SAP Ariba PunchOut - Challenges and Resolution

Let's talk about some of the challenges you as SAP Ariba consultant might face while delivering a punchout supplier assignment. This article is a follow-up to my earlier article on punchout which you can read here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/sap-ariba-punchout-what-when-how-debadatta-dash/?trackingId=CF7k%2FA%2BBn%2BzruUbWYUvr6g%3D%3D

First, the elephant in the room. Overestimating the IT capabilities of the supplier. This is the single biggest reason that often causes major chunk of issues ranging from delay in the timelines to non-delivery of the agreed scope and everything in-between. It is vital to assess the IT ability of the supplier by having meetings with both business and IT teams of the supplier and asking them about their past punchout experiences (with or without Ariba in scope). SAP Ariba has particular standards that the supplier needs to adhere to when it comes to the CXML setup. If they are new to this kind of scenario, take agreed timeline with a pinch of salt and keep some buffer. Remember, it is the supplier's IT team that need to deliver most of the technical configurations. You can only support by providing them the information, but they need to do it on their side.

Now, that being said, here are five specific challenges I have come across and how to deal with those:

1> Error when supplier is trying to load the catalog in Ariba Network:

This is probably an issue the supplier will encounter at the very first step when they are uploading the punchout catalog from their side. This would be most probably because the supplier onboarding isn't complete. Do note that the supplier having an enterprise account and having the trading relationship established with your Ariba downstream is not enough to start the punchout transaction. SAP Ariba's catalog onboarding team needs to be involved and they need to complete their internal onboarding process. Align with your Ariba CEE and ensure that you have a catalog specialist from Ariba with whom you are aligning on regular basis. Once you receive a green light from Ariba side about completion of their onboarding, ask the supplier to upload the catalog again.

2> Ariba Network Full Subscription Synchronization Job Error:

This is an issue you might face if you have been dealing with all internal catalog so far, and the punchout setup at hand is the first supplier managed catalog. Though the supplier has uploaded the punchout catalog successfully from their side, you don't receive any notification regarding same. That's because the relevant job hasn't run, since it never had to, in the past. Even if you are trying to do it manually by triggering it from the core administration area, you are getting an error.

Raise a service request in this case and get into a call with SAP Ariba support. They should be able to solve this.

If you have a parent-child setup in Ariba side, ideally the catalog loading happens in parent, whereas ordering happens in child. It is possible that even though you find the catalog in parent in activated status, you don't see it in child. A shared secret (apparently there is a specific shared secret just for catalog) reset should solve this issue. Take SAP Ariba help in this case by creating a high priority request. Always ask SAP Ariba to take care of resetting shared secret and related tasks, do not try to do it on your own.

3> Error while trying to connect supplier's punchout site from Ariba P2P portal:

Now, once you have solved the catalog availability issues, it is possible that when you click on the "Buy from supplier" button, the system doesn't take you to the punchout portal, but throws an error instead. Error message like "Unable to connect to PunchOut Catalog. If problem persists, ask your system administrator for assistance."

Most likely, you will find the resolution here: https://helpcenter.ariba.com/index.html?sap-language=en#/item&/i/124906

4> Error while returning from supplier's punchout portal:

This is the most common error you will come across. This is due to wrong data the system identifies when you are trying to checkout from the punchout environment after adding the items. Ensure that the commodity code, the unit of measure and other details are configured correctly by the supplier and it is sending those details in the right fields as part of the punchout order message (POOM).

5> Punchout PR for new supplier stuck in ordering status:

Even though you have managed to solve the issues with catalog load and the punchout check-in/check-out, you might still face error while ordering the punchout items. This is most likely due to additional information you are getting when you checked out from supplier side with you items. See if you are getting values like discount or charges for example, which you are not supposed to get. Ask the supplier not to send any values in fields which were not agreed upon.

Additionally, keep an eye on things like UNSPSC - Custom commodity mapping, Approval setup, receiving requirements (manual receipt/auto receipt/no receipt), invoicing requirements and exceptions to ensure the end-to-end flow is taken care of. Usually the punchout is part of your catalog buying channel, hence all checks and balances that apply to your catalog channel should be applicable on it too.