Bidding Engine, Maintain Bidder required?

[Former Member]

Hi all,

Re: Bidding Engine under SRM 5.0

I'm working with a client that wish to generate bid invitations to a large number of potential bidders. Is it required that they maintain a bidder partner details for each bidder to be invited?

I'm aware for SUS that a bidder partner is required with an ID and password. But in the simple case where they wish to send out a bid invitation document, without SUS, and just wish to e-mail the bid invitation to the bidder, can they just enter the relevant e-mail address somewhere or do they require to set up a bidder partner to hold the communication details. I'm aware surrogate bidding is available where we receive a bid response, but my query relates to the initial issuance of the bid invitation.

Thanks

John

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

at the end yes.

In SRM, there are 2 RFQ types: restricted or public.

For <b>restricted RFQ</b>, you must assign each named vendor contact. Only those ones will receive a mail notification and will be able to access the RFQ. Of course the vendor contacts must be created in the system with a user ID.

For <b>public RFQ</b>, you define a "portal" in the RFQ partners. When publishing the RFQ, this will send the details to an external portal (a marketplace bulletin board for example) where it is made accessible to potential bidders via the Web. You can also add an existing vendor if you are expecting a bid from a particular bidder.

A vendor willing to participate to this public RFQ would have to register itself in the SRM application.

As there is no "guest" account, you will need to create a vendor and at least a contact in SRM.

This can be done via the Supplier Self Registration Process.

This is not a straight forward process, fortunately, because you need to idendify those new vendors.

This few weeks process will have to be taken into account for your bidding period.

This will also have an impact on your R/3 system, if you create a PO or a contract out of the winning bid, in a classic scenario: the vendor account will have to be created in R/3 as well.

Rgds

Christophe

PS: please reward points for helpfull answers

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you Christophe,

I have some related questions which I will raise shortly in another post so as to award you points for resolving my initial query.

Regards

John