Purchasing

Purpose

In the purchasing area, Professional Services supports the management of purchase contracts and their business assignment to customer and sales-contract scenarios. This keeps vendor, customer, and recurring-service relationships visible in one shared view.

Business value

• purchase contracts can be maintained with vendor, validity period, and optional customer assignment
• sales contracts can be linked to purchase contracts for transparency
• purchasing-related scenarios can be connected to contract-based and service-based processes

Functional focus

Purchase contracts

Purchase contracts define the contractual framework with vendors. The header typically contains the vendor, the validity period, and, where needed, the related customer.

Contract lines and assignments

Within the purchase contract, you maintain the services or items to be procured together with quantity, validity period, and purchase price. In addition, purchase contracts can be linked to sales contracts to make dependencies transparent.

Triggering purchase orders

Once a purchase contract is activated, it can be considered in batch purchase-order generation. Alternatively, purchase orders can be triggered directly from the contract.

Outcome

The purchasing functions of Professional Services create transparency for vendor contracts and their relationship to customer-facing service models. For the process perspective, use the dedicated process catalog as the companion.