12.6 eMarketplaces

The PECOS P2P may be connected to external eMarketplaces or third party catalogue systems, where multiple suppliers and their catalogue content are hosted.

Consideration must be given to supplier setup in order to accommodate an External Marketplace:

• The eMarketplace must be setup correctly as a punchout supplier.
• All suppliers participating in the eMarketplace, for which an item could potentially be returned to a PECOS P2P requisition, must be setup correctly in PECOS P2P.

eMarketplace Supplier Setup

1. It is recommended that the eMarketplace supplier be configured at the L1 because the attributes should not change for any organisation within the PECOS P2P instance. Suppliers can be created at each L2 that require connection to the eMarketplace but consideration must be made to ongoing maintenance.
2. The supplier must be setup in the same way as a normal punchout supplier, with all mandatory details completed. It should be noted that not all supplier information provided will necessarily be used. Special consideration however must be made to the following data fields:
   • The supplier name should be the name of the eMarketplace and will be used by users to identify the site in the ‘External Marketplace’ section of the PECOS P2P search page.
   • The supplier type must be either: ‘External Marketplace Only’ or ‘External Marketplace with Non Catalogue’:
     • External Marketplace Only: The supplier is a Punchout supplier only. The supplier will not appear as a supplier in the item search section of the search screen or in the ‘add non catalogue item’ supplier search. The supplier is not therefore approved for free text ordering.
     • External Marketplace and Non Catalogue: The supplier is a Punchout supplier. The supplier will not appear as a supplier in the item search section of the catalogue search screen but will appear in the ‘add non catalogue item’ supplier search. The supplier is therefore approved for non catalogue and free text ordering.
3. The eMarketplace connection information must be provided in the supplier punchout sub-screen. Please refer to the section in this chapter ‘Adding a Supplier > Punch Out’ for additional information.
   • When the punchout style is cXML, the ‘Marketplace’ option must be checked to enable all suppliers in a multi-supplier basket to be recognised by their DUNS numbers.
   • By default, PECOS does not allow a user to edit items from an external marketplace but requires them to punch back and undertake changes in the eMarketplace application. Careful consideration must therefore be made to whether or not items are to be edited in the PECOS requisition by selecting the ‘Allow modification to item quantities and item deletion in requisition’ option.
4. The supplier catalogue key (which is auto generated for external supplier types) will need to be assigned to a catalogue collection in the usual way. If a new catalogue collection has been created to host the eMarketplace supplier it will also be necessary to update Business Rule Groups. Please refer to the relevant sections in this manual for additional information.
5. Although not a supplier specific setup issue, it must be noted that if the punchout style is OCI, the eMarketplace site may try to return a cookie in its set up response, that MS Internet Explorer considers a ‘third party’ cookie. It may therefore be necessary to make the eMarketplace an allowable site in the privacy settings of the user’s browser.

Participating Supplier Setup

1. All suppliers participating in the eMarketplace must also be setup in PECOS P2P in the normal way, with particular attention being given to the following fields:
   • The Supplier Type should be ‘Non-catalogue Only’ in order for the supplier to not appear as a supplier in the item search section of the catalogue search screen. This will also ensure that the supplier appears in the ‘Add non catalogue item’ screen.
   • The supplier must have a DUNS number id which must match the DUNS number id of the supplier in the eMarketplace. The shopping basket returned by the eMarketplace (i.e. the Punch-back message) must have an element labelled ‘DUNS’ that contains this id. PECOS P2P will use this id to identify and validate the supplier for the requisition.
2. Users must have permission to the eMarketplace suppliers for them to appear successfully in their requisitions. The supplier must be associated with a catalogue key which will need to be assigned to a catalogue collection, which in turn must be assigned to the user’s Business Rule Group in the usual way. Please refer to the appropriate section of this manual for further information. It is recommended that all eMarketplace suppliers be contained in a separate catalogue collection for ease of administration.

eMarketplace Basket Content

Any item attribute or field that is not represented by a standard PECOS P2P catalogue item field will not appear in the PECOS P2P requisition. The integration of additional fields or extrinsic values will require development and professional services support and you should contact your Client Services representative.

It is recommended that all non catalogue and free text items be very carefully created in the eMarketplace shopping basket if they are to be returned to a PECOS P2P requisition. Any free text line that is not identified to a correctly configured supplier or is missing a field that is mandatory for the PECOS P2P requisition may result in a data transfer failure.

Any item that is not identifiable with a PECOS P2P supplier through a DUNS number (or alternatively configured id) will fail to appear in the PECOS P2P requisition.

Any item that contains a Unit of Measure or Product Classification Code that is not recognised by PECOS P2P (i.e. does not exist in PECOS P2P) will also cause a data transfer failure.