The OCI punch-out is encountered more and more frequently in online trading, especially in the B2B sector. In our article we give you a brief overview of the function of the OCI protocol.
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Reading time 4 minutes
Again and again we experience that our customers are asked for an OCI PunchOut. And very often the panic is great at first. What does OCI actually mean? Is it compatible with your own online shop and is it worth the effort to change the process? In this article, we would like to explain to you briefly and concisely what OCI is all about and why setting up an OCI PunchOut can be worthwhile for you as an online retailer.
What is OCI?
OCI is the abbreviation for Open Catalog Interface and is mainly used in B2B e-commerce. Briefly explained, OCI is a protocol for the exchange of shopping carts between merchandise management systems and other supplier catalogues.
What is an OCI PunchOut?
OCI is mostly mentioned in connection with the term "PunchOut". At this moment, PunchOut simply means access to the provided product catalog and the subsequent transfer of a shopping cart to the calling ERP system.
How does OCI work?
The OCI interface was developed by SAP in the 1990s. It makes it possible to call up external product catalogs from your own ERP system, fill the shopping cart and then transfer it back to the ERP system. Thanks to OCI, orders that have been researched via external web catalogues, for example, can be easily integrated into your own processes with the merchandise management system. The communication between the product catalog and the SAP system runs via the classic Internet protocols.
After the shopping cart is filled and the order is to be placed, the product data is transferred back to your SAP system. No order is placed during this transfer. This is done directly from SAP. This allows you to ensure that your company's ordering processes are adhered to. After the order has been approved, the order is sent to the supplier electronically, for example via IDOC ORDERS05.
Which data can be transferred with an OCI PunchOut?
The number of fields that can be transferred to a product within a PunchOut is severely limited. You can find an overview of the available fields in the official SAP documentation.
What are the advantages of OCI?
Thanks to OCI, your own products and goods can be displayed flexibly and linked to the standardized purchasing processes. The PunchOut enables you, as an online retailer, to always present your customers with a product catalog that is tailored to their needs and is always up-to-date. This can be used like a normal online shop.
The advantages summarized:
Simplified interface for purchasing
Products individually tailored to your customers
No manual, constantly repeated changes to the product catalogue
Vulnerabilities of OCI?
If you are considering creating an interface with OCI for your customer, you really can't go wrong. However, it should be considered in advance whether the effort required for the introduction is in balance with the number of orders placed by a customer per month.
In our experience, most customers start with OCI first and are happy with it. However, if the customer wants to implement even more within the protocol, they switch to cXML. For example, this interface can be used to display invoicing. Unfortunately, OCI is a protocol with limited capabilities.
Another problem is the technical restrictions introduced by most browsers to increase security. Among other things, it is necessary to set the X-FRAME-OPTIONS header of the HTTP protocol correctly for PunchOut sessions. If this does not happen, the customer will only see an error message in their ERP system. In addition, care must be taken to correctly label cookies so that they can be recognized by the browser in the ERP system.
OCI for PunchCommerce
If you are looking for a suitable and simple PunchOut solution, we can recommend our SaaS solution PunchCommerce. Here you have the opportunity to give your customers access to your product catalog with a simple Excel list without prior knowledge. An online shop is not absolutely necessary.
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