What does this module / this process contain:
Purchase requisition is often the start of the process. This is where the requisitioner enters his requirements. Many companies have started to only offer the search in the catalogue, so that the requisitioner does not enter a requirement for convenience even though the product or service is also in the catalogue. For this purpose, items or services that are not actually available as catalog products are created as dummy catalog products so that the person who needs them is automatically directed to the right process. This process is also known as guided buying.
eCatalogue is the other side of eCommerce, where suppliers create and maintain their webshops. In the eCatalogue, requisitioners choose the items and services they need. There are generally two different approaches here:
On the one hand, the so-called inbound catalogue, where information (catalogues) from suppliers is imported into the company's own catalogue. On the other hand, the outbound catalogues, where requisitioners jump to an external web shop of the supplier and the shopping cart is finally transferred back to the company's own catalog system for the approval and order process.
In the past, many companies relied on punch-out catalogues, as these are extremely easy to integrate into their own landscape. You don't need your own search because you use the search function of the supplier in its web shop and you don't have to deal with article updates, since this is completely implemented by the supplier.
In recent years, however, the inbound catalogs have become more and more popular, because with more than 20 catalogues, the end user who is looking for a specific article cannot be expected to have to jump to different web shops to find the right article. Inbound catalogs also have other advantages, which we will explain later.
Marketplace: A different philosophy is pursued with marketplaces, which in turn integrate different providers and carry out the standardization on their own platform. The best-known provider here is Amazon Business. Today one often finds a mixture of inbound catalogues, punch-out catalogs for special applications and additionally connected marketplaces, through which the tail-end spend is then processed. The only important thing is that the complete requisition goes through the catalog and not as a free text order, because that is the most complex variant in terms of process costs.
Ordering is, from the requisitioner's perspective, the next step. To do this, he still has to make the correct account assignment so that the order can be forwarded to the correct approver and the correct budgets can be used for control. In reality, the user only starts the approval process.
Approvals are not necessary everywhere. Systems are often configured in such a way that only very special requirements require approval. This is the case because with an approval rate of 99%, the process costs of the approval are higher than the potential problems of an unjustified order.
Order is then transmitted electronically, either via EDI or WebEDI, in some cases also by email. The supplier also transmits an order confirmation for certain product groups.
Invoices, invoice verification and payment are part of the Accounts Payable process and are often not implemented with the same tool.
What are the main goals:
- Process cost reduction by making the process as simple as possible for the user and with as few process steps as possible.
- Process cost reduction by reducing free text orders that first have to be laboriously verified by the purchasing department, requested from the supplier and then specially procured.
- Acceleration of processes through process standardization.
- Cost savings because only a few suppliers are approved for a product group (and thus included in the catalogue), which means a higher purchasing volume and thus more negotiating power and usually lower prices.
- Avoiding unauthorized purchases.
- Transparency, since all requirements have to be assigned to a product group, a cost center, etc.
Specifics per industry:
There are usually no industry-specific processes in procure-to-pay. Only the fact that some industries require significantly more services, marketing services, legal services, etc. than others makes the industries really specific.
Latest innovations:
Benchmarking is a big trend in eProcurement. Companies receive information about their purchasing performance via anonymous data and can thus better understand how good they are in relation to other companies. This is a major advantage in internal communication and when implementing improvement measures.
Personalized search is used to find the desired article even more specifically (e.g. based on the location, previous orders, trends, etc.) as well as the promotion of various articles in order to be able to make better use of offers.
Intake and orchestration is the biggest change since 2023. A new software layer sits in front of the ERP and the procurement suite: employees describe what they need in plain language (or in Slack or Teams), and the tool routes the request to the right process, approvers and system. Zip, ORO Labs, Omnea and Levelpath are the best-known providers; together they raised several hundred million dollars between 2024 and 2026.
AI agents for requisitioning: startups such as Lio or Procure AI go a step further and let AI agents process purchase requests end to end, from reading the request to placing the order.
Recommendations remain important in eProcurement. This is mainly about improvements in the catalogue, for example which descriptions need to be improved because the items can only be found after several requests.
Extensions and additional functions:
Supply chain execution can not only be used for eProcurement but also for all other goods and services. This has the advantage that no separate connections are required for catalog items and non-catalog items for the transmission of orders and the supplier connection.
Invoicing is a follow-up process that usually runs fully integrated, since the data comparison, whether the goods have already been delivered and whether the prices match the order, can be carried out fully automatically, which results in large process savings in invoice verification.
Product Information Management (PIM) is a process on the supplier side with which the supplier can create electronic catalogs (and all other catalogs) on the one hand, but can also easily administer customer-specific product portfolios and price lists. The management of different product portfolios and prices on the platform can be very different and is sometimes a differentiator between eProcurement providers.