Frequently Asked Questions

eProcurement (electronic procurement) is the business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-government (B2G) purchase and sales of supplies, work, and services through the Internet as well as other information and networking systems such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). eProcurement consists of various processes:

• Sourcing
• Seller management
• Catalog management
• Purchase order integration
• Order status
• Ship notice
• eInvoicing
• ePayment
• Contract management

eProcurement in the public sector has seen rapid growth in recent years within the US and is emerging internationally. Source – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EProcurement

An eProcurement system is a procurement web application that businesses use to facilitate electronic purchasing processes and is a tool that provides visibility into spend, management of sellers and contracts, and helps procurement officers match purchases with purchase orders and invoices. Procurement officers within buying organizations are tasked to control and manage spend within their company and eliminate “maverick” or off-contract spend. As a result, buying organizations are mandating their employees to purchase goods and services only through their chosen eProcurement system. The eProcurement system allows employees to browse online seller catalogs and order products from multiple sellers within a marketplace. The user adds items to a shopping cart and submits a purchase requisition electronically through the eProcurement system. The electronic purchase requisition is routed appropriately within the buying organization for financial approval. Once the order is approved, an electronic purchase order is generated within the eProcurement system and sent electronically to the appropriate seller(s) to fulfill the order.

The online seller catalogs for eProcurement systems come in two different formats: 

1. PunchOut Catalog – seller eCommerce web application that supplies essential information for ordering goods and services and provides marketing and promotional forum directly to the buyers.
2. Hosted catalog/CIF catalog – a static product list (usually in an Excel format) uploaded within the eProcurement system by the seller that provides the essential information for ordering goods and services.

There are many different eProcurement system providers in the market today. Examples of well-known players in the market include SAP, SAP Ariba, Oracle, NetSuite, Coupa and Jaggaer.

TradeCentric, formerly PunchOut2Go, has elevated PunchOut transactions and B2B eCommerce integrations for Fortune 500 companies and their trading partners since 2012. We’re at the center of the largest business transactions in the world, revolutionizing the way companies sell, purchase and transact.

TradeCentric offers an adaptable cloud-based platform, known as the TradeCentric Platform, that sits between the seller’s eCommerce store and their customers on any procurement system. It is seamless for developers to connect to the TradeCentric Platform via an open API, traditional web standards, and one-on-one support. Because the TradeCentric Platform sits between the seller’s eCommerce store and any of their customers on any procurement system, the technology normalizes and harmonizes data such as PunchOut Order Requests, PunchOut Order Messages, Electronic Purchase Orders, Electronic Invoices and other B2B documents that need to moving to and from your store so that all systems can communicate effectively.

All TradeCentric clients receive access to the TradeCentric Business Intelligence Portal. Our user-friendly portal makes it easy to see into your world of trade with customized dashboards, reports, analytics, and alerts. Make smarter trading decisions with secure and instant access to real-time data about your transactions, integrations, invoices, and trends. 

• Real-time dashboard
• Reporting and analytics 
• Transaction alerts  
• Testing capabilities

The TradeCentric Platform can integrate with any eCommerce platform! The TradeCentric Platform is an adaptable cloud-based solution that is very eCommerce platform-neutral. We work with eCommerce providers, homegrown applications and also offer packaged solutions for some platforms. We currently support integrated PunchOut solutions for Adobe Commerce (Magento), NetSuite, HCL WebSphere Commerce, WooCommerce/WordPress, Shopify, 1WorldSync, Salesforce Commerce, Big Commerce, Optimizely and many more.

With TradeCentric, you can integrate with any eProcurement system. TradeCentric supports thousands of integration points around the globe on upwards of 150 different procurement platforms such as SAP Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer, SAP, Oracle, Yardi, Ivaluaand and many others.

Some buyers will require that their sellers accept purchase orders and submit invoices electronically to integrate with their eProcurement and/or ERP application, allowing both companies to streamline the procure-to-pay process and reduce errors and labor spent on processing manual orders. TradeCentric provides additional solutions for electronic purchase orders, invoices and other important trade documents. Procurement applications will offer various methods of receiving purchase orders and invoices, including email, fax, cXML, XML, EDI, X12, xCBL and seller portals.

