How do you configure a smart digital sourcing process?

Maarten de Ru: "RFQ stands for Request for Quotation. So you request (extensive) quotations from a selected number of suppliers. This is done on the basis of one or more questionnaires. RFQs are used to take stock of what services and/or products are available at what price for your organisation's purchasing needs. Various organisations use RFQ procurement processes. For example, within government organisations, the RFO process, or ‘procurement process’, is used to meet the legal legality requirements set for procurement processes. This is to give companies a fair chance to realise a contracting desire from the government and thus ensure quality and independence in the awarding process.  Private parties apply the RFQ process in particular to achieve a high-quality comparison between providers and to comply with (internal) compliancy rules."

Maarten recognises daily practice: "Of course you can carry out a quotation process “manually”, with e-mail and spreadsheets. This is often time-consuming, dependent on 1 mailbox and the progress of the quotation process is difficult to monitor within a procurement team. It is better to digitise the RFQ process and use an RFQ solution, such as Sourcing. With this, you safeguard procurement procedures including compliancy requirements and ensure a more efficient and orderly RFQ process within your team and organisation."

With an RFQ, it is important that the buyer knows what requirements they have for the product or service before the request is sent out. Since the procurement requirement can basically come from any department in the organisation, several people may be involved in the process. Availability of RFQ templates, containing the right questions including requirements and desired documents (such as certificates), is important to easily and quickly start the RFQ process.  

Maarten advises: "Within Sourcing, you have the option of defining RFQ templates with questionnaires and workflows. Of course, this can be changed and supplemented per RFQ. By defining different templates for IT or HRM, for example, RFQ processes can be started quickly and assessed by the right people. Thus, you know exactly who has to answer which questions, which suppliers are invited and you ensure that the right people can assess the RFQ in advance. Also, within such an application, the entire process is logged. That way, you know exactly what has been done, by whom, at what time and thus create transparency within the quotation process."

"When you are e-mailing back and forth with different suppliers to answer questions about the quotation, it is not strange that you lose track of things," says Maarten. "By having the RFQ specifications, questions and planning in one central place, you and your supplier keep the overview. In the Supplier Portal, the supplier can answer the RFQ and ask questions directly, avoiding ambiguities. Moreover, preset workflows ensure that the query, answering questions and assessing answers are carried out by the right people. All information can be easily shared within Sourcing, so that documents and supplier communications are clearly available to the right people." Read more about the Supplier Portal in our blog.

"When assessing the submitted tender, you can use the scores per question to quickly determine which supplier is the most suitable,’ Maarten explains. ‘For example, if requested documents are missing or certain requirements have not been completed in the RFQ answers, you can question whether this is the right supplier. The results of the RFQ and previous experiences with the supplier make it easier to do a proper assessment."

"By asking the RFQ from different suppliers, you gain insight into prices and to what extent suppliers meet the required compliance rules. You can take this information into contract negotiations and into the final order or order. With templates to which values are attached, you can share these insights with your team. Together with colleagues, you thus make an informed choice based on the questionnaire and the final scores."

"The questions you received from suppliers on your questionnaire you answered during the process. What you can do now is take those questions for the next RFQ, by adjusting the templates with the feedback that has been garnered. This way, the process becomes repeatable and you keep optimising the sourcing process to make it more and more efficient in the future including the required quality," Maarten concludes.