So, it is almost essential that B2B IT vendors make it quick and easy for their clients to buy from their online catalogues. The easiest way to accomplish this is to connect the supplier’s IT catalogue to the client’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) or procurement system.
“Punchout” does this.
Punchout integration is increasingly demanded as must-have functionality for any B2B IT provider as clients seek to automate online IT purchasing to save time and money. Many RFPs are now specifying punchout as a requirement. Most of the procurement systems we integrate with are either e-procurement modules that have been added on to client’s ERP systems (e.g. SAP SRM or Oracle) or dedicated procurement platforms (e.g. Ariba or Coupa).
Curiously e-procurement, or procurement-enabled ERP platforms do not always provide the easiest or fastest buying experience for the end user. Having the ability to connect directly into a well-designed and comprehensive B2B e-commerce “IT store” often greatly increases user adoption of the company’s official IT buying channel. This in turn, increases contract compliance and spend visibility, reduces maverick IT purchases and also creates a bunch of other desirable outcomes.
CXML “Commerce eXtensible Markup Language” and OCI punchout “Open Catalog Interface” are the two standards for communicating data between the Markit IT catalogue and our clients’ procurement systems. Markit supports both fully. In recent years, we have implemented an increasing number of cXML integrations as well as others for companies who are using older OCI legacy systems but choosing to also use a procurement system in-between to translate their OCI data into cXML (XML) e.g. Ariba.
At Markit we have completed punchout catalogue integrations (or facilitated punchout) for numerous international companies who buy their IT devices and accessories from our catalogue of 2 million+ products available in 33 countries. For example, ABB, Accenture, AGA (Linde AG), Coca-Cola, Continental, Danfoss, Ericsson, LEGO, MetLife, Rezidor/Radisson, Roche, Sanofi, Scania, Schott, SEB, Siemens, Spotify, Telenor, Tieto and TIKTOK are amongst the many well-known companies who have integrated Markit with COUPA, SAP SRM, SAP ARIBA, Zycus, DIG eProcure, IBX, Basware, Newtron, Onventis, Oracle EBS, Meplato, Ivalua, Synertrade and others.
In fact, over 20% of the Forbes Global 2000 entrust their IT purchasing to Markit but that’s way too many names to list here!