Managing and Awarding a Sourcing Event (Non-IT)
Once a Sourcing Event is published and open for bidding, vendors have through the allotted time per the Due Date to provide electronic responses to the solicitation. These responses are concealed from the Sourcing Agent until envelopes are opened once the Due Date passes. During the time that an Event is open, vendors can ask questions through Event Messages, and Sourcing Agents can respond, if needed, by creating Addendums or even extending the timing of the Event. Although awarding the solicitation to the winning bidder does not happen within the Sourcing Tool, there are several steps supporting this process that do, such as gaining P&C’s approval of the Award Recommendation.
For more detailed step-by-step information regarding this topic in a printable format, see the following job aid.
Even though they won’t be able to see the responses until after the ‘Due Date’ expires, Sourcing Agents can check the ‘Suppliers’ tab at any time to see which vendors have responded. During the Event, if vendors have any questions, they will submit them via the Event Messages page.
Sourcing Agents can provide answers to vendor questions – or make any other necessary updates to the Event – by posting an ‘Addendum’ in the Event before responders submit their final bids.
Sourcing Agents have the ability to change the timing on a published Event if necessary. Although it is not advised to reduce the amount of time vendors have to respond, there might be some scenarios where the timing needs to be extended.
When the Event reaches the response due date, the event status becomes ‘Pending Selection.’ At this point the user can open the ‘Envelope’ to review the responses. Additional negotiations may be required, at which point P&C may be brought into the process via ‘Tasks’ to provide guidance.
After all information has been received and considered, the user can develop an ‘Award Recommendation Memo’ and post the final Bid Tabulation and Award Notification on eVP. If the solicitation was previously approved by P&C, the ‘Award Recommendation Memo’ will also need to gain P&C approval before the solicitation can be officially awarded to a supplier. This is done via the built-in ‘Gain P&C Approval of Award Recommendation Memo’ task in ‘Phase 06’ of the ‘Tasks’ tab.
Once the solicitation has been officially awarded per the process outlined by P&C, and the Sourcing Agent is certain that no more communication between them and the responding vendors will be necessary, the status of both the Sourcing Event and Project should be marked ‘Complete’ for clarification purposes.