TradeCentric supports a wide range of data transfer protocols. Because the TradeCentric Platform sits between your eCommerce store and any of your customers on any procurement system, the technology normalizes and harmonizes data such as PunchOut Order Requests, PunchOut Order Messages, electronic Purchase Orders, invoices and any other B2B documents that need to move to and from your store. The TradeCentric Platform does all the heavy lifting and will translate the documents into the proper format so that each system can send and receive properly. TradeCentric currently formats and transports the following document types: cXML, OCI, EDI, XML, X12, iDOC, xCBL, AS2, HTTPs, FTPs and flat files via transport methods such as web services, HTTPS POST, AS2, VAN and others.

TradeCentric provides solutions that are customizable and tailored to fit the needs of our clients. We provide far more than just the technology by managing each buyer integration from start to finish on behalf of the seller and providing industry expertise to help sellers drive growth within the procurement channel. Contact us for details

Every project is customized and tailored to fit the needs of our clients. TradeCentric has a team of Project Managers, Implementation Specialists, Integration Specialists and Developers in-house that will manage the project on behalf of the seller to see them through with speed and precision. TradeCentric will work with the seller’s technology team to set up or establish the technology, configure and test. After implementing the eCommerce store, we will work directly with your customers to integrate to their eProcurement systems.

TradeCentric provides solutions that are focused 100% on enabling a seller’s own eCommerce application to any buyer on any procurement system. Some other PunchOut Catalog providers require sellers to use their own proprietary eCommerce application to connect to their buyer’s procurement systems. It is challenging for organizations to maintain multiple storefronts on multiple applications. In addition to PunchOut, TradeCentric also supports Purchase Order Automation, Invoice Automation, Advance Shipping Notice and eQuotes.

TradeCentric offers integration solutions for a very wide variety of eCommerce platforms. We provide plug-and-play solutions for popular eCommerce platforms such as Adobe Commerce (Magento), HCL WebSphere Commerce, Big Commerce, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce and many more, plus tightly integrated solutions with other third-party eCommerce providers like Channel Online/CNET, Evolution Software, XMPie and others to easily connect the dots with over 175 different eProcurement and ERP systems such as SAP Ariba, Oracle, SAP, Coupa,, Jaggaer, etc.

Developing integrations to numerous eProcurement systems on the market while accommodating buyers’ customizations to the documentation protocols is a tall order for sellers. No two eProcurement integrations are the same, and with every single integration come anomalies. Every eProcurement system has different requirements and protocols, so it is very challenging for sellers to internally tackle the PunchOut development and B2B integrations.

Besides the complexity, sellers face obstacles such as cost, resources and the time to implement. Many large and small organizations have decided to develop PunchOut and B2B order automation capabilities internally but then find that their solution is not scalable.

B2B sellers that want a scalable, repeatable solution partner with TradeCentric to reduce the cost and complexity of connecting their storefront to their buyers’ eProcurement applications. Many companies, large and small, utilize our solutions to enhance their offerings. TradeCentric does all the heavy lifting for sellers, making it easy to connect and do business with their customers. 

As large buying entities adopt cloud-based eProcurement systems, sellers experience the simplicity of a single integration with TradeCentric that connects their eCommerce application to any buyer on any eProcurement system.

Once an organization can offer PunchOut catalog capabilities, it is critical to build awareness and drive usage of the channel. We do this in a few ways:

• Use internal resources to develop and implement a channel marketing strategy, customer target lists, marketing collateral and training or
• Partner with a 3rd party provider specializing in eProcurement – such as TradeCentric – to market and train internal customer-facing positions and build a marketing strategy.

Best-in-class sellers drive connections with their buyers in the eProcurement channel, educate and train their organization on the importance of the channel, and uncover how their customers are procuring products/services. In addition, best-in-class sellers build out a marketing strategy and tactics to market their PunchOut catalog and B2B order automation capabilities to target customers to grow sales and lower their cost to serve.

