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Introduction
SAP Business Network Catalog Management and Product Discovery (BNCAT-363) feature is beneficial for both buyers and suppliers as it allows buyers to find new sources of supply by searching inside the network for products and services from different suppliers worldwide. After searching, buyers can send a Request for Information (RFI) to any supplier worldwide from their catalog listing or company profile without limitation. Suppliers with a network catalog can increase visibility for their business and expand their customer base. In simple terms, without enabling the relationship (Trading Relationship) with suppliers, now buyers will be able to get a list of suppliers available for a particular product or service by searching in their SAP Business Network buyer account and can further can do business with them.
This feature allows suppliers to easily maintain a master catalog that includes products and services from all categories and comes with the provision of a product manager or product approver role assignment to review the catalog listings and avoid mistakes.
The network catalog feature is available to all SAP Business Network supplier accounts including standard and enterprise accounts. Upload a showcase catalog of your top products and services to start getting discovered by interested buyers.
For advanced network catalog features including open APIs and generative AI to load and maintain catalog in addition to other tools to help suppliers gain visibility on the network and grow their business, suppliers can purchase the SAP Business Network, promote subscription. See what network capabilities are available with your account here.
To learn more about the SAP Business Network, promote subscription visit the website.
Prerequisites
SAP Business Network Buyer Portal –
- Buyer user should have “Create and manage postings on Ariba Discovery” permission to create and manage Discovery postings. This can be done by simply navigating to SAP Business Network Buyer portal under [User Initial] >>Settings>>Users. Kindly visit How can I create or edit permission roles in SAP Business Network? (ariba.com) for more information
- Enable notifications related to Discovery. This can be done by navigating to [User Initial] >> Manage Profile >> Notifications >> Choose ‘Discovery’ tab and tick checkbox of Notify me, when A supplier responds to my posting. This will ensure that buyer gets the notification once supplier responds to the posting made from SAP Business Network Buyer portal.
SAP Business Network Supplier Portal –
- The supplier administrator must assign the product manager role and/or product approver role to other supplier users to manage the network catalog solution. A single supplier user can be assigned with both roles or each supplier user can be assigned with either a product manager role or a product approver role as per the requirement.
- Enable notifications related to Discovery. This can be done by navigating to [User Initial] >> Manage Profile >> Notifications >> Choose ‘Discovery’ tab and tick checkbox of Notify me, when A buyer invites me to a posting. This will ensure that supplier gets the notification once private posting has been created for the product posted on SAP Business Network supplier portal.
- Network Catalog feature is now released for All the Suppliers (Earlier it was only available to Enterprise Account Suppliers) – (Updated as of Ariba 2502 Release)
- Supplier user should have Catalog Management permission and product manager or product approver role. A single supplier user can have both Product Manager and Product Approver roles. Generally, Product Manager is the person who is responsible for staging or publishing a product on SAP Business Network Supplier Portal.
- It is not mandatory to send a catalog product for approval, supplier can directly publish a product online however it is always recommended to review the product internally before publishing it online for different buyers globally.
Information on Template Files –
Before moving to configuration steps let’s find out more details on the template files that are important and required to upload.
Once you open Supplier Business Network account of supplier you will find 2 options under Catalog tab. 1. Customer Catalog 2. Network Catalog.
Our feature is related to Network Catalog which is a new option visible under catalog section as below :
Network Catalog – Here you will find sample files/templates that are required to make your product available for worldwide customers.
3 Templates (Product Detail Template, Price Template & Media Template) are available here that you can download as a Zip file or as an Individual files. Suppliers can select the language in which they would like to maintain the product information using the Language Dropdown so the templates will be downloaded based on the language chosen.
Let’s understand first the details around these templates:
- Product Detail Template – This Template carries all the information of your product like Product ID, Short Name, Description, Product URL (If any), UNSPSC Code etc. Also, each cell in the template file has notes associated with it which guides you with the acceptable information and data. Additionally, each template file comes with 3 sheets namely Instructions, Template & Example which makes it very easy to prepare the files of your product and publish it on SAP Business Network.
Product Detail Template Spreadsheet
- Price Template – Pricing Template allows supplier to add product pricing information based on quantity, geographic location, currency, price validity, discount and Unit of Measurement.
