Bob Block, PeopleSoft Product Strategy Director at Oracle, gave a presentation about how to utilize PeopleSoft procurement contracts to the full capacity.

Over the last few Images, PeopleSoft procurement contracts have gone through several enhancements – starting with Image 30. This new functionality helps organizations streamline data entry, support the creation of group contracts, and ensure punchout item pricing is accurate.

Procurement contracts can be used to establish, transact, and monitor. Users are able to establish guidelines on pricing for items and categories, payment terms and conditions, timeframes, controls, and awards from RFQ or strategic sourcing. You can transact against requisitions, purchase orders, vouchers, maintenance management, and inventory. You are also able to monitor activity with a PO release summary, procurement spend analysis, and payment analysis.

How to Get the Most Out of PeopleSoft Procurement Contracts

Procurement Contract Groupings

There are three main groupings for procurement contracts:

1. Compliance
2. Visibility
3. Usability

Compliance

Compliance meets several needs. One of these is the ability to enforce terms and conditions, policy, and pricing. It also creates a standardized process and gives the potential to reduce maverick purchases. Finally, compliance is heavily integrated with ePro, PO, and Supplier Contract Management.

Visibility

Visibility makes contracts and agreements accessible online. Track spend is offered at both the manufacturing and distribution level. Additionally, thresholds can be set by date or dollar amount with assigned notifications. For those on Image 32, payment analysis is also available for use.

Usability

Usability streamlines data entry and avoids the white noise of a page. It allows the user to enter the procurement contract with only necessary functionality by eliminating other options. It makes a better end user experience.

Manufacturer and Distributor Contracts

Manufacturer and distribution contracts leverage the relationship that can be set up for your items and pricing. This ability is very helpful in a situation in which multiple manufacturers and distributors have a company’s items. The company can establish the pricing at the manufacturer level and can also include begin and end dates, thresholds, track spend and notifications. Then, they can assign differences in markups to distributors that offer that item. The marriage of the two simplifies spending. Manufacturer and distributor contracts are especially prevalent in the healthcare industry. This idea is best illustrated in the image below:

Flexible Ship-To Pricing

Flexible ship-to pricing provides a way for you to establish a price. Then, depending on how you want to capture that price (i.e. business unit level, ship-to, contract domain of multiple ship-tos), you can add a markup or markdown percentage. An example of this in use would be healthcare, in which hospitals pay a certain price per item and clinics pay a different price. Another example would be a price based on a regional zone (i.e. the eastern part of the country receives a different price than the western).

Enhanced User Experience

PeopleSoft reorganized the data entry page without taking away functionality. You can now scroll up and down instead of searching all around for the correct fields. It is a more vertical approach to allow you to access your information more easily. By doing this, you can also leverage contract style to determine exactly which fields and functionality you would like to display for the end user. The images below illustrate a before and after of unchecking boxes in contract style.

UPN on Procure to Pay Transactions

You can now store UPN information on transactions. This includes requisition, procurement contracts, purchase orders, receipts, and vouchers. Then, you can query against this information and find the entire lifecycle throughout procure to pay.

Punchout and Ad Hoc Item Pricing

Are you sure that your punchout suppliers are giving you the pricing that you established? This new feature enables you to monitor the price that is set up in your procurement contract. You can adjust settings to either always use the punch out price as determined by the supplier, always use the contract price previously agreed upon, or take the lowest of the two. Regardless, the discrepancy report will store all items with their price differences. You can now audit your history and use this information to renegotiate pricing. The image below shows an example of a discrepancy report.

PeopleSoft Procurement Spend

In Image 32, a new payment analysis of dollars out the door was released. Any payments that have left the organization will be tied back to contract vs. non-contract or PO vs. non-PO with several facets and security control. The benefits here are based upon real-time. The date is even predefined with 30 days, 60 days, 90 day or selected dates. You can analyze payments vs. procurement activity. This resides in PeopleSoft and leverages the security that was previously in place.

User-Generated Enhancements

The entire PeopleSoft sphere — from the organization to its customers — wins if the customer is involved. Block suggested getting connected and staying informed on Idea Space. Customer input drives enhancements in PeopleSoft. It begins with you as the customer making an enhancement request on Idea Space. Then, based on the activity and impact across several industries, it could get added to the roadmap. PeopleSoft also uses focus groups to refine requirements and then sends it out to you for use in your organization.

When the PeopleSoft team does roadmap review, the team is asked who is using the product, how many votes the comment has received, and the impact on a variety of industries. This direct input from customers with agile, iterative development cycles creates the best products and enhancements. There are frequent product deliverables and flexible, lower consumption. Through this process, your idea can impact several organizations in mere months as opposed to years.