Award to supplier Accelerate

Overview / Purpose

The award to supplier page is where you execute the awarding decision. At the same moment, the page serves as documentation of everything that has been already awarded, was not yet awarded and where an awarding decision is open. You do not need to go back to change your filter settings. You may directly do it on this page in the action area.

Orientation

Action area

The page displays on the action area the pre-filters that were set in the awarding pre-filter page. Below, you find additional column filters defined in the grid template (auto-filter). As a third category the Split by options are displayed (implementation not before End of October 2014). In most cases, the vertical space is not sufficient to display them all. Collapse the categories to see the others or scroll to see the categories below. At the end of the action area you find the buttons Apply and Reset. Any modification in the action area that is applied will have an effect on the main content area. Please be aware that all changes in the grid are lost which you decide not to save before.

Main content area

The grid that is displayed contains the lines that are matching the filter criteria. Depending on the awarding type and if you award for a tender or auction project, the page contains lines where each line

• is a line item – supplier – combination
• is a grid – supplier – combination
• is a questionnaire – supplier – combination
• is an auction position – supplier – combination

Line item awarding

Lines are grouped and feature a group header and a sub-total below the lines. For all groups there is a grand total line at the bottom. There are 2 grouping options:

• supplier companies grouped by line item (default)
• line items grouped by supplier company

Sub-total and grand total will only calculate for those columns that are marked in the grid template as such (show total). Every grid has the following structure from left to right:

• Standard awarding columns Actions, Line status, Supplier or Line item
• Columns as given in order by the grid template, e.g. Description, BU, Quantity
• Columns as given in order from the awarding template, e.g. Awarding amount, Comment

Hint for configuration: For best performance, the grid template should only mark such columns with Show in awarding that are effectively required. In the awarding project, there is no additional possibility to reduce the number of columns.

Line item awarding

Tender element awarding

Like in the line item awarding, lines are grouped, feature a group header and a sub-total below the lines. For all groups there is a grand total line at the bottom. There are 2 grouping options:

• supplier companies grouped by grid / questionnaire (default)
• grid / questionnaire grouped by supplier company

Sub-total and grand total will only calculate for the columns from Awarding template that are marked as such (show total). For questionnaires, there is no such calculation. Every grid has the following structure from left to right:

• Standard awarding columns Actions, Line status, Supplier or Tender element
• Columns as given in order from the awarding template, e.g. Awarding amount, Comment

No other columns (from grid) or fields (from questionnaire) can be displayed and no columns can be removed.

Auction position awarding

Like in the 2 other awarding types, lines are grouped, feature a group header and a sub-total below the lines. For all groups there is a grand total line at the bottom. There are 2 grouping options:

• supplier companies grouped by auction position (default)
• auction position grouped by supplier company

Sub-total and grand total will calculate in any case for the total columns. There is no setting in the auction to show / hide it. Every grid has the following structure from left to right:

• Standard awarding columns Actions, Line status, Supplier or Auction position
• Columns as given in order from the auction setup, e.g. Quantity, Unit, Bid
• Columns necessary for taking the awarding decision, e.g. Weighted Bid, Total, Awarding quantity, Savings method, Calculated savings etc.

The columns that appear in the auction awarding are fix and cannot be changed.

Functionality

Grid standard functionality

The grid features a number of standard functionalities that exist regardless of the awarding type. The most common ones for every user are:

