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The Power of PunchOut: Enhancing Your Sales Strategy with a PunchOut Store

August 17, 2023September 5, 2023

As more companies embrace eProcurement, it is important to utilize and understand how implementing a PunchOut store can help you drive sales, improve customer satisfaction, and streamline your supplier business strategy.

What is PunchOut?

PunchOut catalogs are eCommerce storefronts that allow institutions, government agencies, and corporate buyers to access and purchase a supplier’s products directly from their procurement systems. Similar to an online catalog where you would shop for clothing, PunchOut speeds the ordering and approval processes for issuing purchase orders.

PunchOut catalogs have specific requirements that make purchasing simple

Traditional B2B or B2G purchasing methods can get time consuming and difficult to manage, requiring buyers to visit multiple supplier websites independently. By creating an integrated experience between buyers and suppliers, PunchOut ensures cost-efficient, error-free transactions and strengthens vendor relationships.

Benefits of PunchOut

The PunchOut process brings numerous benefits to both buyers and suppliers. For buyers, having a unified storefront offers a user-friendly, streamlined shopping experience, reducing manual data entry and the risk of errors. Additionally, it ensures compliance with procurement policies and budget controls. For suppliers, PunchOut fosters closer relationships with buyers, leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. It also simplifies the process of managing product catalogs and pricing, as updates are reflected in real-time on the buyer’s procurement system.

Step-by-Step PunchOut Process

Though it may seem complicated, the PunchOut process is actually very simple. Here’s the breakdown on how it works:

1. Initiation:

The PunchOut process begins when a buyer logs in to their eProcurement system (e.g., an eProcurement platform like EqualLevel Marketplace, Ariba, Coupa, etc). From their dashboard, they initiate the punch out process by selecting the preferred supplier they wish to connect with. This session allows real-time interaction and data exchange between the two platforms.

2. Shopping:

In order to shop, a buyer is “punched out” to their supplier’s website, seamlessly navigating to the catalog within the eProcurement system. With EqualLevel GO, supplier’s eCommerce websites become built-in extensions of their buyer’s procurement system.

Within the PunchOut catalog, the buyer can browse through the supplier’s products, view detailed descriptions, compare prices, and add items to their cart. All product information, including pricing and availability, is retrieved in real-time from the supplier’s database.

3. Cart Transfer:

After the buyer has finished shopping, they add selected items to a cart within the PunchOut catalog. When they are finished, the buyer’s cart will be transferred back to their eProcurement system to await approval.

4. Approval:

Back in the buyer’s eProcurement system, the cart content is reconciled, allowing their organization’s purchasing authority to review the order.

5. Purchase Generation:

Once the cart is approved, the buyer’s eProcurement system automatically generates a purchase order using cXML coding language containing the information from the PunchOut session. This order is sent to the supplier to fulfill, completing the purchase process.

PunchOut with EqualLevel

PunchOut is a transformative technology that revolutionizes the procurement process for all businesses. By integrating a buyer’s procurement system with their supplier’s catalog, PunchOut enhances user experience, improves operational efficiency, and empowers organizations with valuable data insights to make informed decisions.

With EqualLevel GO, we ensure a seamless and user-friendly PunchOut shopping experience, enabling your buyers to easily access, purchase, and checkout from your catalogs within our system. Our platform has full PunchOut capabilities and empowers clients with unparalleled cost efficiency. Get set up with a personalized PunchOut store toexpand your connections with unlimited access to EqualLevel clients, automate andsimplify the purchasing process, eliminate manual errors, and reduce administrative overhead. Choose EqualLevel to promote your business’ eCommerce excellence.

Further reading:

For more information on PunchOut, including guides and other tools, check out punchoutcommerce.com.
Click here to learn more about EqualLevel solutions and how they can help you!

Our team of experts is always happy to help, contact us to get started.

