Online catalogues

Salford City Council currently operates punchout solutions with several suppliers instead of holding suppliers' product catalogues.

Punchout is generally the first phase in an e-commerce implementation with a supplier.

What is punchout?

When we use an order created on a supplier’s website to populate our purchase orders. These orders are then returned to our buying application (SAP R/3). Typical lapsed time between a buyer clicking ‘confirm’ on a purchase order and order transmission is two or three seconds. This means that suppliers receive orders faster.

Usually we implement punchout a few weeks before moving to XML ordering. This means that we can generate and send plenty of test XML orders from the punchout system. For more information on XML ordering or punch out please contact e-trading@salford.gov.uk.