When will PunchOut Need Arise

When a B2B customers wants to access his supplier catalog through his procurement system, the technology that can help to achieve it is PunchOut. A PunchOut connection allows the customers to reach his contract catalog without browsing through the rest of the site in a single click. However, suppliers are often in two minds when to make PunchOut ready websites.

When will the Need for PunchOut Implementation Arise for Suppliers

When the supplier catalog has excessively high number of products, it doesn’t make sense to use CIF catalog as a lot of time is spent in loading the catalog. Moreover when the supplier catalog content is being modified, a CIF catalog again can become a headache. In fact, a CIF catalog is a bad option when catalog content requires frequent change.

The solution to all these issues is to use PunchOut catalog, which is designed to simplify your process. Whether it is updating product information or loading high volume of catalog content, it can be done effortlessly and quickly with PunchOut. Moreover, as a supplier, you have to display product configurations to your customers. In this case too, a CIF catalog does not have any provision to show configurations as the products are displayed in in-line format.

With PunchOut, you can show as well as allow your customers to create configurations as per their requirements. So suppliers who want to sell complex products to their B2B customers need to use this technology to simplify their business transactions.

Of course, if your supplier catalog has well below 1000 items and changes in product data rarely occur, there is absolutely no harm in using CIF catalog. However, in today’s times, a supplier catalog is unlikely to have static information. One cannot expect a supplier to sell products at a fixed pricing for a long duration. In current business scenario, frequent changes in product pricing are a given. Hence opting for PunchOut has now become a necessity for almost all suppliers.