There will hardly be any purchaser around who is not aware of the advantages of catalogue management. That makes it all the more interesting that there are only a few purchasing organizations which have reached a sufficiently high maturity level in this area. As of today, only a small number of global leaders have managed to introduce catalogues in at least 90% of their material groups, including complex technical products and services, thereby eliminating up to 70% of all manual activities.

In contrast to average organizations, global leaders have achieved high catalogue coverage of the supplier products by focusing on selected success factors. They determinedly pursue the goal of cataloguing all of the materials for which the transaction quantity exceeds a defined value – without exception. When this ­initially appears impossible due to the complexity of some of the products, they consistently make use of intelligent forms. These are „intelligent dialogue menus“ which support requisitioners during the selection of their materials and query all of the information relevant for the order in structured form. These data are automatically applied to the purchase order and communicated to the supplier without requiring the support of a purchaser. This procedure can be used, for example, to order business cards of high quality and a low error rate simply from catalogues. The intelligent forms are an aid to designing contact details and layout in conformity with CI/CD regulations; a view modus allows the requisitioners to see a preview of their business cards before the order so that, if necessary, changes can be made before the order is submitted. This eliminates the need for proofing in the purchasing department.

Global leaders also aim for user friendliness of the catalogue applications. Without it, requisitioners will not actually use the catalogues in the sense of „self-service procurement“ and will continue to contact purchasers directly. This goal is achieved by making sure that a search algorithm is used which functions well and is capable of learning. Moreover, they are careful to structure all of the processing screens of the catalogue system so that they have the same logical structure and can be used intuitively.

Global leaders secure the up-to-dateness and validity of their catalogue data by automating most of the work steps using special software solutions during the data preparation. Process steps which can be carried out only manually are delegated to the responsible unit in each case. Electronic processes (workflows) involve suppliers to enter relevant product information in the system, and the accounting department supplements the items by adding the applicable account data.