Quick RFP

Introduction

Quick RFP is a quick tender which allows the users to create a RFP with no complications and very fast.

Version Support

Quick RFP functionality is supported from Core 4.4.

Roles

The Quick RFP app is accessible by having the role "QRFP Buyer" assigned. One SDB role must be also assigned in order to see the supplier list.

Backoffice

There is no Backoffice settings available for this app.

Status Management

The QRFP project are having three main statuses:

• Draft: is when the user creates a new project until the publishing it
• Public: after the project is published, the status is set to Public. The project can be in Public status both before and after the submission deadline
• Archive: after the deadline, QRFPs can be set to archive.

Functionality

Landing Page

The landing page is comprises of five main groups as following:

• Last Created: includes all the QRFPs of the user (logged in user).
• Ended but not awarded: comprises of all the QRFPs that reached their submission deadline but no awarding decision has been made for them.
• With up to 3 supplier: is having all the QRFPs that are having either 3 or less than 3 suppliers
• With no offer received: are the QRFPs that are published but hasn't received any offer. It included the QRFPs before and after the deadline.
• Archived: are the QRFPs that passed their deadline and manually set to archive.

The group can overlap with each other.

Main Grid

Main grid comprises of 9 columns as following:

• (no name): includes all the relevant row action buttons.
• QRFP ID
• Name
• Purchasing Volume: is the sum of Price x Quantity of each positions
• Supplier Invited: number of suppliers in the project
• Offers: number of offers available
• Status: one of the three main statuses
• Submission Deadline: the deadline until the suppliers submit their offer. If the submission deadline is less than 5 whole days, it will be shown in the grid with an extra remark e.g. +4 day/s.
• Last Update: the change modified date of the project

Columns settings

• The width of the columns can be changed based on the user preference.
• The unwanted columns can be removed from the list by grabbing the column and move it above the grid and leave it.
• Order of the columns can be changed based on user preference.

The mentioned settings are saved and will be shown next time the user is logged in.

Search Functionality

The following fields are searchable:

• QRFP Name
• Description
• Supplier Company
• Supplier Contact
• Supplier Email

Draft Status Actions

A QRFP on draft status can only be deleted from the main grid.

Draft Status Phases

Upon clicking on Create New QRFP button on top of the grid, user is redirected to the project (Start phase) which is comprises of a wizard with 5 steps. Each phase is explained precisely below. After saving the first phase, the direction between different phases becomes available.

Start

Start is the first page of the project. It has the following fields:

• Name
• Description
• Material Group: multiple selection is supported. It shows the Material Groups of the creator.
• Business Unit: multiple selection is supported. It shows the Business Units of the creator.
• Language: defines the language in which the project is shown for NON XLR8 (not registered) suppliers.
• Comment (for internal use)

All fields except for Comment, are mandatory to be defined (filled). There are validations for the each field, in order to instruct the user about the character limitation and being mandatory.
After filling all the mandatory fields, the Save button gets activated and by clicking, other phases would be available for the user to go through. By save also the QRFP ID is assigned automatically.

Positions

User can define what is needed for this project to be sent to suppliers. The fields for position phase are:

• ID: which is assigned automatically for each position. It starts from 010 is incrementing. In case the user deletes one position, the other ID would adjust automatically.
• Name: is mandatory
• Description: not mandatory
• Quantity: mandatory
• Unit: 5 units are available and selection is mandatory.
• Currency: selection is mandatory. There is no multi-currency functionality available. Therefore, after creating one position, the currency for the later ones will the be the same as the first position's.
• Historical Price: not mandatory

Button Undo, closes the current position and the data is not saved.
Button Save and create a new one, saves the current position and goes to the next position creation user dialogue.
Save button, saves the current position and take the user to the positions grid.
User can edit and delete the positions by the row action buttons.

Documents

In this phase, user can upload any document to the project. The functionality supports drag and drop and manual attachment. After upload, the documents are shown in a list. They can be downloaded and deleted by the row action button on the list.

• Upload document criteria: Platform default size limitation = 10 MB ; type limitation = mime types in general settings of XLR8.

The information shown for each document is:

• Type of file (PDF, Excel, ...)
• Name of the file
• Last modified date

Suppliers

Supplier invitation user dialogue comprises of three main sections:

• QRFP suppliers: are the ones that have been invited to a QRFP (that has been published) before and are not registered inside Accelerate Supplier Database.
• Accelerate suppliers: are the ones that are available inside Supplier Database of Accelerate (onboarded).
• New suppliers: are completely new suppliers and can be added by Email address. More emails can be added by entering a comma after each emails.

