Basic Supplier Purchasing Model

The most straightforward supplier and trading partner purchasing model, which allows for customer order workflow to be performed, involves the supplier sending an electronic version of their product catalog to the trading partner. The trading partner provides the infrastructure through which the customer interacts with the catalog, basket, and order (the infrastructure could be a Web site or an equivalent procurement application). The following figure illustrates this model, and shows how the supplier's role is limited to sending the product catalog and receiving orders after the order workflow has successfully occurred. As opposed to the retail scenario, the trading partner maintains a copy of the catalog (at some level of detail), the only instance of the basket, and the original version of the order.

Basic supplier purchasing model

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