• Sourcing Administration Module

    If the community has the 'Sourcing' module enabled this can be configured from Administration module > Modules > Sourcing.

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    Email Templates

    Community Administrators can create and manage email templates for the email sent to suppliers informing them of the bid. The email uses tokens as placeholders for information specific to the bid, such as Supplier Name, Contact Name, Response Date and so on. To add a new email template select 'Add Email Template' and complete the details, making use of the tokens where appropriate. To set the default email select the name of the email you wish to be the default from the 'Default Template' drop-down.

    Standard Criteria

    The community can pre-define a standard question sections that can be quickly added to bid requests. Standard sections can be uploaded via a CSV file by selecting 'Upload Question Sections' or they can be entered into the application directly by selecting 'Add Question Section'.

    Tags

    Users evaluating sourcing bid responses can add tags against each supplier, these can then be used on the 'Supplier Responses' and 'Scorecard' tabs to filter suppliers by tag. Tags are automatically created when a user enters a new tag name when tagging a supplier. Community Administrators can delete unwanted or old tags on this page. Deleting tags does not impact existing bid requests, but it will stop them being offered as suggestions.

    Scales

    Scales are used to add specific evaluation scales for your community to choose from when creating a bid request (e.g. 1-3, 0-10, 1-100). This is then used by the evaluators to give a score to responses.

    Removed Supplier Reasons

    This page is used to define and manage reason codes that are used when a supplier is rejected during the bid request process. These values are used to populate the reason code picklist.

    Security Profile

    Community Administrators can create security profiles that are assigned to bid request users. The Sourcing security profiles are customizable so that communities can configure access the way they want.

    Allow Ad-Hoc Permissions

    If you would rather just assign individual permissions to users then enable the 'Ad-hoc Permissions' option. Any of the below permissions can then be assigned to a user when adding them to the bid request.

    Permission Description
    Read Allows the user to view the contents of the Bid Request including the summary, selected suppliers, attachments and Bid Request requirements. It includes access to the forums.
    Administrator (Full Control) Allows the user to view and update the contents of the Bid Request including the summary, selected suppliers, attachments and Bid Request requirements. It includes access to the forums. This allows the user to make any administrative changes to the Bid Request, including cancelling the Bid Request.
    Collaborate: Add Requirements Allows the user to add their requirements to the Bid Request. Used when collaborating with other buyers.
    Collaborate: Update Requirements Allows the user to add volume to existing requirements on the Bid Request. The user cannot add new lines. Used when collaborating with other buyers.
    Workgroup Forum Read Allows the user to read workgroup forum posts.
    Workgroup Forum Write Allows the user to read and post to the workgroup forum.
    Notifications Read Allows the user to read the public notifications area.
    Notifications Write Allows the user to post to the public notifications area.
    Supplier Forum Read Allows the user to read the supplier forums.
    Supplier Forum Write Allows the user to post to the supplier forums.
    Can View All Scores Allows the users to view all scores. (Organizations can keep scores hidden until the bid evaluation process is complete and scores can be reviewed collectively.)

     

    Add a New Group Permission

    A group permission defines the security role that will be assigned to users. Give the group a name (e.g. 'Reviewer') and then configure the permissions you will give to anyone assigned that group (e.g. 'Collaborate: Add Products'). The bubble help on the Group Permission screen explains the different permissions.

    Collaboration

    If a community wants to collaborate on bid requests with other organizations in the extended Unimarket community, this tab is used to select which communities to collaborate with. This will allow chosen communities to add your community to their bid requests. If you wish to add other communities to your bid request you will need to ask them to add you.

    The bottom field displays communities that have shared bid request collaboration with you, allowing your community to add them to your bid requests.

  • Viewing & Awarding A Bid Request

    Messages

    The Messages tab within a bid request gives a forum for collaborators and/or suppliers to communicate. When a user selects '+Add Comment' they will be prompted to choose where to post the message. The options include a list of all suppliers included in the bid request as well as notifications and workgroup.

    • Notifications - Messages posted here are sent to all collaborators in the community and all invited suppliers.
    • Workgroup - Messages posted here are sent to collaborators in the workgroup only. Suppliers will not see them.
    • Supplier - Messages posted here are sent to the bid request creator and the selected supplier. Other suppliers will not see them.

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    Responses

    When it is time to award the Bid Request, the user can navigate to the 'Responses' tab and view the quotes from suppliers. All final quotes are shown here in comparison, and actions can be taken on these quotes. Below are the possible options.

    • View - View the breakdown of quoted costs from the supplier response
    • Evaluate - Evaluate the question responses from the supplier
    • Decline - Reject the supplier's response from eligibility in the bid.
    • Tags - Create tags to label suppliers. These tags can be used to group responded suppliers together and filter them out. You can also use them to label notes about the responses. Tags used will be saved for easy access in the future.

    If needed, 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.

     

    Scorecard

    The 'Scorecard' allows users to view the evaluations and compare scores. All suppliers involved will appear in a list, displaying a rating and score for any weighted Section. The filter allows a user to view the Scorecard by all sections or sort by a specific section.

    Select and Award

    On this tab, users will make their selection for the winners of the bid. Once a selection is made, choose 'Close and Award'.

    Note: On RFP/RFI, the Select and Award tab is only available if the Award Sections are in use.

    Some users may want to notify suppliers with an automated message from Unimarket that they have been awarded the bid. Other users may want to notify suppliers more personally or in their own way. When awarding a bid request, users are given this option:

     

    Note: The Close and Award box will only appear when awarding RFQs. Also, no automated notifications go out for RFPs or RFIs when awarded.

