OCI is SAP’s Open Catalog Interface, the punchout protocol that connects an enterprise procurement system to a supplier’s external catalog — the buyer browses the supplier’s own site and the selected basket is returned to the procurement system as form-encoded fields for requisition and approval.
OCI
OCI (Open Catalog Interface) is SAP’s answer to the same problem cXML PunchOut solves: a buying organization cannot maintain a copy of every supplier’s catalog, so instead it hands the user out to the supplier’s own storefront and takes back the basket.
- Round-trip by design - The procurement system posts a session to the supplier, the user shops on the supplier’s site, and the cart returns as name/value pairs.
- Form-encoded, not XML - OCI’s return is HTML form fields, which is simpler than cXML and older-feeling in equal measure.
- Ubiquitous in SAP estates - Any supplier selling into an SAP-based procurement organization is expected to support it.
- Catalog, not transaction - OCI covers catalog browsing and cart return; the purchase order and invoice still travel by cXML, EDI or Peppol.
Punchout is worth cataloguing because it is the most widely referenced integration mechanism in the procurement segment of The State of Supply Chain APIs — eleven providers in the cohort, including Coupa, Ariba, CDW, ServiceNow and United Rentals. It is also a useful illustration of the report’s central argument about this market: punchout works, it is universally adopted, and it was designed around a human in a browser. An agent asked to source a part cannot punch out. It needs a catalog resource it can query, and that is precisely what the segment does not publish.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This standard shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this standard in the context of a real sector.
The State of Supply Chain APIs
Eleven providers in the cohort implement punchout catalog integration — the most-referenced procurement integration standard in the market, and the report found procurement's contract quality still near the bottom of the stack.
