Catalog Management & Digital Commerce

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Catalog Management & Digital Commerce Process

Catalog management and Digital Commerce at GSA encompasses all the actions that vendors and the GSA workforce take to submit, review and publish, access and retrieve, and maintain catalog data for products that can be ordered on GSAAdvantage.

Starting with the launch of the FAS Cloud Platform (FCP) on 3/20/2023, vendors can now submit MAS product and services catalogs via the FCP. Products are submitted, validated against the Authoritative Catalog Repository (ACR), enriched with compliance and pricing market research from XSB’s Price Point API, reviewed and approved by the acquisition workforce, committed to the ACR, and published to GSAAdvantage. Services are submitted, validated against the Authoritative Catalog Repository (ACR), reviewed and approved by the acquisition workforce, committed to the ACR, price lists are generated and published to GSAAdvantage, eLibrary and eBuy. 

Vendors are supported in this journey by the Vendor Support Center Help Desk team, the modernized VSC website with a focus on helping vendors get their first contract, researching/resolving contract maintenance/compliance issues, or reporting and analyzing your contract sales.

These systems provide the backbone of a modern Catalog Management and Digital Commerce solution that supports agency product quality, compliance and risk management moving forward.

Catalog Management Process

FAS’s approximately forty (40) unique procurement channels have disparate policies, processes, and systems, and each of these procurement channels contain FAS catalogs that are accessed through various websites, portals, and tools. The lack of a single interface complicates the catalog navigation process and the user experience, leading to frustration by all stakeholders.

This frustration has been addressed through modernization of the catalog management systems, including FCP and ACR. FCP provides a shared user interface among Vendors, Workforce, and Helpdesk Support, so that all users see the same content in the same format, if the user has permissions to view the content. This catalog data is stored in ACR, which serves as a new “back-end” catalog data repository that simplifies GSA’s current catalog management data storage. The modernization of these two systems provide catalog users with:

• Simplified, intuitive user interface
• Streamlined and more efficient market research and approval processes
• Simpler, automated contract processes that lower administrative burden
• More accurate real-time information on applications like GSA Advantage.

Digital Commerce Process

GSA Advantage is the online shopping system that provides access to millions of supplies (products) and services from thousands of federal contractors. GSA Advantage is designed to facilitate shopping as well as market research, and ensures buyers are getting GSA-negotiated prices, and dealing with GSA-approved sources.

Catalog Management & Digital Commerce Systems

Catalog Management System Flow

1. Vendors initiate contract modifications in eMod. If the modification type requires a change to the Seller’s profile or Catalog, the vendor is redirected to the FAS Catalog Platform to complete the modification action.
2. Vendor logs into FCP and continues the modification and starts the catalog action. As part of the catalog action, the Vendor submits a product file, services plus file, price proposal template, photos, and potentially a terms and conditions file. FCP validates the product file and sends the catalog to the Authoritative Catalog Repository (ACR) for contract, and product/services file validation against the contract and product/services schema.
3. ACR sends validated \ product files to the PricePoint API (PPAPI) for compliance and pricing enrichment.
4. The PPAPI analyzes the products for compliance and pricing issues and sends enriched product data back to the ACR, who then makes it available to the FCP for the generation of the Compliance and Pricing (C&P) report.
5. Vendor receives a notification that the C&P report is available, logs into FCP, assesses the file, corrects compliance and pricing issues, and submits the file for workforce review and approval.
6. Workforce reviews the vendor submission and either requests clarification, or approves the submission in FSSOnline and FCP.
7. Approved products, services, images and T&C files are sent to the ACR and committed.

Digital Commerce System Flow

GSA Advantage, eBuy and eLibary serve as the front-end customer-facing sites where government agencies can search and browse published product and services catalog information

8. Committed ACR Product Catalogs, Services Price Lists, Seller Profile updates, terms and conditions files, Images, and Temporary Price Reductions are put in queue for publication on GSAAdvantage, eBuy and eLibrary.
9. Once the data becomes available on GSAAdvantage, buyers and Vendors can go to GSAAdvantage to browse and search for approved products, images, services price lists and T&C files.

Individual System Information