Home > Articles about Punchout > What is Punchout?

To really understand what PunchOut is, and why it should matter to you, you first have to understand why it exists. It's all about the e-procurement systems used by big companies and large government organizations. Don't worry, this isn't a technical article. I'll keep it short.

E-Procurement systems are vastly complex, enormously expensive software applications that allow large organizations to ensure that buyers make all their purchases in the same way. This has several benefits, including:

While these systems are a great boon to the company that invests in them, they create a problem for suppliers like you and the buyers who need your products and services. That's because e-Procurement systems are internal to the company.

That means that buyers now have a daunting task; get supplier information – like products, prices, and ordering methods – into their e-procurement system. That also means the suppliers who want to do business with a company that uses an e-procurement system have to find a way to ‘plug in' to their system.

That's exactly why the businesses that figure out how to do that are the ones who get the business. PunchOut is simply one of several names given to the technical "protocols" or "routines" that allow you to directly connect your product catalogs to e-procurement systems.

The name of the protocol is specific to the manufacturer of the e-procurement system. To avoid confusion, for this report we'll just refer to all e-procurement connections as PunchOut.

Here is a list of some of the most common -

Ariba, MRO, Oracle, Epicor, SciQuest, SupplyNet, SAP, ExoStar, Infor, ePlusB2B, PeopleSoft, Market4Care, Perfect Commerce, Oracle Exchange, Science Warehouse, IBM ShopOut, Ketera, Unity

Flat files, SOAP, CSV, TapOut, EDI Van, AS2, XML, API, S-FTP, ANSI X12, EdiFact, RosettaNet, Oracle XML, EDI Software, Ariba Punchout, cXML, OCI Roundtrip, SAP idocs PunchOut is one of many names e-procurement systems have for their connection protocols. The ability to connect to an e-procurement system via PunchOut allows you to do business with bigger customers –and compete at higher levels – than you may have ever thought possible.

Okay, so what do you do once you're connected? This is your opportunity to really shine to your customer by providing a PunchOut . That's simply a dedicated website created just for that customer. This site features just your contracted or requested items. That helps your customer by not forcing them to wade through your entire product line to find what they need. Additionally, your PunchOut Catalog displays their pricing.

That means they don't have to manually calculate any special pricing that's part of your agreement. So, your PunchOut Catalog allows customers to easily shop and buy from you from within their existing e-procurement system. In short – you're making it easy for them to do business with you.

So how do you get connected, and create a PunchOut Catalog? Fortunately, recent advances in technology makes all that more accessible to more businesses than ever before.

CoreXpand offers one of the most affordable and flexible options for creating PunchOut Catalogs that can connect to any e-procurement systems.

You can get more critical information about connecting to e-procurement systems using punchout protocols such as Ariba Punchout, including how to get your own PunchOut Catalog that will connect to ANY system by contacting us today.