Next, we'll cover topics related to evaluating the offers.
Unlocking Offers
Once your suppliers have submitted their bids and the evaluation phase has started, you can begin the assessment process.
The first step in this process is to unlock the offers. To do this, go to the Supplier tab in the navigation bar and select either "Evaluation: Questionnaire" or "Evaluation: Price Sheet." You'll see a large padlock icon.
Choose "Release Offers" and confirm this in the subsequent popup.
The offers are now viewable and can be evaluated.
Evaluating Questionnaire
To assess the suppliers' responses to the questionnaire, click on "Evaluation: Questionnaire" in the left navigation.
You now see a list of all suppliers with information:
- Submission: Provides you with information about whether the supplier has submitted a formal offer
- Evaluation: Once the evaluation process begins, this is where the scores achieved by the suppliers will appear
- Missing Evaluations: Indicates how many questions from which team members have not yet been evaluated (indicated by the red counter)
- Overall Evaluation: By clicking "Overall Evaluation >>>," you can jump into the evaluation mode.
- Download All Files: Clicking the download icon allows you to download all attachments from the respective supplier in a bundle.
Switch to the editing mode by clicking "Overall Evaluation >>>." You will first see the following view.
General Information
On the left side, you see the questions asked, and on the right, you see the supplier's answers. The answers include both the response field and associated documents, which you can select by clicking the blue document icon.
The filter bars above enable you to show or hide questionnaire sections and suppliers.
To hide, click the respective "X" next to the tag. To hide all, click the right "X" in the corresponding filter bar.
To show, click the filter bar and then select the options you want to display.
Using the download button in the bottom right corner, you can export all offers as a .csv file.
Conducting the Evaluation
To assess the offers, you have a point scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) available.
Enter your evaluation in the designated box next to the answer. For Auto-scoring questions, you cannot assign a score.
If you wish to leave a comment along with your evaluation, select the corresponding response field with the mouse. A comment pop-up will open. Here you can leave a comment, confirm with ENTER, and view your colleagues' comments.
Once multiple colleagues have evaluated the offers, you will find the information icon mceclip6.png. Hovering your mouse over it will display your colleagues' evaluations.
If there are discrepancies of >=2 points in the evaluations, the yellow exclamation point symbol will appear. Again, you can view your colleagues' evaluations here and initiate a discussion if necessary.
Once you've finished the evaluation, click "Back" in the lower-left corner to return to the virtual project space.
Evaluating Price Sheets
To assess the suppliers' price sheets, start by selecting "Evaluation: Price Sheet" in the left navigation.
You now see a list of all suppliers with information:
- Submission: Provides you with information about whether the supplier has submitted a formal offer
- Evaluation: Once the evaluation process begins, this is where the scores achieved by the suppliers will appear
- Evaluation Status: Indicates whether all price sheets have been fully evaluated
- Overall Evaluation: By clicking "Overall Evaluation >>>," you can jump into the evaluation mode.
Switch to the editing mode by clicking "Overall Evaluation >>>." You will first see the following view.
You see the requested items on the left side. On the right side, you see the submitted offers. In the Best column, after selecting the evaluation method, Prospeum shows you the hypothetically most favorable provider across all suppliers.
To switch between individual price sheets, choose the desired price sheet in the tab.
Conducting the Evaluation
Evaluate one price sheet after another using the three evaluation action areas above the table as follows:
1.Select the relevant decision column for your evaluation (e.g., Total Price).
2. Choose whether to search for the minimum or maximum.
3. Select one of the 4 available evaluation methods:
- Element Scoring: Each element is compared with the best possible price within the row. The ratio determines the number of points the supplier receives. Each row has equal weight.
- Simple Scoring: Calculates the sum over all items in the decision column and finds the provider with the lowest/highest sum.
- Custom Scoring: Each element is compared with the best possible price within the row. The ratio determines the number of points the supplier receives. The weighting is set by the user.
- Average Scoring: Calculates the average over all items in the decision column and finds the provider with the lowest/highest average.
4. The Day System automatically saves the evaluation. Proceed with the next price sheet.
5. Once you have evaluated all price sheets, you can return to the virtual project space by clicking the "Back" button in the upper left corner.
Viewing Rankings and Offer Matrix
After you and your colleagues have evaluated the questionnaire and price sheets, you can view the results.
The quickest way to see the results is through the rankings. The suppliers are sorted from the best to the worst result. To view the rankings, click on "Supplier Overview" in the Supplier tab. In the "Rank" column, you can already see that the suppliers are ranked from Rank #1 to #X.
If you want to better understand the results for any negotiations/discussions, click on "Results" in the left navigation.
You now see a tabular offer matrix that presents individual results at the questionnaire section and price sheet levels. Through the green markers, you can directly identify which supplier performed the best in each section.
Additionally, the Total row displays the overall score achieved by each supplier.
If you've structured your project into lots, you can also directly see the results for each lot. Click on "Subproject View" in the top right corner. You will now enter the following view:
In this view, you'll be shown which supplier performed the best in each respective lot, as well as the number of points each supplier achieved in the individual lots. "Standard" refers to all sections and price sheets that aren't assigned to a specific lot.
Furthermore, if you've configured different evaluation categories, you can access the results for those through "View Evaluation Type." You will enter the following view.
Here, you can see how well each supplier performed in the evaluation categories you defined (in the example above, it's "Technical & Commercial Evaluation"). You can compare how well the supplier performed overall in the category (via the Total row) and how well they did in each individual section.
Next Steps
The results analysis provides a solid basis for making informed decisions about your next steps. In Prospeum, you can now proceed as follows:
- You can directly nominate a supplier.
- You can invite multiple suppliers to negotiation rounds or a beauty contest.
These aspects will be further explored in the following article.