“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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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.

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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SupplierSelect enables respondents to reuse answers to questions by copying them (importing) between different projects. This is a particularly useful feature where similar RFx questionnaires are re-issued to the same group of suppliers.

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A big RFx will often require multiple people to complete the response. This can be a complex task to schedule and administer.

SupplierSelect provides a workflow system to aid team work in this situation.

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