iProcurement Interview Questions

1: What is iProcurement

A: iProcurement is a self-service web Purchasing applicaiton.  Consider it as an alternate application for creating purchase requisitions and simple receiving.

2: What is a Punchout

A: This is a mechanism by which buyers can navigate to Suppliers website straight from iProcurement.  Once the shopping is finished, they then checkout the basket on suppliers website itself following which the shopping basket is brought back to iProcurement.  Shopping basket is nothing but a returned XML file that contains the list/quantity/price of items checked out from supplier website.

3: Do we create a Purchase Orders in iProcurement?

A: No, we can create Purchase Requisitions in iProcurement

4: What are the key advantages of punchout over catalog management?

A: a) No need to maintain the price information. Supplier will maintain it at there end in the iStore

    b) No need to upload supplier item in our system

5: When shopping basket is brought back from suppliers website after punchout, how does the item category code of supplier item get mapped to the category code in Oracle?

A: Suppliers punchout basket will always contained universally recognized category codes i.e. UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code) Codes.  You will need to define the mapping for each such expected code in eCommerce gateway. These will be mapped to your inventory category codes (MTL_CATEGORIES)

6: We need to submit PO creation as soon as the Requisition gets submitted & auto-approved in iProcurement.  How can we do it?

A: In Workflow "PO Requisition Approval", the item attribute "SEND_CREATEDPO_TO_BACKGROUND" needs to be assign a value N.  This will enable Real-Time processing of requisition mainly because the user can get a PO Number within the same browser session if auto-approval is enabled.

7: If a requisition has been approved in iProcurement, we want such requisition to be Auto-Approved once they get converted to PO.  How you achieve it?

A: In Workflow "PO Create Documents", assign a default value Y to attribute "Is Automatic Approval Allowed"

8: After the purchase order gets approved, you wish to send Purchase Order electronically to the supplier, which XML document format is used?

A: "PO 007" is the OAG format that is used for electronically sending XML Purchase Order to supplier

9: What is Zero Buyer Intervention?

A: Once the requisition is completely approved and required automatic approval steps performed, the PO is created automatically and approved. The same can  then be sent to the supplier through FAX or EDI and material received against it.  Thus one does not has to go through the purchasing department where in the buyer would call for an RFQ, then go through the process of calling quotations, followed by the quotation analysis.  Converting quotations into PO, going through the PO approval process and finally sending it to the supplier.

10: Where does the value default from in the account distribution for expense items in core Purchasing and in iProcurement?

A: For the expense items the value in account distribution in core Purchasing defaults from the expense item attribute set in the item Attribute Level in Purchasing tab field if its not there then from the Organizations Parameters Expense Valuation Accounts in the Costing information tabbed region.

In case of iProcurement for expense items the value in the account distribution defaults from the employee record.