Buyers request PunchOut for many reasons:

• Buyers save time with workflow and quick turnaround for all purchase orders
• Buyers control spending by creating electronic purchase orders from an easy to navigate interface with strong accountability
• Buyers reduce errors and increase productivity with an overall goal to simplify and effectively manage procurement processes

Over 175 and counting. Ariba, Oracle, Jaggaer, SAP, Coupa, Birchstreet, Workday and Yardi are some of the most popular procurement systems that have integrated PunchOut catalogs. TradeCentric can integrate into any procurement system that allows PunchOut and any required document protocol from cXML, OCI, XML, xCBL and other custom protocols. One of the main benefits of TradeCentric is our Platform. The TradeCentric Platform deals with any procurement system and buyer variances. 

cXML (Commerce eXtensible Markup Language) is a procurement industry-standard document language that allows buyers from procurement systems such as Ariba, Jaggaer, Coupa and many others to TradeCentric to an eCommerce site. OCI (Open Catalog Interface) relies on field mapping between a buyer’s SAP procurement system to a seller’s eCommerce site. cXML procurement systems typically have fewer configuration variances than OCI. The TradeCentric Platform deals with any variances between any procurement system, cXML or OCI.

TradeCentric offers eCommerce providers, development organizations, consulting agencies and eProcurement providers an attractive program that allows organizations to have a single integration between their application and TradeCentric. Please contact us to discuss a partnership.

According to Digital Commerce 360, B2B eCommerce sales through the eProcurement channel will be more than $1 trillion in 2022. 

Buying organizations, large and small across all industries, are challenged with getting visibility into expenditures across their organization, eliminating off-contract spend, directing spend to their negotiated seller contracts, and increasing the overall efficiency of the procurement process. In turn, these buying organizations move their spend to the cloud and automate the entire procure-to-pay process by investing in procurement and spend management technology. As part of the buyer’s seller and catalog management strategy, buying organizations request that their top sellers integrate product offerings and contracted pricing directly within their eProcurement system with a PunchOut Catalog. This need is because PunchOut Catalogs provide 24/7/365 access to an online catalog and the ability to automate critical B2B trade documents such as purchase orders, invoices, and advance shipping notices.

Buying organizations will often include the PunchOut Catalog as a requirement when awarding new bids and requests for proposals to their sellers. They will sometimes also include the requirement to receive electronic purchase orders and send electronic invoices. If sellers cannot meet these requirements, they may risk losing the business, and customers may award bids to competitors who offer this technology.

Sellers are pressured by their buying organizations to make an investment and the business decision to offer PunchOut Catalog capabilities to retain key customers and win new sales opportunities or risk losing the business. Some sellers are in early stages of understanding eProcurement and do not understand how this channel will affect their business. Best-in-class sellers view eProcurement as a strategic business initiative. They have invested in PunchOut Catalog and B2B order automation technology to make it easy for their customers to purchase and transact with them. Because these sellers are providing a much easier method for their customers to purchase and engage with them, and the technology is available 24/7/365, leading sellers that partner with TradeCentric have realized the following benefits:

• Retained business with key customers
• Won new bids and sales opportunities
• Increased top-line sales revenue with integrated buyers significantly
• Decreased integration time from months to weeks
• Locked in preferred seller status
• Increased customer satisfaction with order accuracy improvements
• Lowered their cost to serve their customers by eliminating manual order entry
• Increased customer loyalty by making it easy for their customers to do business with them

No, when you partner with TradeCentric, you will not need to create a separate PunchOut Catalog because our technology normalizes and harmonizes the data moving to and from your eCommerce application. TradeCentric offers an adaptable cloud-based platform(TradeCentric Platform) that sits between your eCommerce store and your customers on any procurement system. Where other PunchOut solution providers require you to use their proprietary eCommerce application to build a PunchOut Catalog, TradeCentric is the only solution provider that is 100% focused on integrating your own eCommerce application.

Buyers are asking for PunchOut. Unfortunately, buyers are ceasing to do business with sellers that don’t offer PunchOut or deliver on a determined time. Many of today’s RFPs are “recommending” or “requiring” PunchOut. These trading partners want their sellers to do business the way they want. Our solution makes it possible for your company to compete effectively. TradeCentric is here to establish your catalog. Contact us.

PunchOut Catalogs and CIF/hosted catalogs share the same purpose. Both allow organizations to share seller product catalogs electronically with their buyers through a procurement application. However, the approach is very different for each format and each format has its strengths and weaknesses.

A CIF catalog (Catalog Interchange Format) is a term used by SAP Ariba and sometimes referred to by other procurement providers as a “hosted catalog.” It is a static product list that supplies only essential information to order products, uploaded within the buyer’s procurement system (i.e., SAP Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer, SAP, Oracle, etc.). It can also be referred to as a line item catalog. End-users within the buying organization can search and shop from all hosted catalog sellers within the eProcurement marketplace.