Price Template Spreadsheet
- Media Template – This Template is optional and supplier can skip if they do not want to publish a product with an Image on it. Supplier can publish the product online without loading this file into the portal. This file carries URL information of the product image. The visual representation of a product always makes buyer to decide easily on the product purchase.
Media Template Spreadsheet
Configuration Steps
Let’s begin with Configuration steps that are required to successfully deploy the solution on business network.
Below is the sample data and file name that is required to load your files under Network Catalog:
Here for demonstration, I have prepared a files for a product “XYZ Notebook”. Even if the Product ID is in capital letters your file name should always be in a small letters and with format as “product+en+info”. You must replace info word in the file name with the Product ID from your all 3 template files. Product ID should be same since it acts as a lookup value to link the details of all 3 template files into a product.
Step 1 –
Product Detail Template file – Once the file is ready supplier can upload the file under network catalog “Upload Files” option. Below is an example excel sheet and the file name of the same.
Step 2 –
Once you click on upload the system tries to validate the file based on the rules and other technical validations like file name. If the file is uploaded successfully then product will be visible under Staged Products in “Draft Status” as below:
Step 3 –
You can check the status of your uploaded files in logs section whether it is successfully processed or failed. If the file is failed, then with the help of below options you can find the reason behind failed operation, and which makes it easy for product manager to upload the product correctly.
Step 4 –
Price Template File – Below is an example with the file name.
Step 5 –
Once you upload the Price Template file the status of staged product which was previously in Draft status changes to Complete status.
With the complete status now the product is almost ready, you can send the product for Product Approver’s Approval, or you can publish the product online for the customers worldwide.
Step 6 (Optional) –
If you want to have a visual representation of your product then you can upload images with below options of zip file of product images or URL of Images from manufacturer’s website.
Media Template file – Below is an example of Image Info file
Step 7 –
You can send for approval/view/edit/delete/preview/publish the product after uploading the files by using below option –
Step 8 –
After publishing the product it goes from staged product to online product, but still if you want certain modifications in your product then you can move the product back to staged product and after modifications you can move your product back to online.
Once your product is online then buyers worldwide can view the product and create leads/RFI for the product.
This completes the configuration steps.
End to End Flow of Documents
Lets start the E2E flow of the documents involved in this feature:
Step 1 –
Login as any buyer provided that the user you are login should have necessary discovery permissions as mentioned in the blog.
Step 2 –
Search the product and Buyer will get result based on the location, suppliers etc.
Step 3 –
As a buyer you can view the details of product and click on check price where you can start your enquiries related to product with the supplier and the document will be published as RFI to supplier.
Step 4 –
Here you can also put Additional Comments for a supplier in addition to the Response Deadline.
Step 5 –
Once submitted the posting ID will be generated under the Discovery tab of SAP Business Network Buyer Portal and same will be visible under discovery tab of SAP Business Network Supplier Portal (Leads subsection)
Buyer Portal - About SAP Ariba Discovery postings you can refer this link About SAP Business Network Discovery Postings | SAP Help Portal
Supplier Portal – For notifications related to discovery you can refer Discovery Notifications | SAP Help Portal
Step 6 –
In return supplier can act against the lead to whether Respond/Save Lead/Not Interested. If supplier chose to respond to the lead then below options will be available, also supplier can add supporting documents if any.
Step 7 –
Once supplier responds, the posting gets updated into Buyer portal under discovery tab. Buyer can check more details around the response of supplier, close the posting for responses.
Step 8 –
Further Buyer can Invite supplier for trading relationship and can request some certifications from supplier.
Other Related Topics
Recent Developments (Updated as of Ariba 2502 Release)
- With Ariba 2402 Release now the suppliers can add Carbon Emission Information of a product while uploading it to the Business Network. New product template with the carbon emission related columns is available for suppliers. Further information can be viewed here - 2402 :Allow Suppliers to Add Carbon Emission Data Related to the Network Catalog Products(BNCAT-2027...
- With Ariba 2405 release, suppliers can generate product summary using GenAI. GenAI captures certain information of a product updated by supplier and generates a product summary. Further information can be referred here - 2405 :Support for AI-Generated Product Summary and Description for Network Catalog Products (BNCAT-2...
Reference Material of BNCAT-363 Feature -
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