Business use of bypassing sourcing cockpit

[Former Member]

Hi experts,

In which scenario, 'process purchase order in draft' is used instead of sourcing cockpit? What are the benefits in such cases?Personally, I donot see much of any benefits here. Say, a shopping cart with three items have been ordered. If we configure 'sourcing not carried out' for three items, the ordered shopping cart will result in three purchase orders in draft stage. Even if all three items could have been sourced from the same supplier, we now cannot bundle it together to create a single purchase order.

Your thoughts and feedback are highly apprciated.

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ranjan,

But you can always group your SC items to create a single PO if you do not want sourcing.

SRM Server->Sourcing->Define Sourcing for Product Categories to "Aut. Grouping, Sourcing in never carried out" after that run program BBP_SC_TRANSFER_GROUPED to create one PO by vendor

Hope I have understood your query correctly.

Regards,

Nikhil

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Nikhil,

Thanks, you have answered my question technically. Could you please help with business case of not using SOCO and creating purchase orders directly? what are the supposed benefits here?

Regards,

Ranjan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ranjan,

The business case when you dont need to use SOCO and create POs directly is when your end users are using catalogs for procurement (instead of free text procurement).

In this scenario, the purchaser need not intervene to check for the completeness of SC, or to source the SC items to vendors as SC will be complete in all sense when items are ordered from an internal catalog or a punchout catalog.

Regards,

Nikhil

[lisa_sheil · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The business case for not using the sourcing cockpit would be as follows:

You are using catalogs, where prices, vendors and contracts all come with the item and there is no need to search for these via the sourcing cockpit.

There is a difinite source of supply, ie you can use Vendor lists where you have a predefined list of vendors that you wish to

source your items from...then the source is already found and again no need for sourcing cockpit.

In the shopping cart itself there is a Source of Supply tab where you can search for all valid sources of supply, ie, vendor, contract etc. So this is like a mini sourcing cockpit, the sources found would be the same in the SC as in the Sourcing Cockpit. So there then would be no need to send the item to the sourcing cockpit.

Like above also you can still use the Grouping report to group any items your wish to group in the same PO.

Also please see note 1380879, where it lists all splitting critieria on why your items would split into different PO's, normally if all criteria are the same then no split happens and one PO would be created for multiple items.

The benifits of using the sourcing cockpit would be more flexibility:

You can create different kinds of follow-on documents eg. PO, Contract, Bid Invitation.

With the Bidding option there is a negotiation side of things where your vendors can submit their prices etc. This would suit some customers.

All customers needs are different, this is why you can choose to use this or not.

I hope this helps with the decision process.

Kind Regards,

Lisa

[former_member183819]

Hi Ranjan

see below article on Sourcing Cockpit by Lisa Norris

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SRM/CentralizedSourcinginSRM-TheSourcing+Cockpit?focusedCommentId=235965721#comment-235965721

1.cockpit helps to process the incomplete shopping carts by the purchaser from the cockpit.

2. Buyer can determine what follow on documents needs to be created like PO, Contract and Bid Invitation

there are some business Requisition department gives signal to Purchaser what needs to be created via text ( please create a best price contract for this request).

3.There are some situations like there are more than source of supply exist for a single item that time BUYER can decides to whom needs to be added via Propose source of supply option.

4. We need to educate the business what are the faciliities available in the cockpit to the business team

Muthuraman

[lisa_sheil]

Thank you Muthuraman for promoting my page

[Former Member]

That's a great post Muthu!

Thank you Lisa for the elaborate explanation in your article.

This should make it very clear Ranjan.

Regards,

Nikhil

[Former Member]

Hi Lisa, Muthu and Nikhil,

Thanks a lot for your clear and informative discussion. The Wiki page by Lisa is also extremely helpful.

Regards,

Ranjan