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How It Works...
How It Works
Catalogs & Master Procurement Lists
Procurement Contracts
Procurement Planning
Procurement Control
Catalogs & Master Procurement Lists
Catalogs and Master Procurement Lists are the mechanisms employed by the system that allow the participants in the procurement ecosystem to transact in a seamless manner. They provide a structured means for communicating propositions and requests between the transacting parties; the catalog is namely used by the supplier (the selling organization), to 'push' propositions (itemized goods/services descriptions) for consideration to buying organizations that are part of the procurement aggregation network (in other words, to the organizations that buy the goods/services via the aggregator agency). The buying organization may either decline or annex the offered proposition; should it decide to annex the proposed item, it is added - with all its details - to that buying organization's Master Procurement List (MPL); the MPL contains all the items that may be procured by the organization's authorized Buyers.
In other words, the goods/services which the buying organization's procurement staff are allowed to order are recorded in the MPL. When buyers generate Purchase Orders they do so by referencing the approved items listed in the MPL. Purchase Orders generated in this way thus reflect the reference numbers and codes, descriptions, units of measure, pack sizes, pricing and applicable discounts as provided by the supplier.
In the Procurement Aggregation ecosystem - which consists of the Buying Organization, the Supplier and the Aggregating Agency - catalog data is transferred between the Supplier and Buyer via the Aggregator. The Aggregator Agency acts as a type of gatekeeper between the seller and the buyer; the aggregator agency can namely decide which propositions should be forwarded to a particular buying organization from all the propositions it has received from the supplier. In turn the buying organization also has the option to annex (or decline) propositions received from the aggregator agency into its MPL.
Please note that both supplier-originating and buyer-originating orders can only be processed if the two parties are connected to each other in the ecosystem - it is referred to as being 'system aware' of each other. A nominated Buying Organization gets connected to a particular supplier via the catalog transfer mechanism; the moment the Aggregator Agency extends a proposition item from a particular supplier catalog to a buying organization, the two parties - the buying organization and the suppler - become 'system aware' of each other, even if the buyer has not (yet) annexed such proposition item (it only needs to be one item, and it can be any item, even a dummy item).
In a buyer-originating procurement transaction the buyer would typically use the Buyer Application (Purchase Order Utility) to produce a required Purchase Order. This utility presents the contents of the Buying Organization's MPL as an itemized list which can be searched and filtered to locate the required items. The user simply enters the quantity required for each of the items needed. The Purchase Order that gets created in this manner thus reflects the item details as it appears in the MPL as provided by the supplier of the items (e.g., supplier item code, description, unit of measure, pack size, and unit price). Relevant changes to the supplier catalog as negotiated and agreed to by the Aggregator Agency are automatically updated in the Buying Organization's MPL, including price and discount.
In the case of supplier-originating procurement transactions the Sales Order is captured by the Supplier and pushed to the Buying Organization via the Aggregator Agency. For this scenario the itemized details of the sales order is used to update the MPL of the relevant Buying Organization (that is the customer-party of the sales transaction).
The following table provides a summary of the catalog creation and exchange steps, with corresponding 'how-to' references where applicable:
LEARN MORE ABOUT
Deleting an Object Instance (Prune versus Eradicate)
Operating & Navigating the UI
RELATED HOW TO GUIDES
Accept and activate Supplier Catalog Items proposed by the Aggregator Agency for inclusion in the Master Procurement List
Activate a Supplier's proposed Catalog Item in the Aggregator Agency's Catalog using the Supplier Catalog Item Activation Utility
Create and maintain an Aggregator Agency Catalog
Create and maintain the Master Procurement List
Propose Supplier Catalog Items to a Buying Organization for inclusion in its Master Procurement List (MPL)
Send an Object Instance to a Trading Partner using the Object Exchange
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