Finding a Sourcing Event
A Sourcing Event is the electronic tool that State of North Carolina Sourcing Agents use to collect vendor and pricing information in response to Solicitations for Bids or Proposals. Sourcing Agents will post notifications of new Solicitations on the Interactive Purchasing System (IPS). Within the IPS posting will be a link to a public posting on Ariba Discovery, where basic details of the Solicitation can be viewed. If a vendor chooses to respond to the Solicitation, another link will take them to the Sourcing Event where they will be guided through the response process.
Note: An Ariba Network account is not required to view the Ariba Discovery public posting, but vendors will need an Ariba Network account to respond to the Solicitation through the Sourcing Event. These accounts are free and provide additional benefits, as well. For more information, please see Accessing the Ariba Network.
For more detailed step-by-step information regarding this topic in a printable format, see the following job aid.
Solicitations will be posted on the Interactive Purchasing System, linking to the public post on Ariba Discovery.
Navigate to the IPS website at http://www.ips.state.nc.us/ and use the available search options to finds open solicitations. Once a bid opportunity is located, the user can click the Solicitation Number to be directed to the Ariba Discovery public bid posting, where the Sourcing event may be viewed and responded to.
Vendors can access Ariba Discovery through their supplier dashboard after logging in to the Ariba Network at supplier.ariba.com. Ariba Discovery allows vendors to search through all listed solicitations in the tool, not only those posted by the state.
Once logged in, use the drop-down menu at the top of the page to navigate to Ariba Discovery. From there a company can see bids matching their company's chosen product and/or service categories and search for other open solicitations on the Discovery network.
Vendors can view a list of Sourcing Events to which they are attached by accessing the ‘Ariba Proposals And Questionnaires’ page when signed into the Ariba Network.
A listing of Sourcing Events to which the vendor is attached will display in the ‘Events’ section.