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Blog

GPO Utilizes eProcurement Marketplace to Bring Vendor Catalogs Under One Umbrella

May 1, 2023August 24, 2023

For GPO Catholic Purchasing Services (CPS), the use of PunchOut sites, where suppliers are responsible for their own product listings, is imperative. Handling the descriptions, photos, and other product details for their 200 vendors’ tens of thousands of products, on top of their other critical duties, would prove overwhelming for CPS’s seven employees. Instead, CPS utilizes EqualLevel’s eProcurement marketplace to bring all of their vendors’ catalogs under one umbrella.

About Catholic Purchasing Services

Founded in 1988 and located in Newton, Massachusetts, CPS began offering products at a discount to their members via a printed catalog before moving their catalog online in 2010. While CPS’s procurement service is offered through the Catholic Church, membership is open to 501(c)(3) faith-based organizations of all denominations. 25 percent of the market share, which is comprises churches, schools, and nursing homes, are CPS members.

CPS brands and partners include KI, OSV, Smith System, National Public Seating, Staples, Xerox, Sherwin Williams, Slabbinck, School Health, Virco, Quadient, Root Candles, Cavanagh, Cintas, and School Specialty, among many others.

EqualLevel’s eProcurement Marketplace

In 2019, CPS conducted a search for a robust eProcurement system that could be integrated with their existing ERP, NetSuite SuiteCommerce. The organization was impressed with EqualLevel’s partnerships with Staples and other large suppliers. The idea of leveraging EqualLevel’s relationships to offer more vendors and products to their members was appealing. “EqualLevel was by far the best value for the investment,” said O’Hara. “We looked at a lot of other sites that were more expensive and they could not deliver the connections that EqualLevel’s marketplace already had built right in,” she continued. “The technology behind their platform is sound. It gives us a sense of security knowing that EqualLevel is hosting everything and has robust security and connection.”

With just one click, EqualLevel’s solution gives CPS’s roughly 9,000 members access to hundreds of vendors and their products, at special contract pricing and with extended terms. “With EqualLevel’s PunchOut sites, we don’t need to host SKU’s–that’s all done via the suppliers. The marketplace largely supports itself so we don’t have to worry about anything except marketing the site,” said Mary Schell O’Hara, CPS CEO since June 2022.

Growth

CPS’s site includes six critical vendors brought to the marketplace through partnerships with EqualLevel, including Staples. The ability to offer these vendors’ products at a discount to members has had a significant positive impact on the organization’s growth and draw. Since adopting the EqualLevel marketplace in 2019, CPS’s growth in numbers of transactions and dollars has been 25 percent year over year, even with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic factored in.

Sung Oh, EqualLevel’s Vice President of Technical Operations & Support, said of the relationship, “We have enjoyed our partnership with Catholic Purchasing Services and are proud of the tailored marketplace solution we have created to meet their needs. We’ve integrated with their WordPress and NetSuite SuiteCommerce applications for ease of access and a streamlined shopping experience for their members.”

Onboarding New Suppliers

CPS continues to work closely with EqualLevel to bring new vendors to their marketplace. They recently added a partner of many years, Regency Lighting, after receiving requests from members to add a lighting supplier to the site. CPS has been working with Regency Lighting and EqualLevel to connect the supplier’s PunchOut site to the marketplace. “Sung and his team are very easy to work with. We have had no issues with technical help and expertise. The support they have offered has been tremendous,” said O’Hara. Regency Lighting will go live on CPS’s site in early 2023.

The Future for CPS and EqualLevel

In the future, CPS hopes to take advantage of some of the marketplace’s other functionality, including the built-in approval workflow component. This piece allows members to analyze and control spend, as well as put approvals in place. “We are planning to grow the platform by adding new suppliers. We want to leverage EqualLevel’s partnerships and also bring on new vendors. We definitely have EqualLevel in our long term plans,” O’Hara concluded.

For more information on Catholic Purchasing Services, visit www.catholicpurchasing.org.

Click here to read how EqualLevel has helped other cooperatives and GPO’s.

