Earlier, in the article about the sources of information about suppliers, we briefly mentioned the electronic (online) catalogs. In this article we shall discuss them in more detail. Electronic catalog is the digital version of the conventional directory provider, which allows the buyer to examine in detail the purchase and further information about products or services offered by the provider on their computers.
Commodity catalogs include two types of information:
1) Information on product specifications;
2) The transaction data.
Data on product specifications is all the information describing the product, transaction data; this is the price information of shipments and invoices, as well as discount for quantities of purchased goods. If the data on the product specifications are the same for all buyers, the transaction data must be individualized to take into account the price and other terms and conditions that the customer waived in the course of negotiations with the supplier. For example, Business Depot, Dell, Cisco are the customized versions of their catalogs for every buyer, concluding the contract with them.
E-procurement program to work successfully, you need to have guaranteed access to electronic catalogs. Question of availability of directories can be a determining factor when choosing a supplier. The buyer there is a problem if the existing supplier does not offer a digital catalog. In this case, the buyer will have to decide whether he wants to continue to conduct business with him. If his answer is yes, then the buyer will have to take into account the time it will take the supplier to send the catalog online. If the buyer does not currently have formed relationships with any vendor’s choice of provider may also take into account the fact that the supplier is able to enter into electronic transactions. However, the best provider of such opportunities while there may not be, then the buyer can make a mistake, selecting only by this criterion.
Suppliers have several options to convert their catalogs into digital form. You can get a catalog distributor in manual or electronic form and transform it into a suitable format. Or the supplier can buy ready-made software package and process your catalog or buy for this purpose service provider software. If a customer is currently no relationship with the supplier and he does not want to develop them as an acceptable solution can be proposed aggregation. Organizations involved in such aggregation, create a library of product specifications of different suppliers and then sell the right to consult organizations with food specifications in the development of data on transactions. There is another approach: use a network directory in which the host company collects all the directories and individualizes the transaction data for each customer. The buyer himself can bring to your directory service, or access it through the host company. In some cases, the seller allows the buyer to perform additional operations or directory provides access to a directory available to the supplier.
As an alternative, the use of directory service provider supplies can create catalogs controlled by their buyers, which can be combined very different information, including prices and specifications, and offered one or many vendors. At present, even simple software packages with similar databases allow you to create directories such as the majority of ERP-systems have features, using which you can develop customized catalogs. Responsibility for updating directories keeping them in working order is assigned to the service delivery. Created in the organization of directories allow the user to personalize their content (content) in the parameters of supply options and prices (or, conversely limit some options Procurement) this catalog can be integrated into the overall company to reduce process time and track specific types of expenses, allowing the user to no need to compare the procurement options, and it can carry out standardized and large-scale purchases of the selected suppliers.
