Electronic Procurement System Supplier Data Mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current e-commerce systems do not allow suppliers to share their information and catalogs with multiple buyer/purchasing organizations in a single transaction without formatting and transmitting data separately for each organization's supplier management system, and they lack automatic data mapping and updating features.
Innovation Solution
A multi-tenant procurement system that enables suppliers to share data through a graphical user interface, automatically maps and transmits supplier information and catalogs to multiple buyer organizations' systems, and updates hosted data, using a customizable methodology for efficient data management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If suppliers transmit information and catalogs separately to each buyer organization's supplier management system, then data compatibility with each system is ensured, but the complexity of data transmission and formatting increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an electronic procurement system as an intermediary platform between suppliers and multiple buyer organizations. This intermediary hosts a standardized supplier information schema that all buyers can access uniformly, eliminating the need for suppliers to format and transmit data separately to each buyer's system while ensuring compatibility through the standardized interface.
Solution Approach 2:
The electronic procurement system provides a universal data hosting platform that serves multiple buyer organizations simultaneously. The standardized supplier information schema and catalog structure are designed to be universally compatible with various buyer systems, allowing a single data transmission to serve multiple buyers without requiring separate formatting for each organization.
2Measurement precision
If suppliers update information in each buyer organization's supplier management system manually, then data accuracy is maintained, but the time and effort required for updates increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables automatic propagation of supplier information updates. When suppliers update their information in the electronic procurement system, the standardized schema ensures that updates are automatically reflected in all buyer organizations' systems without requiring manual intervention from suppliers, thereby maintaining data accuracy while significantly reducing update time and effort.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the system provides customized data formatting for each buyer organization, then specific buyer requirements are met, but the system complexity and implementation difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The electronic procurement system acts as a mediating layer that provides standardized data formatting to all buyers. The standardized supplier information schema and catalog structure serve as a common interface that meets the requirements of multiple buyers without requiring the system to implement complex customized formatting for each organization, thereby reducing implementation complexity while maintaining adaptability.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method provide an efficient and simple procurement process that is easily customizable and allows the automatic mapping of supplier information and catalogs according to the buyer/purchasing organization's internal data schema used for representing such data, and updates the buyer/purchasing organization's hosted supplier information and catalogs automatically. In an exemplary embodiment, access to an electronic procurement system is requested, a supplier provides supplier data through a graphical user interface (GUI) for storage in one or more databases of an electronic procurement system, the supplier designates a subset of the supplier data as protected supplier data, and conveniently selects one or more buyer organization's supplier management systems to receive the provided supplier data.