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Blog

Creating a Business Case for eProcurement

September 6, 2022August 24, 2023

Procurement departments across the country are reporting that they are busier than ever with staff shortages, budget cuts, and ongoing supply chain issues. Whether it is these challenges or others that your department is facing, you may believe now is the time to find a solution that will streamline your organization’s procurement process. Based on your research, and recommendations from other agencies, you may have already decided that implementing an eProcurement marketplace is just that solution. Creating a formal business case for eProcurement is the best way to present this new initiative to achieve stakeholder approval.

What is an eProcurement business case?

According to projectmanager.com, a business case is a presentation or document that outlines why a project should be executed, and how its benefits outweigh its costs. The goal of a business case is to convince stakeholders of a project’s value, and that the project you are proposing is a sound investment in which they should direct resources. To build a business case for EqualLevel’s eProcurement system, it is important to provide higher-ups with the information they need to understand both the importance of automating, and the return on investment (ROI).

The Five Elements of a Successful Business Case

There are many recommended formats for structuring a business case but in general, it should cover the following five elements:

1. The Challenge

In this first section of your business case, you will outline your current process and the reasons why you believe change is necessary. Challenges you might include:

Manual entry is slowing down the purchase process
Manual entry causes more errors
Bookkeeper burnout
Maverick spend
Non-compliant purchasing

You should also include the costs associated with your current system in this part of the business case. These could include any costs related to software, the wages paid to employees who manually enter requisitions and purchase orders, as well as the costs associated with continuing to overpay for goods and services.

TIP: When tallying your current costs, if there is information you are not able to find within your organization, industry benchmarks should suffice.

2. The Solution

In this section of your business case, you will present the solution you are recommending, namely, implementing EqualLevel’s software. This will be where you define what an eProcurement system is. Here is an example: “An eProcurement marketplace is integrated with an organization’s ERP system and offers a single, seamless platform that facilitates all of the processes associated with the shop-order-pay transaction. EqualLevel’s dashboard offers a consumer shopping-like experience where users can shop from all of their organization’s approved suppliers in one place. With this set-up, best value options are displayed and organizations report higher user acceptance and greater compliance.”

This is also the part of the business case where you will present how the software works. The best way to explain the functionality and capabilities of EqualLevel’s AI-powered software is to see it in use. EqualLevel creates customized software demos so you, and your organization’s stakeholders, can see the marketplace in action. The demos allow interested parties to get hands-on experience with the system and it lets them see how EqualLevel’s Savings Advisor (ELSA) locates savings in real-time, while a user shops.

3. The Cost

EqualLevel is able to provide a worksheet to quickly calculate the results you can reasonably expect to achieve through deployment of its eProcurement marketplace. The worksheet divides savings into two areas: “soft” savings, where process costs will be reduced (the resources may be reallocated to other, more value-added, activities), and “hard” savings, where costs will actually be reduced (using ELSA). Once you have calculated your expected savings, you can subtract that from the cost of the marketplace software to determine your ROI.

4. The Benefits

The next section in a business case should include the benefits your organization can anticipate from implementing your initiative. In this case the benefits of an eProcurement marketplace include:

Efficiency: Automating leads to faster cycle times and improved productivity. The elimination of paper and manual steps frees up time for employees to focus on more critical initiatives.
Cost Savings: With all approved vendors housed in one centralized location, best value products can be easily identified.
Compliance: By automating the three-bid process and showing only contracted vendors, an eProcurement marketplace helps organizations comply with state and federal regulations.
Transparency: Robust reporting capabilities help ensure purchases conform to established policies. Real-time visibility into purchasing activities discourages maverick spending and provides leadership with valuable Insights.

5. The Timeline

Generally, an eProcurement marketplace can be implemented in 60 to 90 days and often a return on investment can be achieved within a single fiscal year. EqualLevel can provide a generic timeline for implementation to present to stakeholders or an estimated timeline can be created that is tailored to your organization’s unique situation.

A well-organized and thoughtful business case could be the difference between being able to implement an eProcurement marketplace, or not. Should you need help with this process, or for more information, go to www.equallevel.com.