The search above the page is automatically showing the results after 3 character entered. Company, Username and Email can be search here. Companies with no contact are now shown here. Also the selected suppliers are cached and in case of searching for other supplier, their selection would be kept.

After clicking on invite, the supplier are shown in a list. They can be removed from the list by Delete row action button. Also, the details of each supplier are visible by View Details row action button:

• Onboarded suppliers:
  • Picture
  • Name
  • Email
  • Phone number
  • Company Address
  • Company name
  • History of past QRFPs

• QRFP suppliers
  • Name
  • Email
  • Company Address
  • Company name
  • History of past QRFPs

• New suppliers

Just the Email and after entering the details:

• • Name
  • Emails
  • Company Address
  • Company name

There is a red warning icon by the New supplier on the list, which is to let the user know that some details must be filled for that supplier. It is only accessible by moving to Summary page.

Summary

In case if adding a New supplier, upon clicking on Summary phase, a user dialogue "Contact & address information" is opened, and obligates the user to fill out the fields. Available fields are:

• Salutation
• First name
• Last name
• Email: already filled from last step
• Company name
• Country: shows all countries of the platform
• City
• Street
• Postal code

Mandatory fields (all but Salutation) are marked by asterisk "*". By entering 3 characters in the field "Company name", if there is a match inside Supplier Database, it will be shown. By choosing the company that is from Supplier Database, the address fields related to that company are filled automatically. If there is no address assigned for that company, user can manually enter the address. By this management, this NEW supplier is NOT added inside SDB, and by changing the address, this would not affect the address of the company inside SDB. This has been added only for simplicity reasons.

After that, user is landed on Summary page, which shows the whole project in a glance. Material groups and Business units number are clickable and the selected info is shown.
The section below, includes a date and time selection for submission deadline. Only future date and time are available for selection. When the user is creating his/her project, after date selection, the default time of 15:00 is shown. User can change it. By each set of time (and publish afterwards), the setting is saved and the next time when the user is creating a new QRFP, the last set time is shown.
User is obliged to upload a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) file into the project. Suppliers can reject or approve the NDA file later. The same file name as the files uploaded in Document phase is not possible in version 1.
By having every mandatory information filled, user is able to publish the QRFP. Email notifications are sent to the creator and the suppliers.

Supplier Access

Onboarded Suppliers

Onboarded suppliers are able to access the project via the link in the email or even rejects it there. Upon submission of QRFP by internal user, the role QRFP Supplier is assigned to suppliers (in case they didn't have it before they land on the login page and only after giving the right credentials, they will be able to access the project. The project is shown by supplier's set language and not the QRFP's. The first page after login is Non-disclosure Agreements and supplier either reject or accept it. By accepting, supplier lands on a page with the positions and can add his/her offer there. Supplier can also enter a comment for this QRFP. There will be no history of comments available later. Supplier can only modify the comment. Supplier can also change his/her offer multiple time. By each submission, a new ID is generated for that QRFP and old IDs are kept in the database and also the email notifications are sent. Supplier can also reject the QRFP in this page.

QRFP & New Suppliers

These suppliers can access the project from the email similar to the onboarded suppliers, however as they are not registered in the Supplier Database, they don't have any credentials and therefore won't land on login page. Upon clicking, New supplier are redirected to a page called "We don't know you page", and all the data that internal user has filled in Contact & Address information dialogue are shown here. Corporate Tax ID is an added field in this page that supplier has to fill. In 4.4 the limitation for Tax ID is 2 characters + 9 digits. In 4.5 it will be 2 characters + (5 - 12) digits. Supplier can overwrite any information on this page. Upon changing the email, a new contact is created for that QRFP company and the new email will continue the rest of the QRFP. The use case is when a supplier from the wrong department is invited, the same supplier can delegate this QRFP to the responsible person. The original added supplier is saved in the database. In case, any other information except for email is changed, the new info is saved under the same supplier and no new contact is created. After this page, the rest of the procedure is similar to the onboarded suppliers'.

For QRFP suppliers, is the same as the New suppliers with only a minor change. QRFP supplier lands on the "You are invited to make offer" page which is the same as "We don't know you page", with no mention of "We don't know you" on the header and having the Tax ID filled (from last QRFP access).

Public Status Actions

After a QRFP becomes Public, multiple actions can be applied for it. Actions are varying depending on deadline. Before deadline, the followings are accessible:

• Add Supplier: user can add new suppliers by the row action button "Add Supplier" only before deadline. By adding each, the email notifications and actions are done automatically.
• Add Document: user can add any documents to the project only before the deadline. By adding and clicking on Save the email notifications and actions are done.
• Extend Deadline: the deadline can be changed to any date after the present time. Time is changeable and if the today is set as date, user can only set the time to the ones after present time. Email notifications are sent accordingly.
• Stop: the project can be stopped only before the deadline, in case the user does not want to continue with it anymore. Email notifications are sent and suppliers would not be able to add any offer anymore.

