What is OCI (Open Catalog Interface)?

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OCI (Open Catalog Interface) is a standard developed by SAP that connects a supplier’s online catalog directly to a buyer’s procurement system, so purchasing staff can shop the supplier’s store from inside SAP and send the cart back as a requisition. It’s SAP’s protocol for enabling PunchOut catalogs — the equivalent of what cXML does in the Ariba world.

Functionally, OCI defines the “punch out” round trip. A buyer working in their SAP procurement system clicks the supplier, is passed — already authenticated — into the supplier’s storefront, browses contract-specific pricing, and builds a cart. OCI then transfers that cart back into SAP as a ready-to-approve requisition, with no manual re-keying, so the buyer’s approval and budgeting controls stay in charge of the actual order.

OCI matters because SAP procurement is widespread among large enterprises, and those buyers expect suppliers to support their standard. A supplier that can’t speak OCI often can’t sell to SAP-driven procurement accounts at all — the same way ANSI X12 or cXML are effectively mandatory in other buyer ecosystems. Supporting it turns a supplier into a valid option for a large class of enterprise buyers.

In ecommerce, OCI support is delivered as an integration between the storefront and the buyer’s SAP system. On Adobe Commerce, it sits on top of the native B2B module as custom integration work — the storefront must expose the right catalog and pricing, handle the authenticated hand-off, and return the cart in the exact format SAP expects. Like every procurement integration, it’s only as reliable as the pricing and catalog data behind it.