Publishing a Sourcing Event (IT)
A Sourcing Event is the vendor-facing part of a Sourcing Project. The Sourcing Project Owner can establish the bidding dates and time, as well as compile all information the vendors will need to develop their response, as guided by a template established by NCDIT. Once the Sourcing Event is in a ‘Published’ status, it will be automatically posted to the Public eVP, and interested vendors can click the ‘Intends to Participate’ button to receive an email with a link to respond electronically through their Ariba accounts. Before the Sourcing Event can be ‘Published’, the Sourcing Project Owner will have to complete a few ‘Tasks’.
For more detailed step-by-step information regarding this topic in a printable format, see the following job aid.
The ‘IT Procurement Intake Form’ is generally completed by Agency Business about an IT business need, and the information collected will help Agency Procurement and NCDIT collaboratively determine the appropriate approach to the solicitation. Users will submit their completed version to NCDIT for approval in the first task.
If applicable, users should complete the two ‘Tasks’ in ‘Phase 02’, before proceeding to ‘Phase 03’ to populate the Solicitation Document and initiate the Sourcing Event. The Sourcing Event is the interactive part of the Sourcing Project where vendors can provide their responses. Prior to sending the Event to the Agency CIO and NCDIT for approval, users will initiate only Section 1 (Rules) and Section 3 (Content) before saving. The information included in the Solicitation Document is complementary to that in the content of the Sourcing Event.
The first of the four sections to edit and set are the Event ‘Rules.’ Most importantly, the rules section allows the Sourcing Agent to establish the ‘Timing Rules’ outlining when the bidding starts and stops. Many of the fields within the six sub-sections on this page are pre-populated, and it is advised that users leave them as is.
The ‘Content’ section of the Event is where the user can share all information about the products or services they wish to receive bids on, and it serves as the framework for vendors to provide a response. NCDIT has created a template in this section that complements the default structure of the various RFx Solicitation Document templates available in the NCDIT Sourcing Library Folder.
Before sending the Solicitation Document and Sourcing Event to NCDIT for approval, the documents must first be approved by the ‘Agency CIO’ group in ‘Phase 03’. If no users were automatically added to this group, at least one must be added manually via the ‘Team’ tab. An edited Solicitation Document and Event will serve as the triggers for the approval task, so both must be actioned upon as outlined above before the task can be submitted.
After receiving approval from the ‘Agency CIO,’ users should consider if the solicitation requires a Procurement Exception Request (Form A). If so it will need to be approved by NCDIT in conjunction with sending the overall Event for approval. The ‘Submit Procurement Exception Request to NCDIT (if applicable)’ task will guide this process. If no Procurement Exception is required, skip this section.
Once all tasks are complete in ‘Phase 03’, proceed to ‘Phase 04’ to submit the Solicitation Document and Sourcing Event for approval by NCDIT. Unless ‘Agency CIO’ suggested any updates, the documents should be ready for approval.
After receiving approval from NCDIT to post the solicitation, users should finalize their ‘Solicitation Document’ then return to Section 1 (Rules) of the ‘Sourcing Event’ to update any dates that may have changed during the approval process, and Section 3 (Content) to attach the final version of the ‘Solicitation Document’ to subsection 3.1 and make any other necessary updates.
Once the Rules and Content are finalized, the Sourcing Project Owner will be ready to go back to the section they previously skipped, Section 2 (Suppliers). In this section, they will select the designated ‘NC eProcurement Sourcing’ supplier to invite, which, once the Sourcing Event is published will trigger its automatic posting to the Public eVP. Vendors wishing to respond will then click the ‘Intends to Participate’ button to receive an email with a link to respond electronically through their Ariba accounts.
If the Sourcing Project Owner selected a ‘Solicitation Vehicle’ of ‘IT: RFQ’ or ‘IT: SOW’ to conduct a private solicitation with a limited set of vendors, they will NOT select the designated ‘NC eProcurement Sourcing’ vendor, but rather, directly invite the identified vendor(s). The solicitation will not post to Public eVP, and only the directly invited vendor(s) will be able to respond.
When Section 2 (Suppliers) is complete, users can proceed to the final ‘Summary’ section. This contains the summary of the first three sections and allows the user to review and edit before clicking ‘Publish.’
