Digital Integration Services FAQ

The Medline PunchOut program supports online purchasing systems, which are common in business-to-business (B2B) environments.

‘PunchOut’ is an industry terminology for purchasing supplies through the internet using an intermediary purchasing system. Business customers can select Medline.com through their purchasing system, and purchase on Medline.com on behalf of their business. These pages provide information and instructions for administrators, PunchOut users (sometimes called ‘requisitioners’ in the industry), and technical administrators.

Note: The Help Guide assumes that you have an account with Medline. If you do not have an account please contact the Medline Helpdesk

Medline Punchout Customer Experience

The PunchOut process involves a few basic steps. An employer-designated PunchOut user selects Medline.com in their purchasing system. Next, they shop on Medline.com, add products to the Cart, and submit the Cart for order approval. With PunchOut, the order approval workflow occurs within the purchasing system.

After receiving the Cart, the purchasing system automatically creates a purchase order (PO) number based on the item and quantity in the Cart. Next, it sends the purchase order to Medline through its technical systems.

Medline Punchout FAQ

E-procurement (electronic procurement) is the business-to-business (B2B), businessto-consumer (B2C) or business-to-government (B2G) purchase and sales of supplies, work and services through the Internet as well as other information and networking systems such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). E-procurement consists of many different processes which include sourcing, vendor management, catalog management, Purchase Order Integration, Order Status, Ship Notice, e-invoicing, e-payment and contract management. E-procurement in the public sector has seen rapid growth in recent years within the US and is emerging internationally. Source – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-procurement

An E-procurement system is a procurement web application that businesses use in order to facilitate electronic purchasing processes and is a tool which provides visibility into spend, management of vendors and contracts. The online vendor catalogs for e-procurement systems come in two different formats:

  1. PunchOut Catalog – vendor ecommerce web application that supplies essential information for ordering goods and services and also provides marketing and promotional forum directly to the buyers
  2. Hosted Catalog/CIF Catalog – a static product list (usually in an Excel format) that is uploaded within the e-procurement system by the vendor that provides the essential information for ordering goods and services

Medline integrates with a large number of procurement systems including: Ariba, Jaggaer (SciQuest), Lawson, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Coupa, Unimarket, Perfect Commerce, Workday, Hybrent, and many more.

Generally, for a standard PunchOut using standard cXML messaging, PunchOut implementations can be completed in couple of days. However, each business may have unique needs. Please contact your Medline Sales Representative or email helpdesk@medline.com if your specific use case is not supported.

Yes. PunchOut orders can be submitted using cXML, EDI transaction, email, fax, or phone. However, Medline preferred method of receiving a PunchOut order is cXML

Yes, Medline’s PunchOut system has the ability to restrict catalog items to a customer’s formulary list.

Yes, this can be accomplished with a formulary list.

Yes, Medline can support item numbers specified by a customer. These numbers can be found by searching our product catalog or even entered directly into the requisition

The new Medline PunchOut system allows order templates, item history, and order history.

Yes, we are a Lawson approved vendor and can support many other solutions as well; such as, Ariba, SciQuest, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Coupa to name a few

Many PunchOut customers submit their purchase orders electronically from their eProcurement systems via an EDI or cXML format. For all eProcurement systems, order submission is separate from PunchOut. Medline’s Partner Integration team (also known as the EDI team) handles this system communication and is nearly always involved with new PunchOut set-ups

Level 2 PunchOut is not currently supported.

Yes, Medline supports UNSPSC and UOM international and custom codes.

Yes, please contact your sales rep

Yes, please contact your sales rep.

Yes, please contact your sales rep to schedule a demo

If catalog is idle for more than 30 minutes, it does time out. However, that limit can be increased at your request.

No, we use two different URL for PunchOut catalog access and PO submission.

A CIF Catalog is a digital file format used to electronically communicate a product or service catalog from a supplier to a buyer. After their founding in 1996, Ariba®, a leader in electronic procurement, introduced the Catalog Interchange Format (CIF) as their standardized electronic file format for supplier catalogs. CIF has grown into a de facto standard and is widely used by hundreds of thousands of companies throughout the world

Catalog Interchange Format
CIF is a hierarchical comma separated variable (CSV) double-quoted format comprised of a file header, line data, and file trailer. The hierarchical format allows parent/child relationships, like with size/color apparel product matrixes, to be represented with relatively minor overhead.

Benefits of a CIF Catalog
The major benefit of an electronic catalog, CIF or otherwise, is that it eliminates the need for buyers to manually enter item information into their procurement system or convert files from one format to another. Through the CIF standard, suppliers can easily publish catalogs and buyers can easily import them. Instead of focusing on mundane catalog management, purchasing departments could allocate more time on spend management.

Limits of a CIF Catalog
The simplicity of the Catalog Interchange Format comes at the price of product configuration. CIF has no direct representation for product specifications, bill of materials, or product configuration rules. CIF can represent simple products or services, but cannot be used solely for items that require configuration. For configurable products, a CIF catalog is used in conjunction with a PunchOut Catalog.

Customers: Please speak with your Medline Sales Representative. Medline Sales Representatives: Create a new Helpdesk request to start a new PunchOut implementation for your customer.