Overview

This chapter covers the following topics:

About Oracle Sourcing

Because strategic sourcing is traditionally a time-consuming and complex process, many organizations are not able to source all of their spending for maximum savings. Oracle Sourcing increases the sourcing bandwidth of procurement professionals so they can exploit many more savings opportunities and capture more value from each. Online collaboration and negotiation makes it easy for participants from multiple organizations to exchange information, conduct bid and auction processes, and create and implement agreements. Professional buyers, business experts, and suppliers exchange information online for a more agile and accurate sourcing process. The application also dramatically reduces sourcing cycle time and creates a complete audit trail of supplier commitments. With Oracle Sourcing, your organization can find and exploit saving opportunities that were previously untouched.

With Oracle Sourcing you can:

Source More of Your Spend

Manage more sourcing events in less time and bring them to conclusion faster so you can find and exploit additional savings opportunities.

Exploit More Sourcing Opportunities

The time required to prepare bidding packages, issue them, and process responses has traditionally limited how much sourcing each professional could manage; leaving savings on the table. Oracle Sourcing lends structure to the entire sourcing process, greatly reducing the time and effort required to source each demand. Procurement professionals can use templates to quickly create sourcing events such as RFIs, RFQs, RFPs and reverse auctions. Sourcing events may also be created by directly consolidating demand from Oracle Purchasing. Buyers can even use one-click renegotiation to instantly clone expiring agreements into new sourcing events. Oracle Sourcing slashes the manual effort required to execute each sourcing event. So procurement professionals can do more of what they do best – save money.

Slash Time with Online Negotiations

With Oracle Sourcing, events are prepared more quickly, concluded sooner, and agreements can be implemented as soon as they are signed. Because it structures requirements-gathering, sourcing events take less time to prepare. Oracle Sourcing consolidates requirements, amendments, and responses in one central location, so suppliers can bid more quickly. Online tools alert buyers to events that need additional supplier actions. Online competition saves time by motivating suppliers to improve terms without time consuming back and forth negotiation. Agreements negotiated in Oracle Sourcing can also be immediately implemented in Oracle Purchasing. So you not only source more, you realize the resulting savings sooner.

Make Faster Award Decisions with Online Bid Comparison and Award Rules

Manually compiling and comparing bids causes slow and inaccurate award decisions. Oracle Sourcing gathers bids in a consistent and structured format and provides online analysis for fast, accurate awards. Side-by-side and graphical comparisons show at a glance which suppliers provide the best overall value. If your organization has developed spreadsheet models for unique categories, Sourcing also exports pricing and scoring data for offline analysis. Flexible award methods let you cherry-pick suppliers, bid lots and lines for the best pricing; or let Oracle Sourcing arrive at the best possible award based on the predefined scoring criteria. Configurable award rules build in compliance with policies such as minority business preference or multi-sourcing of mission-critical items. The award summary gives sourcing team members a complete view of the award recommendation, while award approvals ensure policy and regulatory compliance.

Source for Lowest Total Cost

Oracle Sourcing helps you make more best-value award decisions based on total cost, not just unit price.

Improve Sourcing Results with Cross-Functional Collaboration

Sourcing excellence requires combining the specialized skills of procurement professionals and subject matter experts. But time and distance constraints often make it difficult for all participants to work together. Oracle Sourcing’s online collaboration makes it easy for technical, business, and commercial terms experts to lend their expertise to the sourcing process. This ensures both better sourcing processes and broader buy-in to award decisions. Engaging the right suppliers is equally important to strategic sourcing. Oracle Sourcing lets procurement professionals browse the wealth of supplier information that exists within the company and easily invite new suppliers to ensure highly competitive bids.

Leverage Best Practices with Sourcing Knowledge Capture

The knowledge and best-practices that saved money in one sourcing event are often lost when that event ends or an employee departs. Oracle Sourcing allows sourcing professionals to capture best-practice category knowledge for reuse. All of the successful elements from past events can be captured into category-specific templates for RFQs, RFIs and online auctions. Reusable invitation lists bring in the best suppliers. Reusable pricing elements align buying with supplier cost structures for the lowest total cost. Reusable negotiation styles capture knowledge of which event type and bidding rules will yield the best value. With Oracle Sourcing, your best sourcing knowledge is continually leveraged over time and across the enterprise.

Increase Savings with Lowest Total Cost Analysis and Complete Bid Package Evaluation

Sourcing professionals know that the lowest price does not always yield the lowest total cost. Oracle Sourcing enables lowest total cost analysis by identifying cost drivers and hidden costs that drive up total cost. Multi-attribute weighted scoring and pricing, including price breaks and price elements, enable procurement professionals to strategically define items and services and effectively negotiate with suppliers. Sourcing also provides configurable scoring criteria to analyze bid supplier strengths and weakness that affect downstream costs. Bids can be scored on any combination of price and buyer-defined criteria such as delivery dates, quality, vendor reliability and financial stability.

Create Immediate and Long-Term Savings

Oracle Sourcing creates immediate savings with rapid deployment and ROI, and with consistent execution through the Oracle Advanced Procurement Suite.

Start Saving Immediately with Rapid Deployment

Purchasing professionals know that even small percentage savings add up to a massive contribution to the bottom line. So every day that sourcing professionals aren’t 100% productive costs your business money. Oracle Sourcing can have a dramatic impact on your sourcing organization in weeks, not months. The application can be run on-site or hosted, and works both independently and as part of the Oracle Advanced Procurement Suite. So you can apply Oracle Sourcing to current and upcoming sourcing opportunities and start saving right away, while ensuring that your solution can grow as needed.

Achieve Rapid ROI through Open Competition

Improving sourcing can save event. Organizations using Oracle even incumbent suppliers to risk by providing clearer requirements Reduced risk allows suppliers already have open today.

Realize Long Term Savings with Consistent Execution and Compliance

Even the best purchasing agreements are worth little unless they are consistently enforced. Oracle Sourcing provides even more savings to your organization when used within the Oracle Advanced Procurement suite by ensuring consistent execution from requisition to payment. Oracle Procurement Contracts drives compliance with built-in tracking of contract deliverables. Oracle Purchasing seamlessly executes agreements negotiated in Oracle Sourcing. Employee self-service requisitions placed in Oracle iProcurement automatically default to preferred suppliers at Sourcing-negotiated prices. Oracle Daily Business Intelligence monitors contract utilization and compliance and lays the ground work for finding new opportunities. The Oracle Advanced Procurement suite leverages the value of Oracle Sourcing by implementing and enforcing purchasing agreements enterprise-wide.

Unified Sourcing Platform

Oracle Sourcing is tightly integrated with the procurement modules of the E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite enables companies to efficiently manage customer processes, manufacture products, ship orders, collect payments, and more - all from applications that are built on a unified information architecture. This information architecture provides a single definition of customers, suppliers, employees, and products - all aspects of the business. Whether one module or the entire suite is implemented. Oracle E-Business Suite enables procurement professionals to share unified information across the enterprise and smarter decisions with better information.

Oracle Sourcing Business Flows

There are three typical business flows that utilize Oracle Sourcing.

Buyers have visibility to information throughout the complete procurement process. Oracle Purchasing users can view the awards that initiated the standard purchase order or blanket purchase agreement. Likewise, requisitioners in Oracle iProcurement can view the negotiation in which their requisitions are being negotiated. Suppliers accessing Oracle iSupplier Portal can drill down from a purchase order to the backing sourcing document and quotation in Oracle Sourcing.