SKU Based Contract Management in an Electronic Procurement System

Abstract

A single instance, multi-tenant procurement system, includes an access module to provide access to a plurality of end users associated with an organization to their respective accounts, each account being customized by a super user of the organization, a search engine to execute searches for products offered by one or more suppliers, a transaction module to process and track one or more requisitions generated by the plurality of end users, a business rules module to apply business rules established between the organization and the one or more suppliers to process the requisitions, and a data repository to store data generated on the system.

We claim: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method, comprising:
 at a server system hosting an electronic procurement system, the server system including a processor and a memory storing programs for execution by the server system:
 receiving a user request to associate one or more item attributes with a contract between a user organization and a supplier or catalog, wherein an item attribute describes an item characteristic without specifying a particular catalog item; 
 associating the one or more item attributes with the contract; and 
 after associating the one or more item attributes with the contract.