In the current scenario wherein, enterprises are strategizing hard to achieve targets for business growth, the need for managing their spend becomes crucial. Even in the corporate world, the saying “a penny saved is a penny earned” holds high regard.

The e-procurement systems play a vital role in achieving the target to minimize the expense for large organizations by capitalizing the aptitude of eCommerce demesne.

Supplier exchange or e-procurement through EDI (electronic data interchange) handles the value chain of the process with the transparency and the optimization of the resources and managing the complete requirement to pay cycle.

Many key players are there in the market for providing such advanced multi functional application for the purpose. The buyer-supplier correlation is crucial for the success of any such application.

Punchout helps a buyer make purchases from a vendor within buyer’s own procurement application or hosted e-procurement system. It basically takes the seller’s product catalog and puts it inside the buyer’s e-procurement system.

• How punchout works.

The working process of punchout endeavors with Spend Management Systems. The punchout integration lets the buyer(s) place order(s) in their own e-procurement system (like Oracle, Ariba, etc to name a few) instead of redirecting them to the seller’s eCommerce website.

Due to the Punchout integration, the seller’s eCommerce website is visible and navigable from within the e-procurement system. The remaining process is akin to a regular eCommerce transaction, where the buyer selects the items from sellers’ product catalog.

• Integration with eCommerce stores.

The enterprise eCommerce solution that intents to simplify the eCommerce, comes with the feature to easily enable the stores as Punchout capable. Punchout Integration can be done using CXML or OCI protocols.

But the better option is to get a Punchout enabled online store rather than having a separate Punchout catalog.

• Still finding a reason to use punchout?

Punchout is admired by suppliers globally owing to its easy-to-adapt gateway solution that integrates with their existing build and provides plug&play solutions for all known eCommerce platforms.

It also offers the most technically advanced, robust, and pocket-friendly solutions combined with the flexibility to adapt as per needs of both buyers and suppliers.

• Purchasing made simple

With direct access to the vendor catalogs in their own e-procurement system, the procurement admins and their users can adore their settled prices with pre-registered vendors of their choice.

The purchase orders can directly be generated through the system itself with no need for the buyer to make the payment on the merchant’s store.

• Centralization of the process.

Improved spend management and purchase unification can be achieved as all the catalogs are centralized within a single application.

Punchout benefits both buyer and supplier with hassle-free purchasing by automating the whole procurement process. It helps to explore new markets and allows to sell to a large number of buyers which is the need of the hour in eCommerce.

It also helps in improving the buying decision of any organization by providing better control over the buying of products and services for an organization.