i/s Back Issues

Volume 17

No. 3  January/February 2002

Changes Coming to ECAT, MIT's Electronic Catalog

Lee Ridgway and Lorraine Rappaport

Over the next few months, those who do purchasing for MIT through ECAT will see some changes.

Computer Equipment
Look for the following vendor changes in the area of computer hardware, software, and other equipment.

	MIT is terminating its contract with NECX as of March 31, 2002. NECX's customized MIT catalog will be available for Institute and personal purchases until the cutoff date. Because orders will be accepted through March 31, there will be a transition time for deliveries, back orders, invoices, credits, and returns.
	PC Connection and Dell are being added to the ECAT vendor list to replace NECX for MIT purchases. Special pricing for MIT purchases will be offered by both vendors.
	PC Connection offers a much larger catalog than NECX. It will be the place to go for Apple products, including MIT-recommended systems, other (non-Dell) computer hardware, peripherals, accessories, and software. You will also be able to make personal purchases through PC Connection at MIT's special prices.
	MIT purchases of Dell Windows systems will be done through the Dell ECAT catalog. These systems may be custom-configured for options such as memory, hard drive, and monitor. For personal purchases of Dell equipment, go to http://www.dell.com/ (MIT discounts do not apply to personal purchases.)

Office Furniture
MIT Procurement is working with Creative Office Pavilion to make it easier to select, price, and purchase Herman Miller office furniture, such as chairs, desks, tables, cabinets, and cubicle dividers. Creative Office Pavilion is preparing a Web catalog for MIT that will feature Institute-recommended products. The site will help MIT purchasers select and configure Herman Miller products, and submit the order to Creative Office Pavilion for a quote; the quote will then be forwarded to Procurement for approval.

Hardware (Nuts 'n' Bolts)
Grainger has been selected as the vendor partner for maintenance, repair, and operations supplies. Their comprehensive catalog features equipment, tools, parts, and other materials related to facilities management and upkeep. Grainger is upgrading their catalog with improved navigation, additional search and tracking options, and easier integration with customer systems, such as ECAT.

Delivery Service
MIT's designated shipping vendor is DHL. Offices can now prepare, track, request pickups, and handle billing for their outgoing shipments through the Web Shipping option on the DHL Web site. For electronic billing, it is crucial that the cost object be entered in the shipper's reference field.

Registration is required to use Web Shipping for MIT purposes. For details, call John Goddard in the Procurement Office at x3-8383.

More Vendor Information
Once these new vendors are in place and available for general MIT use, you will be able to get more information about them and access their catalogs from the main ECAT page at http://web.mit.edu/ecat/

Behind the Scenes
With these new partners, MIT is upgrading its ECAT infrastructure to support transactions under the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). This is in addition to the Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards that MIT currently supports. ECAT uses these e-commerce standards in three ways:

	To transmit the contents of the shopping basket at the vendor's Web site to an MIT server, which then populates an SAPweb requisition;
	To send electronic purchase orders from SAP to the vendors;
	To receive electronic invoices from the vendors to post in SAP.

As more companies adopt the XML standard, MIT will have greater flexibility to add new vendor partners. All changes in back-end processing should be invisible to ECAT users.

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