Buyer Group - An overview

In the business scenario a buyer represents the Purchasing Organization unit of the company. He/she interacts with the Suppliers and acts as the primary source for the material procurement through purchase channel of the company. Buyer is identified with user Login Id & user Login name. For the purposes of having a better control on the procurement process as well as to have a traceability of the purchases made, buyer groups can be defined based on any chosen criterion. Through this it is possible to clearly demarcate the responsibility of purchases depending upon the specific expertise that the user possesses. It is also possible to have buyers identified by a unique buyer code earmarked for purchasing specific part types and also have overlapping of parts across buyer codes for flexibility of purchase in case of emergencies.

Buyers are identified with User Login Id and User Login Name. The same is defined in the administrative component as a part of defining the Login user and Security Access rights and roles for the various activities. A set of such Buyers will be associated to a Buyer Group. This Buyer Group can be defined with respect to certain criteria. For example Buyer Group for the procurement of Raw material, Spares, Rotables, Services etc. The part types that can be procured by a particular buyer group should be defined and mapped for better control.

Individual Buyer can be a part of one Buyer Group in the business process. The person higher in the hierarchy of Procurement business process defines this. The Buyer will have the access rights for the following activities of various components:

• Creating, Editing and Viewing the  Purchase Order

• Creating, Editing and Viewing the Blanket Purchase Order

• Creating, Editing and Viewing the Release Slip

The status of Buyer Group can be made "Inactive" from "active" status and vice versa. The individual buyer can be added or removed from the buyer group using modify activity.

Getting familiar with the activities