Context based ordering assistant (CBO)
The context based ordering assistant allows a user to shop in one or more predefined procurement contexts. Contexts are made available to individual users in the context definition process
It is part of our advanced guided buying tools & ordering assistants extension of ZUGSEIL Shop.
Purpose
Each context bears individually optimizied catalog category hierarchy and a set of specific products which target explicitly this context. This speeds up the shopping process and provides a better shopping experience.
Benefits
- Increased productivity - by reducing time for ordering products
- Reduction of maverick buying - regular users may only order predefined products, and may not purchase "out-of-scope" products
- Procurement governance - For each context specific approval processes may be defined, leading to faster and more controllable purchasing processes.
- Multi-Tier Purchasing Knowledge-Management - Each of the purchasing participants can bring its knowledge to the table and through this reduce complexity and changes for wrong purchasing decisions
Roles in the context based ordering process
Especially the knowledge management for the context is a central functionality for the context based ordering process to work. For optimal results, these roles work together in this way:
General management
The general management creates the context based shopping purpose once. After this is done, the corresponding available contexts are managed in the context definition process. In this process, each of these contexts receives basic informaiton:
- generally available product groups for this product
- generally usable category structure with attached search attributes
- assigns team members and team roles
Typically the context is created with default values for all other settings, so that the shopping experiece does not always has to be redefined from zero, but requires punctual fine-tuning by the following roles.
Strategic buyer role
After the opening of the context these data need to be defined:
- suppliers available for online ordering
- suppliers available for preordering at predefined pickup-sites
- products available for internal ordering (and internal fulfillment)
- internally available for internal ordering (and pickup at predefined pickup-sites)
Context operative manager role
After the context is opened the operative manager:
- further manages available products to the context, reducing the products with the knowledge he has on work to delivery and goods required for this project.
- manages team members
- manages approval strategies inside the contexts teams
Demand side role
This role is creating demand by using the shop
Demand leader role
This role has the same functionality as the demand side role, extended by approval functionality for demand before the purchasing process is triggered.
Context defining objects
Each of these objects allow the definition of a individual procurement contexts
- business participant groups
- teams
- projects
- project phase
- workplace types
- organization units
It allows predefined stakeholders of a context based ordering process to work together in a collaborative environment. Typical stakeholders are:
- Strategic buyer
- Organization's operative buyers / lead buyers
- Operative team managers
- Team members
Ultimately the context based ordering assistant allows team members to shop from a product sortiment, which is narrowed down to exactly the demand and organizational requirements.
Example for team ordering in the domain of Personal Protective Equipment
This example is typical for personal protective equipment, which is highly regulated as it ensures the protection of staff.
- The strategic buyer for personal protective equipment (PPE) defines suppliers and accepts their catalogs. These catalogs are the foundation for PPE procurement.
- The organization's PPE lead for personal protective equipment defines team type/job profile specific catalogs, predefining from which products the team managers can decide for their staff members
- Depending on the team type / job profile the team managers can adopt the entire catalogs from the PPE lead and eventually add or remove individual articles from PPE lead catalogs.
- The team member will only see the products made available from its team leads.