Sourcing - Core Concepts
There are a few fundamental concepts to understand about how sourcing is managed in Supplios.
This article provides an overview of each of these major concepts, with links to additional details as needed.
Sourcing Event
A Sourcing Event is the RFQ, RFP, RFI, RFx, Tender, or whatever else you might call your request from potential suppliers. In the app and in this documentation, we sometimes just call it the "Event".
A Sourcing Event has a few "states" it can be in -- the high level stages of the sourcing process. Those states are: Draft, Open, Closed, and Archived. You can read more about each of the states in the related article linked below.
Keep in mind that the Sourcing Event state only controls the general visibility of the event (ie: who can see it, internal vs. external) and whether you are accepting new submissions. Each individual Supplier Response can be controlled on a more granular level, as detailed below.
Supplier Response
A Supplier Response, quite obviously, is a response to your Sourcing Event from a single supplier/vendor/company. Each company can only have ONE Response per Sourcing Event. They can, however, create multiple revisions to their responses, upload new versions of documents, modify their quotes, etc. as you negotiate with them through the sourcing process, and if you allow such modifications in the settings of the Sourcing Event.
You can either invite suppliers to respond (various ways), or you can post the Sourcing Event in your Supplier Portal (restricted or public) to solicit bids from a wider supplier base.
Each Supplier Response has a corresponding status -- this tells you where they are at in the sourcing process, as they move from being invited, to either starting their response or declining to bid, to submitting their response, to you either rejecting them, or awarding them business. We go into a deep-dive on what each status means in a separate article.
Response Items
Response Items are the things you need vendors to provide when they submit their response. Supplios provides you with multiple formats for doing this: creating custom forms with the Form Builder, creating custom Excel-like tables for vendors to fill out with the Quote Sheet Builder, providing a template for vendors to fill out (like an Excel file or Word document), or just asking vendors to upload a document.
You must add at least one of these to the Sourcing Event, in any of the available formats. But you can add as many as you want, and you can also make them optional or required.
You create the Response Items on the Setup page of the Sourcing Event..
Sourcing Event Owner & Team
When running a Sourcing Event, there will typically be multiple people involved from your company.
The Sourcing Event Owner is the main person at your company in charge of the event. They must have a 'Full-User' Supplios license. The Sourcing Owner can control everything about the event, and can add/remove team members.
The Sourcing Event Team includes the other internal people involved in the event -- and they can be included on the team either as a Collaborator or as an Event Admin. Any Supplios user at your company can be added as a Collaborator. Only users with a 'Full-User' license can be added as Event Admins. Collaborators can do most things the Owner and Admins can do, except for changing the status of the Supplier Response (ie: awarding, rejecting, flagging for follow-up, etc.) and opening/closing the Sourcing Event itself.
By default, everyone you add to the Event Team will also be included on the "External Messages" and the "Internal Comments" emails and notifications for each Supplier Response. Event Owners and Admins can easily remove people from these notifications, and each team member can also unsubscribe themselves from these notifications if they find it annoying.
You add team members to the event in the "Team" section of the Sourcing Event Setup page.