Coupa PunchOut - The Right Way to Deal with B2B Transactions

Are you a Coupa procurement user and looking for an easy way to do B2B transactions with your supplier? Are you frustrated with difficulties resulting from using CIF catalog? The answer lies in implementing Coupa PunchOut, a direct connection between the Coupa procurement system and the supplier’s website. This functionality can simplify your B2B process to a great extent. Most importantly, you start a Coupa PunchOut session without entering any login details.

As a B2B customer, using PunchOut protocol to connect with your supplier site, allows you to reach your Contract catalog. As you know, every B2B customer has an agreement with the supplier that enables him to access specific products at special pricing. To access this specific catalog, you really don’t have to browse through non-contract products. The functionality enables you to “punch out” from a procurement system like Coupa to your supplier’s contract catalog via an electronic standard like cXML.

Also unlike B2C, B2B customers follow an order approval process. Every time an order is placed, it requires approval from the management. Hence, the cart after adding products must return to the procurement for approval. This is what exactly happens in a Coupa PunchOut solution. The cart containing products comes back from the supplier’s site and is transferred to the procurement application. After ensuring that the cart is within the budget, a purchase order is created and electronically sent to the supplier. Once the order is received, the supplier processes the order and then delivers to the customer.

PunchOut also eliminates the need to reload supplier catalog in order to view product updates. This is because any changes in catalog (for instance, if the supplier discontinues a product or changes product pricing) are available to the customer in real time. So every time you log into the store via PunchOut, you get access to latest product information.