• Change column width: This function allows you to enlarge or reduce the column width to a convenient size, so you can better exploit the available horizontal space. Please note: Also this setting is not permanently saved when you leave the grid – you have to reset it when returning.
• Fix headers: This function allows you to always view the header of the columns. It includes only the header. There is no configuration for the user to configure it like freeze panes in spread sheets.
• Pagination: This function allows you to navigate between groups of lines. The default number of lines is set to 10, counting the real lines (line item – supplier combinations) without group line, sub-total or grand total. You can directly navigate to each pagination by entering the corresponding number (e.g. 37 if there is a total of e.g. 51 paginations). Further, you can navigate to next, previous and last pagination directly. You may adjust the number of displayed lines if your screen resolution is large enough (current values: 10, 15, 20, 30, 50). Please note: This setting is not permanently saved.
• Truncation of text: To save space both vertically and horizontally, the content is truncated if it does not fit into the available size of the cell. If you want to see more of the text, you need to enlarge the column.
• Click to edit: You can directly edit each editable cell by clicking into it. The cell display will change so you can type. To leave the cell, click with your mouse elsewhere or hit Enter.
• Navigate between editable cells: Press TAB to go right, press Shift + TAB to go left.
• Edit numeric columns: You can use alternatively arrows up/down to increase/decrease the numeric value in the column.
• Unsaved data values are marked: Any value that you enter and not directly save is marked with a red triangle in the upper left corner. If you see any triangle on your screen, it is recommended to Save .
• Mandatory columns: For any column that requires an entry its name appears in red font.
• Formatting of sub-totals and totals: the values in such lines will appear in bold font always.
• Formatting of best values: the best value within a group of values will appear in green font always. For awarding of type Line item awarding, the green appears only if in the grid template the attribute “Colouring in awarding” was set to “Min/Max” for the corresponding column. Please note: If the grouping is by supplier company, the result may be misleading, since line items, grids, questionnaires or auction positions are compared. In this case, switch the grouping.
• Search: the search takes any keyword and will search in all alphanumeric (e.g. ABC123; DEF) free-text columns, thus reducing the number of displayed records. A search in numeric (e.g. 245) or monetary (e.g. 367,89 EUR) columns or columns containing discrete values (e.g. BU) is not supported. (not before November 2014)

Actions

Business actions

The key business actions of the awarding app are described in the following.

• Award : Awards one or multiple selected line(s) at once. The action includes a prior save action of the visible line(s) on the page followed by a validation check of the data entries (e.g. a check for mandatory fields).

The awarding action changes the line status from Open to Awarded .

• Unaward : Revokes the awarding decision. One or multiple selected line(s) can be unawarded at once.

The unawarding action changes the line status from Awarded to Open .

• Close : Closes the awarding project and states that all awarding decisions were made. It is the official end of every tender or auction project using awarding.

The close action changes the status of all lines in Open to Not awarded. As a consequence that now for all lines a status Awarded or Not awarded exists, the tender or auction status will be also set to Awarded .

• Reopen : Reopens the awarding project and states that – for various reasons – not all awarding decisions were correct.

Typically, only a few corrections are required. For this reason, the reopen action does NOT change the status of all lines in status Not awarded back to Open. You need to set this manually by selecting those lines that you wish to modify, then clicking Unaward .

Standard actions

The standard actions of the awarding app are described in the following.

• Save : Saves the data of all columns of all lines visible on the page.
• Reset : Discards any changes entered in any of the cells on the visible page.
• Switch grouping : Changes the display from one grouping to the other. No data is automatically saved.

Actions that do not trigger a save action

In order to avoid that you lose any data while working with the application, be reminded that the following actions do not automatically save the data you have entered / modified in the grid:

• Pagination : Any click or entry in the pagination will not save the data. You will receive a warning instead.
• Breadcrumb : Any click on the name of the tender element or the tender project name will not save the data.
• Click outside the grid: Any click outside the main content area (e.g. action area, home area, welcome area) will not save the data.
• Close, Back, Reset and Switch grouping : None of these actions in the tool-bar area above the grid will save the data. You will receive a warning instead.

Technical implementation

Synchronisation with tender

The awarding project takes over the relevant settings from the tender project which are:

• Data
• Tender template settings
• Grid / questionnaire awarding settings
• Tender awarding template columns

Awarding configuration settings

Since all project settings are preset from the tender, there is no page required to make settings directly in the awarding app.

Synchronisation with product database

After the awarding decision the data are synchronised into the product database:

• Line items become products
• Data from line item columns become product attributes

From there they can be re-used for re-tendering in a new tender project.