What Is Punchout and Why Does It Matter?
Institutional buyers — universities, hospitals, government agencies — do not place orders on your website the way consumers do. They use procurement systems like SAP Ariba, Coupa, and Jaggaer. Punchout is the protocol that connects your catalog to their procurement system so buyers can shop your products without leaving their workflow.
Without punchout, you are invisible to institutional procurement. With it, a buyer clicks a button in Ariba, lands in your catalog, fills a cart, and the order flows back into their purchase order system automatically.
Middleware vs. Native: Why We Build Direct
Most punchout implementations use middleware — companies like TradeCentric or Punchout2Go sit between your store and the procurement system. They charge $15,000-$50,000 per year in licensing fees, and you are dependent on their uptime and their roadmap.
Fowara builds punchout natively into your platform. We parse cXML directly, handle SSO handshakes, manage cart transfer, and inject orders — all in code we write and you own. No middleware licensing fees. No dependency on a third party.
Institutions We Have Connected
Our punchout implementations are live with institutional buyers including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University, Penn State, and multiple Ariba Network buyers. We support both cXML and OCI protocols.
Published Pricing
| Service | Price | What's Included |
|---|---|---|
| First Punchout Connection | $15,000 setup + $2,000/month | cXML or OCI integration, SSO, cart transfer, order injection, buyer testing |
| Additional Connections | $3,500 each | Each new procurement system connection after the first |
| Punchout Monitoring | Included in retainer | Real-time connection monitoring, error alerting, buyer support |