RSS+Punchout (need help)

I can tell you that setting up punchout wasn't that big of a hassel. Lawson will recommend you have your punchout serverlet running on a server in a DMZ for security purposes. Some people at Lawson disagreed with that, but to be on the safe side we built a server and put it in a DMZ. After that the biggest setup hassel has been with the vendor. CDW was easy to work with Staples\Corporate Express was a nightmare. We have asked them not to accept phone orders and they are still accepting phone orders and putting the orders on POs that come in through punchout. So matching has been problematic. What has been nice is that we had to setup approvals for our Staples orders. Instead of doing that throught their website and maintaining an additional user setup and hierarchy, we are able to bring that into Lawson and use our existing Requisition approval process.

We have setup Punchout with OfficeMax and didn't run into too many issues.

If you have the RSS+Procurment Punchout modules, what additional hardware/software is needed to stand up punchout? I see that a separate punchout servlet running on a server in the DMZ is recommended but what does the Lawson architecture set up recommend?

We did not setup a seperate server. The connection is _outgoing_ only so you will not need to punch a hole in your fire wall. If you have web filtering software you may need to watch that as we did have an issue with that.

We also ran into an issue on the security certificates although that may now be better documented on the Lawson site.

Punchout is beneficial for procuring non-file items, eg office products, pharmacy, and non-inventory items from catalog vendors. The buyer does not need to maintain vendor part#s, UOMs, and prices in Lawson if the more accurate catalog is available on the vendor's ecommerce site. Upon checkout, the web requisition generates a Lawson requisition, which generates the Perfect Order. According to the Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI), a Perfect Order is “a purchase order processed electronically (from order to payment) without human intervention, which is delivered to the correct location, on time, undamaged, at the correct price – i.e., the provider’s purchase order price matches the supplier invoice price – with the desired quantity, on the first attempt.” The end result is faster, more accurate 3-way matching.

The question becomes---if punchout is good for the bottomline---why isn't it catching on? Couldn't purchasing be 100% punchout?

From a healthcare perspective, consider that up to 27% of supply costs are attributed to implants, mesh, suture, etc. Another 27% is spent on cardiac cath, radiology, and lab supplies. Most of these items are inventoried, which means that---for the most part---they fall outside the scope of the clinician, who create requisitions for non-inventory items. For inventory items, the supply manager (or the inventory system) generates auto-POs based on min/max levels---and bypass the requisition.

Hey there -

In some cases, you might come across a punchout vendor who has NOT worked with Lawson. I've implemented Punchout a couple of times - and in the instance implementing Dell there was an issue mapping Bill To and Ship To values on the cXML PO - as it turns out, Dell was not validated with Lawson, and required some special code to map these values in the cXML PO. Be sure to download the punchout trading partner list from Lawson!

Punchout is a great tool to basically "outsource" your item master and vendor item master data management to the Vendor - thereby staying ahead of Invoice Matching issues in MA64 and contract maintenance in PO25.

It's also very powerful when used with Requisition Approval Process Flow - you can not only pull the UNSPSC code back and route Process Flow approvals based on the Product Type (in the Dell implementation, I was able to route requisition approval for Desktops vs. Servers using UNSPSC substring), but you also get better audit control over purchases that typically involve some type of external Vendor Web Site.

Additionally, think of all the different user accounts to manage on the Staples Web Site - or any e-commerce site for that matter - and the fact that employees could be purchasing from Staples without following any of the financial policies of the Org, or even continue to have access to purchase after they were terminated. Punchout solves a lot of this administrative burden with SSO - and you could also build a simple flow to de-activate a Requester record upon Termination - so a terminated employee could not buy anything and give themselves a severance gift!

Good Luck.

Rob

We've been using Punchout for about 6 months. Generally once it’s setup, works well.

Technically, you should have IT perform the installation, ideally with good working knowledge of WebSphere (or your Application Server). DMZ Configuration is a must -- otherwise you're at risk and it will only be a matter of time before you become a new story. SSL certificates can be an issue -- they do expire.

Some vendors were (relatively) easy to bring on -- others a real chore. The documentation for the procedure to configure Lawson RSS and the Punchout server has gotten better and once understood is not that complex.

Most of our issues came in with the vendor catalog. Characters that they permit, which Lawson or the Punchout server choke on (like copyright or trademark symbol, single or double quotes, etc.).

Recommend you occasionally recycle the Punchout server for good measure – particularly Windows boxes, Unix servers not so much.

At some hospitals, off-contract spend can be as much as 40% of total. In Lawson, these items are procured as non-file items ("specials") with prices of $1. Sounds familiar?

To alleviate this problem, hospitals could source their items from a website containing their GPO and local contracts. With GHX as a Lawson Punchout trading partner, the hospital can download approved products and updated prices from their contract catalog.

The contract catalog could contain local contracts, which could represent formularies for Bill-Only items. In this case, a provider can institute a policy where, when the vendor brings one of their products in, the OR Mat. Mgt. staff would go out to the catalog and easily find the vendor, product, description, catalog#, and cost to:
a. Verify that the product is approved for use
b. Create a PO/document that would put the item(s)- description, catalog#, cost, etc. on the document that could be used by them to send to purchasing for processing---eliminating the handwriting that currently occurs in creating a "bill only" PO.

Hello, I am in the process of enabling punch out for Oracle's iStore. We are the supplier. The buyer is using Lawson procurement . Can I some how get a sample XML / DTD from the Lawson Application which I can use to test the connectivity.

Thanks
Anil

That would normally be sent or provided to you by the buyer or their IT department. If they don't know where to get it, they should be able to open a support call with InforXtreme for Lawson to provide the data.

The actual data being passed would be dependent on templates used, employee attributes  and extrinsic values defined

Hi everyone, We are looking at setting up Office Depot as a Punchout vendor. We are wondering if anyone has set up Office Depot as a Punchout vendor. Also if there were any issues doing the set up.

Anyone using punchout with Prosys or CDW?