|  A
market place provider is a software solution that brings
buyers and suppliers together. They can be 'horizontal'
or 'vertical'. Horizontal market place providers aim to
aid procurement across commodity groups, commonly focusing
on areas such as MRO. The same integrated system can therefore
be used to buy stationary, coffee and laboratory supplies.
Vertical market place providers bring together many suppliers
across a specific industry segment, for instance life sciences.
A market place provider, or market
site, can manage a procurement function by two different methods
- via a hosted catalogue or a facility called punchout. The
most flexible market sites will offer both solutions.
Punchout technology allows you to 'punchout'
from the market place provider into a supplier's web site
in order to compile your order. This allows you to use all
the features of the web site, that would be unavailable
through a hosted catalogue, such as real time stock availability,
full search facilities across all products, order history,
order tracking etc.
After compiling your order, you then go back into
the market site to continue with the order from other suppliers
and 'back office' detail is completed .
The market place then splits the order and sends it to the
appropriate supplier ,
and populates the data into your ERP system .
Fisher Scientific strongly recommends
that if you are considering using a market place provider
that you use this in conjunction with punchout.
Hosted catalogues are tailored catalogues
that are downloaded onto the market place from Fisher Scientific
and other participating suppliers. Depending on how often
updates are carried out this information can rapidly get
out of date, therefore price changes and new products may
not be included. In addition, only a limited number of products
can be placed on a hosted catalogue, so full product offering
is often not viable. As the customer is viewing products
via the market site, the features and facilities of the
Fisher Scientific web site, such as real time stock availability
and order tracking, are not available.
 One
purchasing model for all suppliers
Reduced
'maverick buying'
Full
functionality of iNSiGHT, our web catalogue, when used
with punchout
For more information about the
market sites that Fisher Scientific currently works with,
and how to go about selecting a market place provider, please
contact
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