A CIF or hosted catalog requires the seller to dedicate resources to compile the data for the catalog, keep the data current, and upload the CSV file into each buyer’s eProcurement system. The buying organization will then review the catalog and approve within the eProcurement system to make it available to the user community. Data is not transparent and does not happen in real-time like a PunchOut Catalog. For example, if the seller launches a new product, it would require a resource from their organization to gather the pertinent information, format into the appropriate file, and upload a new hosted catalog into each buyer’s procurement system so customers can order the new product.

In today’s B2B environment, PunchOut Catalogs are the preferred format with most sellers and buyers alike. A PunchOut Catalog is a powerful tool to integrate with a buyer’s eProcurement system, allowing sellers to present and market their product offering in a dynamic, real-time, usable format.

Here is an overview of the benefits and limits for each type of seller catalog format:

PunchOut Catalog

Benefits

• Seller manages content and displays product portfolio in a way that best reflects their offering
• Content and pricing are dynamic and real-time if the seller has the integration to accommodate
• New products listed sooner, and sellers control the views
• Enables ordering of configurable products in a manner that the seller feels is best suited
• Eliminates generation of catalog files for each buyer, allowing one central application serving up all customers, which lowers the cost to serve customers with a single interface
• Special website features available for upselling, promotion and marketing to increase sales
• No limit to content
• It’s your store – you can sell your products in the best way you have decided to

Limits

• Product not searchable within marketplace without Level II PunchOut Catalog functionality enabled
• Different experience for buyers with each seller’s website

Hosted Catalog

Benefits

• Provides one-stop-shop for buyers
• Consistent buyer experiences

Limits

• Content and pricing is static
• New products are not available until seller loads new content files
• Buyers must approve each seller catalog, updates as well
• Seller must create catalog information files for each buyer on each system around the specifications that each buyer or system mandates
• For the most part, only simple products and services can be ordered
• Because every seller is not one-size-fits-all, the search algorithms never work in a manner the seller would find accurate
• When you look at all the sellers that buying organizations have, there is no way any hosted catalog situation would achieve the best results possible for a seller

When PunchOut2Go was founded a decade ago our products and services focused entirely on the PunchOut process, where buyers are able to browse suppliers’ catalogs online and then purchase goods or services within their eProcurement system.

As we connected with more and more businesses around the world, we discovered a considerable opportunity to expand on our existing technology and develop complementary solutions that automate a broader scope of B2B transactions for our customers. Our new name, TradeCentric, reflects the full scope of our business today and where we will take it in the future.

No. PunchOut2Go simply changed its name to TradeCentric. Same team, same owners, same products and services, just a new name. PunchOut will remain the cornerstone of our business.

After 10 years as PunchOut2Go, it was time for a name that speaks to both our PunchOut capabilities as well as the millions of B2B transactions that we automate for our customers.

Today, we offer the industry’s best PunchOut integration and automation solution as well as a full suite of offerings that support the entire digital procurement and commerce lifecycle. These offerings include the automation of orders, invoices, quotes, acknowledgements, notifications and marketplace integrations. As we continue to evolve the business to meet our customers’ needs it makes sense to step into a name that reflects these changes and our future direction.

Yes! PunchOut was, is and always will be fundamental to our business, and we are the global leaders working with more than 3,000 businesses in over 40 countries. It has taken 10 years to achieve our position as the undisputed market leader in PunchOut solutions, and we plan to keep building on that position. We’ve expanded our offerings over the years to meet the evolving needs of our customers so we want a name that reflects the full range of what we do – including PunchOut.

Our platform sits at the center of B2B transactions that occur between buyers and suppliers as they trade goods and services. Being centric to trade between our customers and their trading partners led to our choosing TradeCentric.

We are not eCommerce. We are not eProcurement, nor ERP. We occupy a unique position that is central to the trading process that happens between buyers and suppliers. TradeCentric reflects our deep connection to the buyer and supplier community which enables them to achieve a seamless and streamlined trading experience. We are, literally, “trade centric.”

We are the same team, same owners, same solutions, same services, same partners, same customers and same values. We have the same mission, to help companies connect with their trading partners, and the same vision, to connect every business in the world with their trading partners, embracing digital transformation and automation of business-critical transactions.

