The provision / supply of an e-Catalogue and e-Procurement Solution

WWU use an e-catalogue provision to enable our business users to order a wide range of goods, products and services to support our decentralised procurement model.  Requisitions can be raised by anyone in the business with SAP SRM access.

WWU self-manage all the catalogues, but we may in the future allow suppliers to co-manage their individual catalogues with us.  WWU can create new, add to, delete from or edit the content of all catalogues at our own discretion with no interaction with the associated suppliers.  Any changes published to the catalogues immediately updates to our live shopping environment once released, which is supported by a full audit trail.

WWU's current provision operates though different catalogue types which serve different purposes and offer slightly different options to our delegated purchasers:

Supplier catalogues - Single supplier, single catalogue containing a mix of products (stock and non-stock items) which have set pricing and lead times generally supported by an agreed contract. These catalogues also allow us to link related items in order to highlight other connected items available for purchase.

AVL (Approved Vendor List) Catalogue - Multi supplier catalogue containing our approved vendor list to show the products and services a supplier can offer to WWU.  We have hundreds of suppliers that can each have multiple lines which are hard coded to WWU's material groups. Users have to populate the description, price and lead-time when adding the item to their shopping cart.

Stock Catalogue - Contains products that are not on individual supplier catalogues, but are held in stock by WWU within our warehouse network. Once the requisition is approved, it generates a reservation against central warehouse stock for allocation and picking from WWU's warehouse stock instead of creating a PO (Purchase Order). Displaying the stock levels/availability is not required to be on the catalogue.

Multi-Supplier Catalogue - This catalogue contains products from multiple suppliers that generally have agreed pricing and lead times, but WWU have the flexibility to make fields editable as required e.g. delivery charges. This catalogue currently houses around 30 suppliers, some of which only have one item and the majority of which have less than 10 items. These suppliers were combined together in order to reduce the effort of creating extra catalogues because there are so few lines for each.

Punchout - Diverts the user to a catalogue hosted by a supplier on a separate website and returns them to SAP once they submit their basket.

WWU's catalogue solution allows selection from any combination of the above catalogues and any combination of items in a single requisition, which once approved generates the required stock reservations or POs in SAP.

As part of the Procurement function, we utilise our eSourcing tool on a daily basis. This system serves as the platform for launching tenders, conducting evaluations, storing contracts and performing supplier vetting. It is essential that the tool remains intuitive and enables us to adhere to regulated processes, while also providing an effective means for accessing supplier information internally.

The eSourcing system is accessible to both the procurement team and business users, who can evaluate tenders and set up and manage mini competitions with limited procurement input.

A mini competition in WWU terminology means a mini tender which is run under a framework agreement. These mini competitions will have a limited number of suppliers who are on a framework (often 3 or 4 suppliers). The tender process is largely the same but can vary and this will be stipulated in the framework agreement itself. Flexibility is required in terms of how these mini competitions are run, scored and evaluated.

It is our intention to extend the use of mini competitions via the solution and to give business users the autonomy to set up and run these without the need for procurement support. Naturally, their access would need to be restricted so they cannot see any events being run in the solution that they do not have permission to see.

The Procurement team conducts most evaluations online for all stages submitted via the portal, including pre-qualification, conditions of participation, tender and commercial stages. However, we also retain the capability to perform evaluations offline when necessary.

Business stakeholders use the portal to evaluate assigned tender event sections. The system offers a complete audit trail and supports consensus sessions to agree on a shortlist or preferred bidders.