of additional information that may be specific to a certain supplier or item. Approval managers are also able to initiate Price and Availability calls during the approval process.
There is no widely adopted standard for performing real time queries like Price and Availability check and this makes integration challenging as your suppliers may have adopted a range of technologies.
Hubspan’s Price and Availability Connector changes the rules for integration by combining a world-class SaaS integration platform with industry best practices and domain expertise to offer you a comprehensive solution. The Hubspan Connector mediates communication protocols, messaging structures and data formats supported by the supplier’s system and those supported by your eProcurement system.
Find out how SciQuest buyers use Hubspan’s Price and Availability Connector to access real-time information.
Tags: e-catalog, eCommerce, eProcurement, ERP, integration, procurement, SaaS, SciQuest
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