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Create a Bid Request

Nas Patnugot
  • Updated

Users with the Bid Requests role see 'Sourcing' displayed in the Module Switcher. This menu allows the user to view and award existing bid requests or create new ones.

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Bid Request Summary

Once a user creates a new bid request, they are required to fill out the summary. This outlines the name, description and behavior of the bid request. The following table outlines the fields on the summary:

Field Description
Name The name of the Bid Request. This is displayed to the supplier and on all bid listings.
Description A short description about the Bid Request. This is displayed to the supplier and on all bid listings, giving them a short explanation of the request.
Type There are three types of Bid Request. A Request For Quote (RFQ) Bid Request is used to invite suppliers to bid on specific products or services that you have specified using the Item Sections. The quoted items can be added to a cart and checked out once an RFQ is awarded. Request For Proposal (RFP) and Request For Information (RFI) Bid Requests are used to invite suppliers to respond to your requirements for a commodity or service, or submit responses to questions for evaluations. You may specify Award Lines used to award the bid in place of items.
Bid Behavior This determines the type of Bid Request that is issued to suppliers. There are 3 possible types.
  • Standard: Buyers are able to view all supplier bid details as they are submitted.
  • Sealed: All supplier Bids are sealed and not viewable until the Response Date.
  • Reverse Auction: Suppliers are notified of where their Bid sits in relation to competitor bids so they can re-bid if needed. No competitor names are revealed.

Evaluation Scale

 The scale on which your evaluation rating will follow (e.q. 0-3 or 1-10). These are configured by a Community Administrator.
Allow Online Registration If enabled, a public URL for the Bid Request is created so it can be published on a bid listing site for potentially any supplier to respond and bid.
Require Company and Tax Profile If enabled, the supplier must complete their Company Profile (company information) and their Tax Profile (W9 and W8 forms US ONLY) before they can respond to the Bid Request.
Award Type This allows the user to select a Bid Award Type. The Award Types are as follows:
  • Quote: The bid is awarded based on all components of a quote. The entire quote is only awarded to one supplier.
  • Section: The bid is awarded by section, allowing the bid to be awarded to a different supplier for each section.
  • Line: The bid is awarded by each line, allowing the bid to source from several suppliers for each individual product or service.
General Category The UNSPSC category of the Bid Request for future reporting purposes.
Requester If the Bid Request was requested by a user other than the primary contact.
Contact Details The contact details of the Bid Request initiator. This should be the the user all supplier correspondence are directed towards regarding the specific Bid.

 

Sections

The 'Sections' tab is where items and questions are entered for suppliers to respond to. This is done manually, or by uploading a .csv file.

Manually Adding Sections

  • Choosing an 'Add' option allows users to create sections for items or questions.
  • 'Standard Question Section' (Question Section templates created by a Community Administrator) can also be added here.
  • When adding an 'Item Section', the user will be presented with some options for their section. Users must name each Item Section, and decide whether or not to allow substitutes for the line items. If substitutes are allowed, users can also decide whether a quote for the base product is also required.

  • Now that a section is created, required lines are added to populate the section with goods and services for suppliers to quote a cost for. Clicking '+Add Requirement' will prompt a field to enter information about these items.

  • The same process works for the 'Question Sections'. Adding a question section will prompt you with the following field.

  • At this point, questions can be added. There are three types of questions.
    1. Picklist: Suppliers are given options to choose from a list.
    2. Yes/No: Suppliers must choose Yes or No in their response.
    3. Text: Suppliers are asked to fill out a field using standard text.

Internal Questions

Users may also select a question section to be internal. This will create questions that only evaluators can see and respond to. These questions remain hidden from suppliers and are used while determining which supplier(s) to award the bid to.

Sections

Below is an example of complete sections, once they have all been created by the user.

Award Sections

When a user creates an ;RFI or an RFP, there are no priced items for the evaluators to choose when awarding a winner. Award Sections are used for the awarding user to have an item to award to the supplier, even though the item has no monetary value and cannot be added to a shopping cart like when awarding an RFQ.

Note: If you do not include an Award Section on an RFP or RFI, you will not be given the option to Select and Award a winner later on.

 

Upload

  • Choosing one of the above options displays instructions for downloading a template.
  • Once the template includes all the necessary information, upload the .csv file.
  • Any errors made in the uploaded file are brought to the users attention.
  • Once any errors have been fixed and the user is satisfied, the final product is ready to go and the user can move on to the next step. This can be useful when creating a bid request with a large number of items.

For more detailed instructions on using the templates to upload sections, see Uploading Sections to a Bid Request.

Suppliers

Suppliers can be added to the bid request on this tab.

  • The suppliers connected directly to a user's community are displayed in the first field (Add University Marketplace Supplier), while all suppliers in the Unimarket Directory can be browsed from the second field (Add Directory Supplier), allowing users to request suppliers they may have never worked with before.
  • Finally, a non-Unimarket supplier can be invited to register and participate in a bid by selecting the third field (Add Non-Unimarket Supplier). The user is asked to provide email credentials for the invited supplier and an email is generated to invite the supplier to the bid request.

  • Suppliers can also be added or removed after the bid request has been published, using the Edit function.

Attachments

Users can add any necessary attachments to a bid request. These attachments are visible to the suppliers invited to participate in the bid request. This is an ideal place to upload a full outline of the requirements for the specific bid, or any documents that may need to be signed by the suppliers. The flexibility of the attachments function allows users to upload any important documents that might be important to the bid, without having to distribute the documents individually to each participating supplier.

Email

A customizable email is sent to all suppliers the user invites to the bid request. A number of tokens are available to customize the email for each supplier. The use of tokens eliminates having to draft a different email for each individual supplier. A generic email is pre-populated into the field as a suggestion, however users are free to edit and change the message however they like. At the bottom of the page the user can preview the message to see how it appears to recipients. The Revert option restores the message back to the original version. If the user selects Help, an extended Markup Help window appears with extended formatting and editing tools to further customize the message.

Team

If Bid Request Collaboration is enabled for your community, the Team tab allows users with the Bid Request and Bid Request Collaboration roles to invite any user within their organization or any other organization in the extended Unimarket community to collaborate on the bid request.

  • When adding collaborators to a team, the user is prompted to assign permissions to the collaborator. This allows the user to have control over what abilities each collaborator has when viewing and editing the bid request.
  • If the community has Allow Ad-hoc Permissions enabled in Comminity Modules, a list of permissions will appear, allowing the user to select specific permissions for each collaborating user.
  • The Community Administrator can also pre-configure roles with preset permissions.

For more information on configuring the Community Features for sourcing, see Sourcing Adminstration Module.

You can edit your team and evaluators without reopening the bid request by clicking on the Actions Menu and selecting Edit Team. You can edit at any time including after a bid closes.

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Evaluators

Evaluators for your question sections are also appointed on the Team tab. Users must be added as collaborators before being added as evaluators.

Publish

When the bid request is ready to be published, a timeline can be outlined for the bidding process, including a start and end date, as well as alert dates and a questions due date.

Once a user has entered all the necessary information, the Publish tab allows you to either save the bid request or publish it in Unimarket.

Note: If the bid request is being edited, the user is prompted to add a description of the changes being made. They can also choose to notify the workgroup of the changes being made.

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