What e-procurement catalog management solutions are available today?
Most companies use a combination of Catalog Management Tools (e.g. Requisite, Saqqara) for maintaining “local” supplier catalog files, and XML “punchout” (e.g. Ariba cXML Punchout, SAP OCI Roundtrip) to connect directly to their suppliers’ online catalogs. Some also pay service providers (e.g. SciQuest, ePlus) to do it for them. Why two answers to the same problem? Although today’s Catalog Management Tools have excellent functionality, they can become very resource intensive, cumbersome and thus costly as the number of SKUs increases. As a result, they are often used for smaller catalogs. Most companies then use XML “punchout” for larger catalogs, assuming the supplier can support it (not always a safe assumption). Why? Using “punchout” moves much of the costs and complexity of maintaining larger catalogs using Catalog Management Tools to the supplier. But “punchout” has it’s own issues (see next question).