TradeCentric sits at the intersection of eCommerce and eProcurement, helping B2B buyers and suppliers connect, automate, and scale their digital trading capabilities. Our purpose-built integration platform is a fully-managed, highly secure cloud solution built to handle the complexities of B2B trade and transaction processes, and enable a seamless digital experience for both buyers and suppliers. With more than 3,000 businesses around the world relying on us every day, TradeCentric is transforming the way businesses do business.

First and foremost, you will continue to receive the high-quality service and support you have come to rely on from us. To ensure that you continue to receive product notifications and other communications from us, please whitelist tradecentric.com on your email server(s).

The PunchOut2Go Portal and the PunchOut2Go Gateway will be migrated to TradeCentric on separate schedules. In June 2022, the TradeCentric Portal will be available to users. Visitors will see a new look and feel along with all the existing functionality of the PunchOut2Go Portal. The PunchOut2Go Portal will remain active and available.

No changes to the PunchOut2Go Gateway are happening at this time. We will coordinate with customers and trading partners later in the year to plan and schedule migrating connections over to the new domain. During the migration later in the year, we will work with each customer to ensure that the transition occurs on their schedule, with ample time for testing and review. Additional information and details on migration will be forthcoming.

Going forward, we will be able to service more of your needs pertaining to the automation of trade with your supplier partners, and we will be able to introduce you to more suppliers you may want to do business with.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

We do not expect the transition from PunchOut2Go to TradeCentric to have any impact on your users. In the coming months, we will work with you to ensure migration of all your connections and integrations. We will also provide ample time for testing and review.

First and foremost, you will continue to receive the high-quality service and support you have come to rely on from us. To ensure that you continue to receive product notifications and other communications from us, please whitelist tradecentric.com on your email server(s).

The PunchOut2Go Portal and the PunchOut2Go Gateway will be migrated to TradeCentric on separate schedules. In June 2022, the TradeCentric Portal will be available to users. Visitors will see a new look and feel along with all the existing functionality of the PunchOut2Go Portal. The PunchOut2Go Portal will remain active and available.

If you test integrations to your Storefront through Portal and define PunchOut2Go in your Content Security or X-Frame policies and wish to use the TradeCentric Portal, please modify your ecommerce platform’s Content-Security-Policy and/or X-Frame-Options headers to allow it to be framed by portal.tradecentric.com, stage-portal.tradecentric.com, and qa-portal.tradecentric.com.

No changes to the PunchOut2Go Gateway are happening at this time. We will coordinate with customers and trading partners later in the year to plan and schedule migrating connections over to the new domain. During the migration later in the year, we will work with each customer to ensure that the transition occurs on their schedule, with ample time for testing and review. Additional information and details on migration will be forthcoming.

Going forward, you will realize more value from our relationship as we help increase your visibility and preferred status with your buyers, while enabling you to streamline operations, eliminate manual processes, reduce errors and improve efficiency overall.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

We do not expect the transition from PunchOut2Go to TradeCentric to have any impact on your users. In the coming months, we will work with you to ensure migration of all your connections and integrations. We will also provide ample time for testing and review.

In June 2022, the TradeCentric Portal will be available to users. Visitors will see a new look and feel along with all the existing functionality of the PunchOut2Go Portal. The PunchOut2Go Portal will remain active and available.

If you test integrations to your Storefront through Portal and define PunchOut2Go in your Content Security or X-Frame policies and wish to use the TradeCentric Portal, please modify your ecommerce platform’s Content-Security-Policy and/or X-Frame-Options headers to allow it to be framed by portal.tradecentric.com, stage-portal.tradecentric.com, and qa-portal.tradecentric.com.

No. We will continue to support all our existing integrations and will be here for you for maintenance and upgrades for those integrations and to help you add additional ones as you continue to grow your business.

We are dedicated to our partner community and are committed to continuing to invest in improving our partnership network and deepening our relationship with strategic partners.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

No. The change in name does not mean our EIN/tax ID is changing.

You can expect us to continue to invest in the business we’ve built over the past 10 years and be a leader and innovator in the integrated B2B commerce market. We will continue to provide the expert integration technology, service, support and maintenance our customers expect from us. You’ll also see a more dynamic product roadmap that includes better visibility, analytics and reporting. And we will explore ways to leverage our community of buyers and suppliers to benefit our customers and partners.