With Pedlar's Single Creditor Model, one-off purchases can be integrated into your existing procurement process via punchout as well.
The requesting department already knows exactly what it needs. The spare part has been found, the quote is on the table, or the link to the right product is settled.
In principle, the order could be placed right now. Instead, this is usually where the laborious part starts. Product data is copied or keyed in by hand. A new supplier has to be created and vetted. Approvals have to be collected and data moved between different systems. All of it for a purchase that may be worth a few hundred euros and may never happen again with that vendor.
So the problem is not finding the right item. The problem is getting it cleanly into the procurement process that already exists.
A punchout connection is exactly what prevents that break in the process. With classic punchout, users start in the procurement system they already know and move from there straight into a supplier's connected catalogue. They select the items they need and transfer the completed cart back into their own system.
The order itself is not placed in the online shop. Back in the company's own procurement system, the transferred cart becomes the basis for the purchase requisition. Approval, budget check and ordering then run inside the existing processes.
Punchout therefore combines the convenience of an external supplier catalogue with the company's internal procurement rules.
For suppliers used on a regular basis, punchout is an excellent solution. A company might order safety equipment from one vendor, office supplies from a second and electronic components from a third. When those suppliers are used frequently, connecting their catalogues directly to the company's procurement system pays off.
The requesting department no longer has to transfer product information manually. Prices and item data come straight from the relevant catalogue, while requisition, approval and ordering stay in the company's own system. The decisive point, however, is this: a classic punchout connection links the procurement system to the catalogue of one specific supplier. With five regularly used suppliers that can make perfect sense. There are five relevant sources worth setting up and maintaining a connection for.
For one-off purchases the arithmetic looks different. If a department needs a specific spare part from vendor A today, a software licence from vendor B next week and a product from vendor C a month later, a separate supplier relationship would have to be created for each of them.
And this is precisely where scaling through classic punchout connections runs into a practical limit. Punchout solves the technical transfer of the cart. What it does not automatically solve is how a new vendor enters the company's procurement process in the first place. The supplier first has to be created, vetted and approved. Depending on the system and internal rules, the technical connection then has to be set up and tested as well. That effort pays off for a strategic supplier used for regular orders.
For a vendor a company may need exactly once, for a single item worth 300 euros, that effort quickly bears no sensible relation to the order. This is not a weakness of punchout. For recurring purchases from established suppliers, punchout is exactly the right technology.
The problem only appears across the long tail of procurement. For rare, unplanned and individual requirements outside existing catalogues and framework agreements, the number of sources needed goes up while the order frequency per vendor goes down.
This is why Pedlar combines punchout with the Single Creditor Model. The difference lies in who gets connected. Instead of setting up a separate connection for numerous individual vendors, Pedlar is created once as a creditor and connected to the existing procurement system via punchout. When a department then needs an item from a vendor outside the existing supplier base, it opens Pedlar directly from the procurement system it already uses.
The requirement can be captured there in two ways. If a quote already exists, the PDF is uploaded. Pedlar reads the line items, prices and material groups from it and builds the cart. Alternatively, a product link from an online shop can be pasted in, and the corresponding item data is taken over into the cart as well. The completed cart then goes back into the company's procurement system, where the purchase requisition is created.
Approvals, budget control and ordering therefore stay where they belong, in the company's existing system.
The decisive difference comes after that. The order goes to Pedlar, the creditor already on file. Pedlar handles the purchase with the respective vendor, takes care of payment and coordinates delivery. The goods arrive directly from that vendor, while the invoice the company receives comes from Pedlar.
The punchout connection therefore stays the same, even though the actual source behind Pedlar changes from order to order. For procurement that means one connection, one creditor, many possible sources.
For one-off purchases and C-parts in particular this is decisive, because a new requirement no longer automatically leads to a new supplier record or another punchout connection. The Single Creditor Model thus complements existing catalogue and punchout structures. Strategic suppliers can stay directly connected, while the unpredictable remainder has one central route.
No. Existing punchout connections to strategic and regularly used suppliers can stay exactly as they are. Pedlar complements that structure for one-off purchases and for sources that do not justify a connection of their own.
The cart is assembled outside the company's own system and then transferred back. The requisition, the approval and the order itself all happen in the company's procurement system.
Not to the customer's procurement system. That is where the punchout connection to Pedlar sits. Purchasing from the individual vendors is then handled by Pedlar.
Requirements can be captured from quote PDFs and from product links out of online shops.
Punchout is at its strongest when companies order regularly from the same suppliers. The external catalogue is connected directly to their own procurement system, product data no longer has to be transferred by hand, and internal approval processes stay intact.
One-off purchases follow a different logic. Here the vendors keep changing. A dedicated connection and supplier record for every single source would create exactly the effort companies are trying to avoid in the first place.
Pedlar therefore carries the principle of punchout over to the Single Creditor Model. The company does not connect every individual vendor, it connects Pedlar.
That way the variety of sources is preserved on one side, while on the other there is only one punchout connection and one creditor for one-off purchases.
Would you like to discuss how one-off purchases could fit into your existing procurement process, without building a separate connection for every new vendor? Schedule a call →
