Contract comparison

Question

Dear All,
Is there anything like contract comparison in MM the way we do Quotation comparison?  The business practice followed at client is, there are 20 different subsidiaries of one Group of Companies and all of them deal with common set of vendors. Now, they do not want to go for centrally agreed contracts. Each of the companies have different contracts with same vendors for the services procured. But , for same type of services, the vendor charge differently to all subsidiaries, Client wants to keep track of it and want to compare the contracts/values before they raise purchase order and assign the contract as the source of supply. Is this possible? Please suggest the best practice for solving this as well.
Thanks in Advance,
Binita Joshi

Answer 1

Dear Binita,
In the such case there is no available process for the contract comparison. You can use the following as per the convenience:
1) Create a Z development. It is a tedious job as there will not be limited fixed parameters for comparison!
2) In the SAP the reference purchase organization can be used effectively. The configuration is required to create the reference purchase organization. The reference purchase organization can be assigned to the existing purchase organization. The Contracts can be created with the reference purchase organization. This will help you to track the contracts created, you can refer to these contract in the future, The comparison process is again offline, it will help in tracking/ searching/ approval of the contracts as per the requirement.
3) you can create a separate document type as per the requirement.
I think the creation of the reference purchase organization will be helpful and more effective.
check the configuration
SPRO - Enterprise Structure -Assignment - Materials Management - Assign purch. organization to reference purch. organization
Here is the description :
Assign purch. organization to reference purch. organization
    In this step, you can make the appropriate settings to enable the
    purchasing staff of your enterprise to work with conditions and contract
    release orders on a cross-purchasing-organization basis.
    It is then possible for:
    o   The conditions of a reference purchasing organization to be used by
        other purchasing organizations for the purpose of price
        determination
    o   Several purchasing organizations to access the contracts of a
        certain reference purchasing organization
    Activities
    Assign the desired purchasing organizations to a reference purchasing
    organization.
    Note:
    You can assign several purchasing organizations to one reference
    purchasing organization, but each individual purchasing organization
    should be assigned to just one reference purchasing organization.
Hope this helps.