Sourcing Center


Desktop complement to printed and Internet catalogs
  • Uses data exported from the Data Center
  • Initially installs on a buyer's PC via CD
  • Updated product information transmitted electronically enabling customers to query item availability, confirm pricing, place orders, and issue sample requests in a near real-time environment

Sourcing Center marries the best of desktop and Internet technology to provide customers with a superior alternative to printed price books.

The Sourcing Center is a Windows-based program that installs onto a user's hard drive directly from CD. A live Internet connection is then required to receive subsequent product updates, perform item availability checks, place orders, and access order history.

Product display information:

  • Product name
  • Category data hierarchy
  • Descriptive product text
  • Product image (if applicable)
  • Listing of items in that product group
    • Item number (hyperlinks to the item detail page)
    • Description
    • List pricing (drop down of all available brackets)
    • Contract status

Item display information:

  • Parent product name, descriptive text
  • Item image (if applicable)
  • Item number/SKU, manufacturer item number and description
  • Attributes associated with the item
  • All list pricing brackets and associated prices

Shopping cart functionality:

  1. Clear Cart - Clears all or selected item lines from the cart.
  2. Update Cart - Performs item availability check on all or selected items in the cart.
  3. Create Template - Creates a frequent order template from current shopping cart information.
  4. Submit Quote - Creates a formatted quote request that may be printed or e-mailed to a CSR/sales rep from the shopping cart.
  5. Submit Order - Upon clicking Submit Order, the data in the cart will be formatted as a predefined structured data string and submitted to the online order management system for processing into the appropriate order entry backend system.

Item availability check performs the same type of item check as a shopping cart but in a single SKU capacity.

Frequent order templates are stored shopping cart sessions that can be retrieved and reused for future ordering sessions.

Check Order Status is used to review previously submitted orders and quotes. From the check order status screen, users can view both order summary and quote summary lines and details for all previously submitted quotes and orders.

After a successful data import into Sourcing Center, pricing information relating to items on contract can be compared to previous contract pricing. An exception report can then be generated based upon increases and decreases.

Users can analyze:

  • All contract items (SKU, description, new price, old price, deviation)
  • Contract items with price increases
  • Contract items with price decreases
  • Item detail
  • Any bulletins regarding certain price changes or line changes associated with a customer's contract