Tender Phases

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to provide a general view of the most important tender templates and the phases which are involved inside each.

Phases Introduction

A project is made of internal and external phases, which are specific for each selected tender template. Internals refers to the users of the system on the buyer side and externals to the supplier company users. Alternatively, internal phases can be distinguished as “System Phases” and external ones as “Client Phases”. Each phase has a start and an end date. Structures are linked to a phase. Project and supplier teams can be setup depending on the phase. Complexity of a project, determines the number and the settings of the phases.

Phases Settings in the Backoffice

The settings for phases are available in:

• Backoffice> Customizing> Settings> Tender (app drop-down)>> Available phases

In this section all the available phases are visible. Also, a new phase can be added in this section. It is worth mentioning that that the phases can be renamed. This is done by using the “Translate Phase name” inside the action column. However, by renaming, the workflow will remain the same. So a phase in OBM project can be called “Preparation”, whereas the same phase in RFx is called “Project Setup”.
Additionally, the settings to manage the phases inside the tender templates are configurable in:

• Backoffice> Customizing> Settings> Tender (app) >Project templates > Opening up a template >>Project phases

Here the user can assign phases from all the available ones, to the selected tender template.

Creating a Project

In order to create a project, a project template must be selected. To select the most relevant one for your project, the user can read the comment column for the template content and settings. Alternatively, an existing project can be copied and pasted by selecting the project and clicking the “Copy project”. After the creation of a project, the phases of the selected tender template are visible in the wizard of the page. The appearance of phases depends on the conditions of the project.

In this article, the most common phases from four mostly used templates of OBM, RFx, SynerPublic and Full Project (RO) are described.

Phases Descriptions

Project Setup (Preparation, Project Management)

The initial settings of a project exist in this phase. Depending on different template selection, this phase can have alternative names such as “Preparation” and “Project Management”. The most important tabs in this phase are:

• Project details: the “Project details” page displays the main parameters of the project and allows the user to enter project name and assign the project to Business Units, Material Groups, Geographical Zones, Currency and etc. The mentioned settings can be customized by the project leader or can be configured automatically through Backoffice.

• Schedule: the project schedule is an internal page, which means that the supplier users do not have access to it. The schedule is used as the project plan and is shared with some invited project team users. The dates and times entered in the schedule, have no influence on the real project dates. To summarize, this tab is optional and recommended for complex projects with many project team members involved. Schedule tab can exist in more phases such as Sourcing, RFP and Analysis.

• Finance: the finance tab is used to compare the planned, estimated and actual savings for each project. The data is used for analysis reports such as Qlikview and Procurement Planning app. By completing the finance data, a clear comparison between planned, estimated and expected can be achieved.

• Project Team: here the internal members can be added to the project in order to collect internal data, act as approvers and scorers and monitor the project. Team member role defines the access rights and the participation of each member in the project. The mostly used role are guest (with only view right), assistant, leader substitute, project leader and colleagues. The colleague roles should only be selected whenever the internal phases are used.

• Supplier Circle: here, the supplier users can be invited to the project in order to answer the tender elements (questionnaire and grids) and download/upload documents. The internal user is able to add multiple users of the same supplier company.

• Documents: in this page the documents, which can contain project specifications and/or general conditions, can be uploaded by the internals for the supplier users.

• Emails & Reminders: from this page, project team can manage and send email templates. The templates are set in the projects by default and the mails can be sent automatically, semi-auto and manually from the project to project team members and/or supplier users, depending on different triggers.

• Project Settings: the project access can be controlled through the access tabs. In other words, project settings are used to display/hide tabs and functionalities. Standard project templates are already pre-set; however, individual projects can be customized via this tab. The changes will only be applicable to the specific project; the settings will not change the standard default template initially selected. To avoid that users, change the project settings, the entire page needs to be deactivated from the tender template.

• Project Approval: depending on the settings of the chosen project template, if the “Project setup” is visible on the top of the page, the user has to validate the project setup before creating the tender elements. For this validation, an approval workflow should be activated.

Definition of Demand

This phase can also alternatively be named as "Demand Specification" in some tender templates. In this phase, which is an internal phase, the project leader collects the internal needs. As an example, there is a project regarding “hardware” and internal users are invited to express their needs such as screen, mouse, etc. BU view, which is a setting, that displays specific information such as local price, Incoterms and currency for each Strategic Business Units, is available in this phase. Moreover, questionnaire, grids and magazine view can be created in this phase.

