Integrating a Digital Product Catalogue with Your Procure-to-Pay (P2P) Suite

Integrating a Digital Product Catalogue with Your Procure-to-Pay (P2P) Suite

David Record Managing Director of Lyreco Thailand Thailand’s leading purely B2B / E-Commerce distributor of office, workplace and safety products. “Lyreco regularly integrates its digital catalogue of products with the world’s leading procure to pay suites. Our extensive experience and globally standardised data offerings make every integration with Lyreco run smoothly and trouble free.”

“FutureLog is a fully integrated, cloud based P2P platform for the hospitality industry. Our OCI integration of Lyreco’s dynamic product catalogue with FutureLog was a simple and efficient process; facilitating Purchase Orders to be transmitted by EDI. Now, hospitality industry customers across Thailand can browse & shop Lyreco’s digital catalogue and prepare their orders via FutureLog’s P2P solution.” Franz Lingl Director of Operations, Asia Pacific

Procure-to-Pay (P2P)

Increasingly, companies are seeing procurement as a service that can benefit from digitalisation and the number of active P2P suites is expanding as forward-looking companies within Thailand and across ASEAN are using automation and innovation to control spending and improve collaboration with their suppliers. By using a P2P suite, purchasing and procurement professionals can benefit from many procurement services such as budget control, transaction management, invoice and contract management; bundling their suppliers into a single P2P suite or platform, with payment services, price benchmarks and reporting readily available. This creates a single connected environment, in which the applications can share common data leading to visibility, cost and control efficiencies. A P2P solution is different from a Source-to-Pay or Source to Contract (S2C) solution in that P2P enables a cross-functional workflow to streamline and improve the company’s process from the act of requisition to accounts payable. Whereas a S2C solution takes this much further, by including the process of sourcing the products or services which need to be purchased.

The Typical P2P Cycle

Through the typical P2P cycle, a purchase requisition is routed for approval through a predefined rule-based workflow. Once approved, the requisition will be converted into one or more purchase orders (POs). The POs are transmitted to the supplier(s) by email, electronic data interchange (EDI) or XML integration. The final step in the workflow is the receipt, followed by the goods or service. The part of the P2P suite which involves companies like Lyreco, involves creating a series of digital or e-catalogues containing a range of products or services from regular suppliers.

Requistions

Catalogue Content Management

Purchase Orders

This digital catalogue of products or services can be either static (hosted) or punch-out (also known as dynamic) based on the requirements of the company. Some of the differences between the two digital catalogue options are explained on the next page.

Ordering

P2P

RFQs / Quotations

Sourcing

Receiving Invoice / Payment

Analysis

Supplier Management

Reporting

Supplier Performance

Static (Hosted) Catalogues A static catalogue is the most basic information about a supplier’s product; raw data such as name, limited description, price and sometimes pictures. Static catalogue data is given to the buyer’s P2P suite controller, often in Excel format and uploaded into the buyer’s suite. Loading this type of catalogue is a manual process, so some buyers find it difficult to keep product description, inventory, and pricing data up to date. Additionally, static catalogues do not allow a supplier to market new products to buyers leading to suppliers sourcing from new suppliers and building a long tail of suppliers, when an existing supplier may already supply the product they need. Buyers are able to search their P2P suite for these items, but due to the limited information, it makes it difficult for them to make an educated buying decision. That is one key reason some buyers prefer punch-out catalogues. However, many other buyers like hosted catalogues for the higher degree of control they provide over any revisions that need to be made, so despite the extra work involved, some companies maintain very large hosted catalogues on their P2P suite.

Request for quote (RFQ)

Demand

Quotation

Products

Digital Catalogue

Purchase requisition

Pay

Order

Receive

Receive

Purchase Order

Receipts

Goods

Payment

On the other hand, punch-out catalogues are dynamic so they offer various advantages, including the ability to provide real-time pricing and availability. They have many configuration capabilities, accommodation for almost limitless product documentation, product information and other information to support decision making. Because they can provide an enhanced customer service with a very high-tech user experience, punch-out catalogues are generally the better choice for complex, service-oriented, larger catalogues with many SKUs and line items; or goods that require updates on price, description and content; and a high number of transactions, such as the office, workplace and PPE supplies sold by Lyreco. Punch-out (Dynamic) Catalogues

“Technically, the majority of the P2P suites communicate with one of two languages, HTML or Idocs for SAP based platforms and cXML for Oracle based platforms. Nowadays we are witnessing the rise of APIs, and the most common language is neither HTML (SAP) nor cXML (Oracle), but JSON, with which Lyreco is also compatible.”

Nopadol Thumnium E-business Manager Lyreco Thailand

Lyreco First

When implementing a new P2P suite, Lyreco is often one of the first suppliers that a company will choose to bring into the process because, regardless of the kind and number of ERP systems and P2P suites in the world, Lyreco usually has experience of integrating it’s digital catalogue with a similar suite. For many years, Lyreco have supported their clients in their global rollout of P2P projects with the creation of static and punch-out catalogues with dynamic integration to Lyreco’s digital catalogue. This means that success is quickly and easily achieved so buyers and procurement professionals alike can start using Lyreco on their new P2P suite for requisitioning and ordering goods and services using the features their suite provides. Dynamic integration to a specific catalogue of products with Lyreco enables buyers to “shop” for needed goods and services from Lyreco’s catalogue at the requisition stage and place them in their cart, with all the required product details and pricing transferred into their own ERP or P2P suite prior to issuing purchase orders. With hundreds of integrations worldwide, Lyreco’s global standards, expertise and experience makes it easier for users to start the P2P suite adoption. Lyreco’s digital catalogues give them control, flexibility and confidence in their P2P suite.

The Expanding P2P Market Place

Irrespective of the reason for choosing Lyreco, rest assured, the digital integration works. Lyreco‘s static and dynamic catalogue are compatible with the world’s leading P2P suites;

Free Delivery No Minimum Order

Next Day Delivery

Daily and Monthly Invoicing

30 Days Return

ISO Quality Standard

For more about Lyreco’s e-procurement solutions in Thailand or for a consultation contact our experts at; Solutions.TH@lyreco.com Lyreco (Thailand) Co., Limited Bhiraj Tower at BITEC 16th Floor, 4345 Sukhumvit Road, South Bangna, Bangna, Bangkok, 10260

Lyreco Thailand

02 338 0200

th.orders@lyreco.com