By accessing the project in 5 phase via a row action button, user can move between all phases but can only see Start and Positions phases as view mode.

And after deadline, user can only set the QRFP to archived status. Any archived QRFP can be restored again.

Public Status Phases

After the project becomes Public, by clicking on it from the main grid, user is redirected to Public wizard which has two "Offers" and "Documents" phases.

Offers

In the offers step, user can see an overview of all invited suppliers, their registration status (onboarded; invited), company name and their offer status (Offer rejected, Offer received, No offer). Suppliers that have not submitted any offer yet, are removable from the list before the deadline. In case, any supplier has already submitted an offer, the details cannot be seen before deadline. Only after deadline, any information of offers would be accessible.
There are Compare all and Compare button on top of the list which are not clickable before the deadline.

Offers Details

After the deadline, user can click on each supplier that has submitted an offer and view the offer's details.
There are three header boxes on the page called QRFP Details, Quotation Summary and Documents. For 4.4 only internal user's documents are shown. From 4.5 , suppliers documents are also shown. Documents are downloadable one by one and by having a zip file from clicking on View Attachment.
There is Mark Offer button on the page, which marks the offer for later comparison. This makes the checkbox in the Offers list to be checked.

Documents

All the internal user's uploaded documents are visible here. Before deadline, user can also attach a new document from this page. From 4.5, supplier's documents section is also visible only after deadline. For supplier's document, the upload date is visible and not the modification date. Internal user's documents can also be deleted before the deadline. Email notifications are sent upon this action.

Awarding

By either marking or checking the checkbox of at least two suppliers offers, Compare button gets activated. Compare all is active after the deadline and will compare all the offers together. Clicking on either of them, will redirect the user to the Awarding page. Request Details, Purchasing KPIs and Suppliers. Supplier's box consists of selected suppliers for awarding and their total offers. The best offer is the one with higher savings and is always marked as green. Award QRFP button, awards the best offers automatically regardless of having one supplier fully awarded or each positions to one supplier. The awarded suppliers and position are marked "Awarded" on this page and also on Offers page. After awarding, the button is changed to "Revoke Award QRFP". User can provide a comment and send it to self and suppliers. Respective email notification are sent accordingly. User can also select the positions he/she wants and award the project to any registered supplier. Not all the positions must be awarded. Revoke can be done also for each awarded position.
Important: only suppliers that are registered into Accelerate's SDB be awarded.

SSR Invitation

Suppliers that are not registered cannot be awarded. If there is any UNregistered supplier in the awarding page, the button SSR Invitation is active and by clicking a user dialogue with the list of unregistered supplier of the page is shown. Internal user can select the supplier he/she would like to award later and send the SSR Invitation. Suppliers get the notification and the link to SSR from the email. Once the suppliers registered in the SDB through SSR, their status is updated in the QRFP, and they can be awarded.

Archived Status

Archive action make the QRFP into view-only mode. User is able to see the overview list, offers' details, view/download documents, mark and compare the offer.

Share/Revoke Functionality

QRFPs in statuses "Public" and after deadline and "Archive" can be shared voluntarily or upon request to another user who has QRFP role (colleague).

Voluntary Share/Revoke

Share is available from row action button "Share/Revoke" of QRFPs after deadline, and by clicking a user dialogue is opened where user can search for user name, last name and email. After 3 character, the result is shown, by selecting and sharing, user are notified by email about access and can see the QRFP in view-only mode through the deep link in the email.
Also, in each share email, there is a button "Download Comparison", which download an Excel from the data inside All Comparison page of the QRFP. The transfer is done in a secure way and user has to enter his/her credentials to authenticate this download.
Revoke can be done by the same row action button. The list of shared user are available in the dialogue and by removing them and confirm, the user access is revoked.

Sharing by/from a colleague

There are 2 groups in the landing page, "In Collaboration" and "QRFPs from Colleagues".
Inside "In Collaboration", all the QRFPs of the logged user that are either shared or asked to be shared are visible. The button Share/Revoke is available for all QRFPs. For the QRFPs that are requested fro share, another button "Confirm Access" is als'o available. By clicking, the users who already ask for access are shown, and logged user can decided to which one give access.
"QRFPs from colleagues" contains all QRFPs in the platform except for the logged user. Available button is "Request Access". The owner of the requested QRFP for access, will receive an email and can confirm from In Collaboration group.