IBM General Procurement is committed to lowering costs of procurement by creating and using highly automated supply-chain systems worldwide. As a result, it is strategic for IBM to create an environment of cooperation with our suppliers by having them send offerings to IBM’s internal procurement system for hands-free procurement of products and services. IBM General Procurement’s requisitioning and catalog system, includes a function for loading, managing, categorizing, and controlling access to offerings supplied from external or internal sources. The goal of this process is to make it simple, expedient, and cost effective for current and potential suppliers to use their existing product catalog delivery systems for transmitting those offerings to IBM.
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All catalog suppliers shall provide identification and characteristic data in ISO 8000-110:2009 compliant electronic format on any of the items covered in this contract for the purpose of creating a standardized master data record. The required item attributes (to include properties and characteristics) will be identified per United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) to the supplier by the assigned IBM catalog manager. The required attributes are based upon the Electronic Commerce Code Management Association's (ECCMA) ISO standard and are subject to modification to support IBM's business requirements.
Service level agreement (SLA) for catalog suppliers
All new contracts with trading partners regarding catalog provisioning must include a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for governing the quality of content provided by suppliers of catalogs. The IBM Relationship Manager will ensure the terms of the SLA document is made part of the negotiation process. If not in place at the time a catalog is requested for deployment, a 30-day exception will be granted for implementing the SLA. A copy of this document is provided below for your review.
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All files must be provided in CSV format. The following Microsoft Excel document is intended to help those who manually create their file rather than doing so with an automated process:
- Required attributes have red column headers.
- Do not delete any columns. If you are not providing a value. Leave it blank (unless required).
- We load catalogs several times per day, and the most prevalent cause of outdated products and prices being placed on IBM Purchase Orders (POs) for catalog items is the result of outdated catalog content. This is most often the result of re-loads failing due to formatting issues (see mapping instructions document above). For this reason, the example spreadsheet includes some macros that will allow you to perform basic input and formatting validations. These macros will check for the most common formatting/input errors.
- Prior to sending your file to IBM, be sure it is saved as a CSV file type.
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The following chemicals and lead acid batteries require flagging as chemicals in Buy on demand hosted catalogs. Lead acid batteries include batteries used as uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). These chemicals and lead acid batteries cannot be listed in ShopOut catalogs. If you have a question regarding whether or not an item in a catalog is a chemical, please contact Doug Johnson at:
dougj@us.ibm.com.
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The purchase of certain tools and equipment can introduce hazards in the workplace. Other items may require specialized knowledge for the user to safely use or operate them. To minimize the potential for increased risk or injury, the IBM requires occupational safety and health review and approval purchase before the purchase of these tools or equipment. To ensure the necessary review and approval of tools and equipment posing safety concerns, items in the categories below must be flagged for occupational safety and health review in Buy On Demand catalogs. Items requiring occupational safety and health review can not be listed in ShopOut catalogs.
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Suppliers of catalogs will provide appropriate United Nations standard products and services codes (UNSPSC) for all products by utilizing version
11_1201 of the
UNSPSC product classification. Please visit the
UNSPSC Web site for details regarding the UNSPSC process and a list of UNSPSC codes.
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