Mandatory standards are enforced in categorization – the SciQuest Scientific Taxonomy and UNSPSC – and unit of measures and product sizes (ANSI/ISO).  The catalog validation process also provides standards support for important attributes that are required for the scientific community; such as CAS number, purity, attributes related to controlled substance and hazardous substance regulations, etc. At any stage of the validation and loading processes, detailed feedback will be given to the supplier in the validation reports.

Most suppliers have no problems delivering catalogs in the correct formats with the SciQuest toolset.  However, if suppliers require more extensive support, the SciQuest Supplier Support team is available to educate the supplier in detail as well as help with proper formatting and technical validation of the content.

Additional Catalog Management Services:

• Categorization – Suppliers can use an additional SciQuest service to categorize the content correctly in the deep SciQuest scientific categories. There may be a nominal fee for the supplier for this categorization service.
• Diversity suppliers – SciQuest identifies diversity suppliers for its customers using the Austin-Tetra / Equifax standard service.  This service is offered at no cost.
• Data Quality Reports – Suppliers and buyers in the network receive periodic updates on the content quality of the hosted catalogs in the network.  These reports are used by customers and suppliers alike to identify opportunities to improve the end-user experience and to maintain a high quality of data in the catalogs.

For more information about Hosted Catalogs, visit HERE.

SciQuest has fully adopted cXML as the business-to-business standard for its document exchanges with suppliers. Today, cXML is the de facto standard for electronic commerce document exchange. SciQuest also supports selected EDI transactions over the internet.

To view the SciQuest cXML Integration Specification document, which outlines all of our cXML Integrations, open it HERE.

Find out more about the cXML standard at http://www.cxml.org

When a search is performed, the Best Match list of items, suggested forms, suppliers and contracts displays.  The Best Match list is determined by the criteria entered, the type of search being performed, and the priority order described below.  (Note:  The result list can be re-sorted as described above.)

1)  Keyword Relevance:  The most important criteria in determining search results order is matching the keyword(s) entered by the user.

Exact matches display first.  Part number matches display first.  Then exact matches for product descriptions from suppliers and keyword information for contracts, suppliers and forms display.

Partial matches for part number display second.  For example, if a portion of the SKU is searched on.

Flexible matches display third.  If part of a phrase is present in the description, or part of a word is matched.

2) Preferences:  Within each relevance grouping in search results, the results display in the following order:

Custom Catalog Attributes – These organization specific attributes display first.

Supplier Preferences – Supplier preferences set up at the category-level display, the general supplier preferences.  These preferences are commonly identified with an icon defined by the organization.

Favorites – Shared favorites (for organization, department, etc) display, then personal favorites.

By virtue of these factors for sorting the search results, buying organization can truly drive spend to their preferred vendors.  The preferential treatment of a supplier will escalate that supplier’s products in an equally relevant set of search results.  Suppliers who have Preferred Positioning have been proven to increase sales to that buying organization.

You will only have access to your own Punch-out site and no other users on the ChemLife demo site will have access to your Punch-out.

To get access to your Punch-out site on ChemLife, you will need to contact Bonita Nettles, the Manager of our Supplier Network Services team.  She can be emailed at bnettles@sciquest.com.

You will need to provide us with the basic credentials to set up your punch-out.  We will need the Punch-out url (the url that we’ll send the PunchoutSetupRequest message to) as well as the Message Elements from the bottom of page 41 in the cXML Integration Specification.

We will then do three things to get the Punch-out Integration set up for your site.

1. We will configure the Punch-out credentials that you have provided us.
2. We will create a UserID and a generic password for you on the ChemLife site and send you the url to login.  Once you log in, you can update your password through the profile tab.
3. We will give your UserID access only to your own Punch-out.

When you log in to ChemLife, you will see the icon for your supplier organization.  When you click on that icon, we will initiate the Punch-out by sending the PunchoutSetupRequest message with the credentials provided, to the Punch-out url that you provided.

Through a demo site called ChemLife we can give you access to shop content for suppliers loaded on that site, including your own.

The one caveat is this:  any pricing that you loaded for the ChemLife “customer” can be viewed by any other supplier that may also have access to this demo site.  There are many suppliers that have access to ChemLife.  Therefore, we highly recommend that you load either List Price or “Dummy” pricing of $9.99 (or something similar) for all of your products on ChemLife.

To get access to ChemLife, you will need to contact SciQuest support at support@sciquest.com.   Support will need to do two things for you.

1. They will create a relationship between your supplier organization and the customer called ChemLife.  This will allow you to load pricing to this new “customer”.  The price file that you load will be automatically approved on this site.  It may take several hours after Syndication for the prices to be searchable due to the indexing of the prices within the database.
2. They will create a UserID and a generic password for you on the ChemLife site and send you the url to login.  Once you log in, you can update your password through the profile tab.

If you do not want your content to remain visible for any extended period of time, after you do your own testing, you can load a new Price File for the ChemLife “customer” that removes all pricing.  To do that, replace all of the previous pricing with an X in the new Price File.  Once that new Price File Syndicates, all of your content will no longer be visible to all ChemLife shoppers (including you).

A training snippet is available in your Supplier Portal to walk you through the steps.  The training snippet is found by logging into your portal and going to the Document Library tab.   Under the section titled “Training Snippets, Webinars, and more”, click on the Training Site link.  On the left side of your screen is a small green box called Supplier Library.  In the Supplier Library box you will select Document Library.  You will now see a large Document Library box displayed and a section called Training Snippets.  In this section, you will see Supplier Training Site with an Access link.  Click on the Access link and it will bring up the available training snippets for you to select.

A training snippet is available in your Supplier Portal to walk you through the steps.  The training snippet is found by logging into your portal and going to the Document Library tab.   Under the section titled “Training Snippets, Webinars, and more”, click on the Training Site link.  On the left side of your screen is a small green box called Supplier Library.  In the Supplier Library box you will select Document Library.  You will now see a large Document Library box displayed and a section called Training Snippets.  In this section, you will see Supplier Training Site with an Access link.  Click on the Access link and it will bring up the available training snippets for you to select.

You can do this on the Item/Price tab > Items tab in your Supplier Portal.

A training snippet is available in your Supplier Portal to walk you through the steps.  The training snippet is found by logging into your portal and going to the Document Library tab.   Under the section titled “Training Snippets, Webinars, and more”, click on the Training Site link.  On the left side of your screen is a small green box called Supplier Library. In the Supplier Library box you will select Document Library.  You will now see a large Document Library box displayed and a section called Training Snippets.  In this section, you will see Supplier Training Site with an Access link.  Click on the Access link and it will bring up the available training snippets for you to select.

• NON-PO INVOICES:  Customer can control whether or not they want to allow the supplier to send invoices that are not associated with a Purchase Order in the system.
• NON PO LINE ITEMS:  Customer can control whether or not they want to allow the supplier to send invoices that include line items that were not on the associated Purchase Order.
  • I.E.  PO has 4 lines and the Invoice has 5 lines…first 4 match, but 5^th is a new line item.
• SUBSTITUTE LINE ITEMS:  Customers can control whether or not they want to allow the supplier to send invoices that include substitute line items (a part number that does not match the part number on the associated PO).
  • I.E. Invoice has the same number of line items as the PO, but one of the line items has a different SKU
• DUPLICATE SUPPLIER INVOICE NUMBERS:  Customer can control whether or not they want to allow the supplier to send invoices with the same Supplier Invoice Number as an invoice previously sent into the system.