Understanding Contract Syndication

When you syndicate a contract, you publish the contract from a parent system (PeopleSoft) to another single or multiple third-party systems (remote systems). After syndication, the contract is available on the remote system from which remote users can create purchase orders and process receipts, vouchers, and returns to vendors.

The publishing process is achieved through PeopleSoft Integration Broker outbound message processing for the entire contract or for certain changes to the contract, such as new contract lines. After receiving the syndicated contract or its changes, remote users can create purchase orders or perform other actions using the syndicated contract.

When the third-party system has the capability, its users can send certain updates back to the parent system so that you have an aggregate view of activity using the parent system. The Syndication feature makes it possible to share contracts by using a framework that enables contract execution processing in remote systems with overall contract management and performance tracking taking place in the PeopleSoft Purchasing application that resides on the parent system.

The Syndication feature in Supplier Contract Management facilitates the exchange of contract information between systems so that remote systems can use the centralized parent system's contract pricing information. Using this contract-sharing feature, you have the framework for managing contracts in disparate systems as the overall contract management and performance tracking takes place in the PeopleSoft system.

Using the Syndication feature, you can:

• Define and publish current contract information from Purchasing contracts to remote systems.

• Receive and consolidate contract-related activity from remote systems.

• Create a contract in Purchasing (contract import) from another system.

  This is a general inbound contract message for the PeopleSoft system and is not specific to the Syndication process.

  See the Review Inbound Contract Exceptions Page.

  Note: These topic describe the process for using the PeopleSoft system with third-party systems. It's assumed that remote systems use inbound and outbound message publishing programs that are compatible with PeopleSoft publishing programs. This means that any related setup data, such as suppliers, items, or units of measure, on the remote system supports the inbound contract message. Supplier Contract Management syndication syndicates only contract information and not the setup information.

You can syndicate contracts from either the contract component, or schedule the syndication using batch processing. When syndicating a contract, the system initially publishes the entire contract. For subsequent syndications, you can either publish contract changes or republish the entire contract.

This diagram describes the syndication flow of a contract between parent and remote or child systems:

You maintain the syndicated contract using the PeopleSoft parent system, but you can use remote systems to release purchase orders, receipts, and vouchers against the contract. You can set up service operations and routings to process these activities which are sent back to the parent system.

For additional information about setting up the parent system, see .Setup Requirements

This topic provides high-level steps that you use with the Syndication feature to manage contracts between the PeopleSoft parent system and third-party remote systems. To syndicate the current version of a contract:

1. Use the parent system to set up the syndication system.

   This includes defining installation options, nodes, and remote locations.

   See Setting Up Contract Syndication.

2. Create a contract in the PeopleSoft parent system.

   Use the Purchase Order process option when adding a contract for syndication so that the PeopleSoft system can syndicate it to multiple remote systems. This process option supports sharing contract pricing information with multiple remote systems. You can only syndicate contracts that use other process options to a single remote system.

   See Defining Contracts for Syndication.

3. Syndicate the contract from the PeopleSoft parent system.

   You define the remote systems that can use the contract and reference which remote systems are to receive the contract definition. When the processing option is Purchase Order, you can specify multiple remote systems.

   When you syndicate a contract the first time, the system publishes the entire contract. The parent system tracks contract changes after the syndicated date and time so that with subsequent syndication of the contract, the system sends only the contract header, lines, and categories that have been modified.

   Note: The child system's inbound contract processing must be capable of supporting net changes to contracts and correctly interpreting any new lines versus changed lines as a part of the inbound processing.

   See Syndicating Supplier Contracts.

4. Remote systems receive contract information into their own processing framework.

   This depends on the remote system. Using remote systems, you map the contract to a contract import definition that PeopleSoft publishes.

5. Remote systems execute contract lines and summarized and publish summary information back to the PeopleSoft parent system.

   This information might include, for example, purchase orders, receipts, and voucher amounts. The remote system must include the capability to publish the contract activity back to the PeopleSoft parent system.

6. After receiving contract activities from the remote system, capture the parent activities.

   You perform this process in the parent system to capture any additional parent activity information for contracts that use the Purchase Order process option. This is how the system creates a consolidated view of information for viewing in the Review Contract Activity component.

   See Capturing Parent Activities.

7. Review contract activity for both the parent and remote nodes.

   Use this feature to review transactions against the parent contract. You can view both local (parent) and syndicated (remote) activity and navigate to view activities for specific remote systems.

   See Reviewing Contract Activities.

8. Publish the updated contract back to the remote systems using outbound messages.

   You can publish the entire contract again or only the updates made to the parent contract definition.

   See Publishing Outbound Messages.

Supplier Contract Management uses integration points to exchange information between the PeopleSoft system and third party-related programs or processes. Integration points process information (service operations) between the two systems.

• CS_PROCUREMENT_CNTRCT

  Contract syndication is implemented with the service operation that you define using the CONTRACT_SYNDICATION queue. The system uses the service operation to send the contract and contract changes to remote systems. The system sends changes for certain child records along with the parent record for outbound syndication.

• CS_ACTIVITY_CNTRCT

  Inbound activity updates are implemented with the CS_ACTIVITY_CNTRCT service operation that you define in the CONTRACT_SYNDICATION queue. The published activities from third parties can include summaries of purchase orders, receipts, and vouchers that are received and processed by this service operation.