The Need to Use SciQuest PunchOut Solution

SciQuest procurement users often complain about the difficulty in shopping their contract products through the supplier’s site using CIF catalog. This is because the contract products appear with the rest of the products that the supplier is selling. Just imagine if the supplier is selling millions of products, locating those contract products can be a nightmare for the customer. The customer has to deal with an unfriendly shopping interface, which can be extremely frustrating, thereby leading to ordering errors.

Considering the aforementioned facts, CIF catalog is definitely not the proper way to connect with the supplier’s site. SciQuest procurement users should ask for SciQuest PunchOut solution from their suppliers to resolve the issue. The catalog solution is designed to provide a personalized shopping experience for B2B customers. As a B2B customer, you really don’t have to do the tedious task of searching through non-contract products. With a single click, you reach from your procurement application to your contract catalog. In other words, every B2B customer gets direct access to his own pre-approved contract catalog.

Another issue faced by SciQuest procurement users with CIF catalog is the inability to get accurate product information. For instance, if the supplier makes any changes to product pricing or discontinues a product, the customer has to first upload the CIF file into his procurement application. Loading the file can be time-consuming and may even take days. As a result, the changes made to the CIF catalog are not immediately reflected on the customer’s side. In such circumstances, there is a high probability that a customer may actually add a discontinued product in the shopping cart, resulting in ordering errors.

On the other hand, SciQuest PunchOut users always get access to updated production information in real time. So whenever a supplier modifies the contract catalog, the changes are instantly visible to the customer.