About the Author

April Marzzacco is a Strategic Sales Consultant for EqualLevel where she brings over 20 years of eCommerce and procurement experience to her role. Prior to EqualLevel, she served as a Business Process Analyst at the Lee County School District where she was responsible for production support, analysis, process documentation, training, and process improvement. She also worked in the district’s Procurement Department where she was instrumental in integrating both the EqualLevel marketplace and an eSourcing platform.

Case Study

eProcurement Platform Automates Cooperative Purchasing

August 4, 2022August 24, 2023

The Interlocal Purchasing System, better known as TIPS Purchasing Cooperative (TIPS), selected EqualLevel to help automate and streamline purchasing for its members. The TIPS eProcurement system allows TIPS members to easily access the cooperative’s approved suppliers within a single, intuitive marketplace to ensure compliance and best value purchasing decisions.

About TIPS

TIPS is a national purchasing cooperative that offers its 10,000 members access to competitively sourced purchasing contracts. TIPS members consist of organizations in the education, government, and non-profit sectors. The cooperative began as part of the Region 8 Education Service Center (ESC) and is one of 20 regional education centers in Texas. Jensen Mabe, VP of Sales & Business Development for TIPS, said of EqualLevel’s selection, “We wanted a cooperative marketplace and directory platform that was comprehensive, easy-to-use and administer, and adaptable to our individual member needs. EqualLevel was the easy choice.”

The EqualLevel Marketplace

The EqualLevel marketplace will provide TIPS members with a consistent, consumer-like shopping experience across supplier storefronts. The new system will ensure members are purchasing from contracts that have been awarded through TIPS’s stringent competitive bid process. Further, guided buying navigation and supplier contract profiles will provide shoppers with the necessary steps for purchasing.

In addition to contract compliance, TIPS’s new marketplace features the EqualLevel Savings Advisor™ (ELSA), a patent-pending technology that combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and a growing database of commonly sourced products to automatically identify in real-time the lowest price for items, or best available substitute, from approved suppliers.

“EqualLevel is excited to partner with TIPS to create a one-stop-shop for its members. The marketplace will ensure compliance, drive productivity, and deliver hard dollar savings,” said EqualLevel CEO, Orville Bailey.

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News

Cooperative Purchasing Organization Launches eMarketplace to Simplify Procurement for Members

April 6, 2022August 24, 2023

Cooperative Purchasing Organization MHEC, New England’s Premier Purchasing Consortium, has launched their new eMarketplace, the i-buy marketplace™. The i-buy marketplace™ simplifies purchasing for MHEC members by enabling them to buy from multiple contracts utilizing the same shopping cart and interface. With 50+ contracts in their porfolio, this significantly streamlines purchasing for members.

Many-to-many Capability

MHEC began their search for an online platform in 2020 when research indicated that its members wanted a simpler means to access and purchase from MHEC contracts. Chris Raymond, Director, Contracts and Operations, noted, “It was a difficult task to find a platform that could embrace everything that was needed. We have many contracts, many products and services, and many suppliers. We needed a purchasing platform that could enable a many-to-many capability to meet the requirements identified by our members, including systems integration. We found that with EqualLevel.”

Benefits

Michael Di Yeso, MHEC Executive Director spoke of the benefit of the i-buy marketplace™ for MHEC’s members stating, “We have over 2,100 members that range from large university systems to small local libraries, from municipal government offices to K-12 schools, all with varying levels of support for the purchasing function. Our i-buy marketplace™ delivers a powerful capability for our member organizations to target their search and purchase specifically to what they need, regardless of size, sector, location, or purchasing operations. It’s a game changer and I’m proud to offer it to our members.”

About MHEC

MHEC is a not-for-profit Group Purchasing Organization. The organization was created in 1977 to provide purchasing contracts for the state’s higher education systems. Its membership reach has since expanded to include any not-for-profit organization with an educational component located in the six New England states.

Click here to learn more about EqualLevel’s work with cooperative purchasing organizations.

Further Reading

eProcurement Platform Automates Cooperative Purchasing

How Cooperative Marketplaces Optimize Savings for Agencies

GPO Utilizes eProcurement Marketplace to Bring Vendor Catalogs Under One Umbrella

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