     

  • Uploading Sections To A Bid Request

    Creating sections for items or questions in Unimarket is made simple through the Sourcing tool, however in the case of a very large set of bidding requirements, some users may prefer to upload their requirements via a CSV spreadsheet. Using this option, users may download the required template and upload it directly back into Unimarket once they have filled out their requirements. This help document will give you an overview of how to create sections using the Upload feature.

    Item Sections Upload

    To begin uploading item sections to your bid request, find the Sections tab while creating a bid request. Item Sections are only an option for RFQ Bid Requests, so if you do not see the option for item sections, make sure your bid request type is not RFI or RFP.

    Once you select you will be prompted to upload your file, as well as download the template if you do not already have it. A guide to the Unimarket Units of Measure can also be downloaded from this window.

     

    The template will download as an Excel workbook and open in Excel to be edited. The following fields are included in the template:

    Column Description Mandatory
    CODE Some products have a product code or SKU number. This can be entered here. N
    REQUIREMENT The name of the product you would like to require a quote for. Y
    SECTION Your items will be separated into sections. (example: one section may be titled 'Materials' while another is titled 'Labor Costs'). Y

    SECTION_ALLOW_SUBSTITUTE

    A value of "No" will default the entire section to not allow substitutes, and a value of "Yes" will allow substitute items. This will apply to all items within the section but must only be marked on the first item of a section. N

    SECTION_BASE_REQUIRED

    Only necessary when allowing substitutes. A value of "Yes" will require bidding suppliers to still quote the original product, even when supplying a substitute item. A value of "no" will not require them to include the original product when quoting a substitute item. This will apply to all items within the section but must only be marked on the first item of a section. N
    CATEGORY The UNSPSC category of the item. N
    QUANTITY How many of the item you would like suppliers to quote for. Y
    UNIT_OF_MEASURE The unit of measure you would like the supplier to quote for. (example: EA [Each]). Y
    DELIVERY_DATE The date you expect the item to be delivered. N

    MANUFACTURER_PART_ID

    An optional manufacturer part ID. This is useful when requiring a very specific model of a product. N
    ALLOW_SUBSTITUTE A value of "No" will not allow substitutes for this item, and a value of "Yes" will allow substitute items. N
    BASE_REQUIRED Only necessary when allowing substitutes. A value of "Yes" will require bidding suppliers to still quote the original product, even when supplying a substitute item. A value of "no" will not require them to include the original product when quoting a substitute item. N

     

    Question Sections Upload

    To begin uploading question sections to your bid request, find the Sections tab while creating a bid request. Once you select you will be prompted to upload your file, as well as download the template if you do not already have it.

     

    The template will download as an Excel workbook and open in Excel to be edited. The following fields are included in the template:

    Column Description Mandatory: Section Line Mandatory: Question Line
    TYPE Choose S or R for this value. This tells Unimarket whether this line of your upload is a Section (S) or a Question (R). Y Y
    NAME The Question or information you would like to include (example: "Please enter your contact information"). Y Y
    SCORED This allows the user to choose whether or not this section can be evaluated and counts towards the final score. Choose YES or NO. Y N
    WEIGHT The percentage of the score the line makes up. If TYPE = S then choose what percentage of the final score this section will represent. If TYPE = R then choose the percentage the question should be weighted for within the section. All sections must add up to 100 and all questions within sections must add up to 100 within their own section. If you would like Unimarket to auto-weight your questions within sections by assigning them equal percentages, leave this blank and answer NO on 'WEIGHT_QUESTIONS'.

    Y

    (If SCORED = Y)

    Y

    (If SCORED = Y)

    WEIGHT_QUESTIONS This is asking if you would like Unimarket to allow you to manually weight questions within a specific section. If answered YES then enter weights manually on 'WEIGHT'. If NO or left blank, Unimarket will Auto-weight the questions. N N
    INTERNAL This allows you to choose if these questions will be answered by suppliers, or internally by evaluators. Y N
    MANDATORY If the questions are not internal, they may be optional or mandatory based on what you choose here.

    Y

    (If INTERNAL= N)

    N
    EVALUATORS Enter the username of the evaluator. If left blank, the user creating the bid request will be automatically added as an Evaluator. If other users are evaluators on the 'Team' tab, their usernames may be added here as well.

    Y

    (If SCORED = Y)

    N
    DESCRIPTION Shows as a caption below the question. (example, for a Yes/No question that says "Can you deliver by required date?" this line can read "If no, explain in comment field" and include an optional comment field). N N
    ATTACHMENT

    If question is not internal, choose whether an attachment from the supplier is DISALLOWED, OPTIONAL or MANDATORY.

    Note: If MANDATORY is chosen then the Section must also be MANDATORY

    N Y
    COMMENT If question is not internal, choose whether an attachment from the supplier is DISALLOWED, OPTIONAL or MANDATORY. N Y
    QUESTION_DATA_TYPE If question is not internal, choose whether a question is a PICKLIST (drop down menu allowing multiple options), YES_NO (drop down menu allowing yes or no), or TEXT (blank field for text). Question types are not supported for internal questions. N Y
    OPTIONS If you have chosen a PICKLIST for QUESTION_DATA_TYPE, include the possible options separated by semi-colons (example: Option1;Option2;Option3;Option4). N Y



  • Create a Bid Request

    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.