“Reference Projects”, is a new feature added to SupplierSelect which enables vendors and buyers to build a set of reference information free from the restrictions of the standard tendering or RFx process.

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Intercontinental Hotel Group has been using SupplierSelect since 2007 to manage RFPs across all the procurement categories that luxury hotels require. In this article, Richard Tan, Director of Procurement Asia Pacific, describes how SupplierSelect helps not only with managing with RFPs and tenders efficiently, but also with achieving the brand consistency that is central to the group’s success.

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SupplierSelect sends email notifications for significant events such as an invitation to respond being sent from a buyer to bidder. Previously, all email notifications sent by SupplierSelect came from a system email address (system@supplierselect.com). This occasionally causes problems, such as when the recipient is on holiday, and an automated out of office reply is sent.

SupplierSelect now supports per Project configuration of the “From” field to be used by email notifications. This a new mandatory field in “Project Details”. It can be changed at any time, even after a Project is published.

SupplierSelect is currently working on an exciting project with the Event Marketing Institute to bring SupplierSelect to their members, complete with a range of RFP templates suitable for customization.

The Event Marketing Institute is a trade association and research body for the Event Marketing industry. Part of its role is to educate and encourage best practise amongst industry participants. Over recent years they have become increasingly aware of dissatisfaction amongst both buy and sell side organizations with regard to the RFP process. Vendors say they receive too many inappropriate RFPs, and buyers sometimes lack experience of running a formal RFP. Last year, the Event Marketing Institute published an excellent report for its member. We are very pleased to be given permission to reproduce this report here (in two parts):

Event Market RFP Best Practices Part 1 (PDF)

Event Marketing RFP Best Practices Part 2 (PDF)

This report makes some very good general points about how to conduct an RFP for a complex service as well as more industry specific advice. It discusses the differences between an RFI and an RFP, methods of appraisal and evaluation, the roles of the procurement department, and provides some case studies of RFPs conducted by leading marketing groups. Part 2 of the report provides the results of a survey carried out by the Event Marketing Institute of its members. This details how these organizations are currently conducting their RFPs, what technology (if any) they use, what plans they have for the future, and some insights into the current state of vendor relationships.

Respondents answering an RFP in SupplierSelect may elect to enable “Workflow” for the given project. Doing so provides an alternative task-centric view of an RFP response in which sections or questions can be allocated to different users for update / review / approval etc. This has been available since 2007 and is described more fully here:

http://news.supplierselect.com/2007/08/22/team-working-for-respondents-suppliers/

This has proved to be a very important feature for larger organisations who respond to dozens of big RFPs per year via SupplierSelect. Based on feedback from these groups we’ve now added support for email notifications and enhanced event logging.

Email Notifications

The problem about email notifications is that if you’re not careful your web application can become a very efficient spam email factory. This is especially a risk when working with individual questions and answers in an RFP. A typical RFP might have many hundreds of questions, and it’s usual to work through these questions quickly. For example a manager might work through 100 questions allocating responsibility for answering each one to a different staff member.

To cope with situations like this we’ve introduced a batch processing mode for Workflow notifications. A background operation runs once each hour, and it figures out which notifications should be sent, and to whom. This information is then bundled up into one summary email which is sent to those users who have responsibility for specific questions.

Events that currently generate notifications in Workflow mode are:

• Question allocated (e.g. responsibility for answering question 3.5 is allocated to Bob)
• Answer rejected (e.g. Alice reviews Bob’s answer to 3.5, but rejects it)

This list is limited specifically to focus on notifying users of events that prompt action.

Event Logging

Respondents can now see a list of all audited events for each question they are responding to. This makes it easier to see an audited timeline for each answer - who allocated it to who, who answered it, who edited the answer, who approved it, etc etc.

A prominent Procurement industry blog recently contacted SupplierSelect to see if we could contribute an article about public sector procurement transparency and how eSourcing software can help to make procurement processes more transparent. The article has just been published here:

http://procureinsights.wordpress.com

This article refers to the benefits of using eTendering and eRFX software generally, and is not specifically about using SupplierSelect. It draws on some of the lessons we’ve learnt from working with government organisations in the UK, Canada and especially New Zealand.

SupplierSelect is very excited to have begun working with leading tender consultants, Tony Zemaitis Associates. In addition to help with traditional tenders, they will be offering training and hands-on support for sales teams in e-tendering and electronic RFP management, using SupplierSelect as their training environment. Tony Zemaitis are particularly experienced in working with public sector tenders in the European Union.

SupplierSelect provides a number of features to help Suppliers manage their RFP responses online, and we are delighted that our supplier users will now be able to benefit from training provided by Tony Zemaitis Associates.

http://www.zemaitis-uk.com/

Answering a long RFP is a time consuming business. To make life easier for suppliers or vendors responding to RFx questionnaires, SupplierSelect is introducing a new feature which automatically saves answers as they are input, without having to submit a form and wait for the page to reload. This allows users to view a full page of all questions in a section, inputting answers, and having the new information saved each time they move between fields.

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The purpose of asking questions in an RFP is to elicit information from suppliers that allows an objective assessment and comparison of bids. To achieve this, questions must be framed in such a way as to minimise ambiguity. In general, this means asking more “closed” questions - that is questions with a limited range of possible answers, such as multiple choice or numerical questions. However, in practice, this can be difficult. In this article we explore how to frame a good RFP question.

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This describes some of the ways in which web based software can help public sector organisations comply with common regulations. This article draws upon our experience of working with public sector organisations in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to provide some ideas for how to use eSourcing and eRFX software in public sector tenders.

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