Demand Aggregation

In this internal phase, the user can select data from multiple internal sources with the concept of launching a consolidated project. That is, demands are collected and summed and the deviations are managed. Team members must be set specifically, in order to have access and complete the tender elements. Grids can be created and aggregated in this phase and are transferable to the external phases.

Sourcing

Sourcing is an external phase and is created for pre-qualifying suppliers, containing some questionnaires with general information about the company and the qualifications, certificates and all the information the user needs to qualify the suppliers. This is an external phase and questionnaire and grids can be created here.

Submission of Tender (SOT)

The phase is used, when the user publishes the tender elements to the suppliers and is similar to the RFP phase. SOT phase is specifically for public tender template and was developed according to HCL requirements.

RFP

This phase is also external and is about either collecting questionnaires and grids from prior phases or creating new tender elements to have qualitative data (i.e. capabilities and service orientated). Additionally, business unit logic exists in this phase and suppliers can give a quote for every different business units.

Re-negotiation

It is an external phase, which is dealing with the suppliers. The purpose is to have a workflow to do the first and second round of negotiation for grid. The same procedure in RFP, happens here. Questionnaire and grids can either be created here or re-used from prior phases.

Auction

It is an external phase, which is dealing with the suppliers. The purpose is to have a workflow to do the first and second round of negotiation for grid. The same procedure in RFP happens here. Questionnaire and grids can either be created here or re-used from prior phases.

Scoring

Scoring can be created on project team. On this phase, the internal team members can score the supplier questionnaire responses either manually themselves or automatically by using the formula. In this phase, KPI qualities from Supplier Relation Management (SRM), are evaluated.

Evaluation

In this phase, a direct supplier evaluation can be set by the user. Only the customer “EKZ” uses this phase inside Tender (RFx).

Analysis

It is to review the suppliers' answers in all internal and external phases. In this phase, the user can create either reports or line items. Standard reports may also exist if standard tender elements are linked to the tender template.

Awarding

Awarding phase is the final stage to award the business to selected supplier(s). The suppliers can be awarded based on line items or tender elements. Currently, for awarding, two new and old versions exist, in the releases from 2.0 to 3.9.

Implementation

This phase is relevant only for tender elements which are linked to Product Database (PDB). Here the user can activate the product. The activated product will be also activated in the product database.

Publicity

This page contains only one page and the project leader has the possibility to load documents and add a hyperlink into the website http://achatpublic.com. Internals can upload the documents on the website and externals can then download them.

Contract

A phase, in which, the user can be easily redirected to the contract app of the system. In other words, all existing functionalities, which are existing in the contract app, can be integrated with the tender. Also all the contracts are listed here.

Negotiation

The negotiation phase is optional and will not be displayed for all RFX templates. The purpose of this phase is to make negotiation with suppliers. This phase contains “suppliers short list”, “quotation”, “quotation analysis” and a simplified “scoring” pages. Negotiation phase is specifically used for public tender and was developed according to HCL requirements, whereas “re-negotiation” is used for standard tender templates.

DCE

The extended name of this phase is a french phrase “Dossier de consultations des enterprises”, which means “Companies Consultations Record”. This phase is similar to “Project setup” page but also containing the two tabs of “Planning” and the “Approval”.

Planning

This phase starts with the setup phase. However, it contains financial and budget information.

Phases Matrix

The purpose of the matrix between templates and phases is that the reader can have a precise view, which phases can exist in different templates. This section provides a general view of the wizards.

	OBM	RFx	SynerPublic	Full Project (RO)
Analysis	x	x		x
Assessment
Auction	x	x
Awarding	x	x		x
Contract		x
Demand Specification	x	x		x
Demand Aggregation		x		x
Demand Management
Demand Positions
Demand Survey
Demand Survey Analysis Phase
Documents
Evaluation
Measures/Activities
Planning		x	x
Product Implementation	x
Project Setup	x		x
Public Tender - Analysis			x
Public Tender - Awarding			x
Public Tender - Contract			x
Public Tender - DCE			x
Public Tender - Definition of Demand			x
Public Tender - Negotiation			x
Public Tender - Publicity			x
Public Tender - Submission of Tender			x
Re-negotiation		x		x
RFP	x	x		x
Scoring
Sourcing		x		x
Strategy
Supplier Analysis
Supplier Questioning
Suppliers

Note: There are other phases, which are mentioned in the matrix above but are not described in the description part. This is due to the fact that they are not used often.