The chapter describes the Item and Supplier Analysis pages and highlights the decisions that project managers and buyers can make using these pages.
This chapter covers the following topics:
Project managers and buyers can analyze items to procure for a project using the Item Analysis page. The Item Analysis page is centered upon items that have been ordered for a project in the past. It brings in historically segregated, structured, and unstructured data from purchasing document attachments about the item and makes it available to you in a way that enables quick decision making.
Item Analysis page provides additional information to the buyer and project manager when they need to analyze the items assigned to a procurement plan line. When they click on Analyze Item for a plan line, the application carries the context of the plan to the Item Analysis page and pre-filters the page with the item number and description. If the page is accessed directly from the menu, no automatic filters are applied. This page provides all the current and historical procurement information of items in one page.
Project managers or buyers can assess the risk of procuring an item by looking at past history. For example, if an item has had quality issues in the past, they can anticipate that they might probably encounter quality issues in the future. Additionally, the Item Analysis page displays availability information and provides insight into other projects that have procured or planning to procure a given item. The Search functionality in this page enables the project team to find an item by entering keywords as textual content from attachments is also available for search. The consolidated information regarding items enables the project manager or buyer to determine if they are buying the right item, if there are viable alternatives, determine most appropriate budget for the item, and determine the procurement strategy based on historical and future demand.
Buyers and project managers can also see the current procurement status of an item, including which projects have ordered the item and any existing agreements or suppliers of the item and how much has been spent or is committed to be spent on the item.
Project managers can access the page by clicking on Analyze Item from Procurement Plan, Plan Line tab. Project buyers can access the page by clicking on Analyze Item from buyer command center. Additionally, they can directly access the page from the Item Analysis menu.
This page provides additional information to the project manager and buyer when they need to analyze the items assigned to a procurement plan line.
Heading Region
This region displays the date and time stamp of the last ETL update.
Search Region
The Search component allows you to submit keyword searches and provides type-ahead suggestions displaying attribute values that match the typed text. When you perform a search, the search term is added to the Selected Refinements component. As you type, you may be prompted to select a matching attribute value, or simply search for the entered text.
Selected Refinements Region
The Selected Refinements component displays all values that you have selected to filter data, and allows you to quickly make adjustments to the current refinement by removing items or clearing all filters from the list.
Bookmarks Region
The Bookmarks component allows you to save a given navigation and component state and return to it at a later time.
Available Refinements Region
The Available Refinements component allows you to filter data based on the currently available values or value ranges for selected attributes that are displayed within attribute groups. Expand the attribute groups to view and select attribute names.
Totals Region
This region displays the following metrics based on the filters applied on the page:
| Metric | Metric Display Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Totals | Items | Total number of items represented in the current view |
| Totals | Suppliers | Number of suppliers who supplied the item in the past |
| Totals | Projects | Number of projects for which the item has been procured, or is being planned |
| Totals | Requisitions | Number of requisitions in which the item is referenced |
| Totals | Purchase Orders | Number of purchase orders in which the item is referenced |
| Totals | Agreements | Number of agreements in which the item is referenced |
| Totals | Negotiations | Number of negotiations in which the item is referenced |
PO Line Attachments and Item Description Region
This region is based on the item description and PO line level attachments.
Analysis Region
This region displays the following charts and graphs:
| Tab | Chart Title | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Item Analysis | Trend Analysis - Total Spend Vs. Off Contract | Total spend refers to the sum of purchase order line amounts. Off contract spend refers to those purchase order lines which do not have BPA/ CPA reference. The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. |
| Item Analysis | Trend Analysis - Average Lead Time | This value is derived from agreement lines, and is converted to days as the UOM. This is the default Trend graph. |
| Item Analysis | Trend Analysis - Average Price | This value is derived from unit price on purchase order lines. The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. |
| Supplier Relationship | Overall Supplier Performance | X-Axis: On-time delivery rating (default) / quality rating / price compliance rating Y-Axis: Quality rating (default) / on-time delivery rating / price compliance rating Bubble size: Total spend (OU functional currency) The application does not display this chart when there are multiple functional currencies. |
| Supplier Relationship | Supplier Performance – Price Compliance (average) | Please refer to Analyzing Suppliers for calculation of price compliance. Each supplier is a line with a different color. |
| Supplier Relationship | Supplier Performance - Quality Rating (average) | Please refer to Analyzing Suppliers for calculation of quality rating. Each supplier is a line with a different color. |
| Supplier Relationship | Supplier Performance - On Time Delivery Rating (average) | Please refer to Analyzing Suppliers for calculation of on-time delivery rating. Each supplier is a line with a different color. |
| Supplier Relationship | Items Supplier Analysis - Number of Items by Supplier | Shows number of distinct items supplied by suppliers. Clicking on a supplier drills down to the supplier sites. The graph only renders when you choose a UOM value, either implicitly or explicitly. |
| Spend Analysis | Total Spend Spread - Total Spend by Category | Split total spend data by item categories. This is the default Spend Analysis graph. The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. |
| Spend Analysis | Total Spend Spread - Total Spend by Deliver to Location | Split total spend by deliver to location on purchase order shipments. The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. |
| Spend Analysis | Total Spend Spread - Total Spend by Item Description | Split total spend by item description (comprises both inventory items and description based items). The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. |
| Spend Analysis | Total Spend Spread - Total Spend by Supplier | Split total spend by supplier name. The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. |
| Spend Analysis | Contract Vs Off Contract Spend Spread Contract Spend, Off Contract Spend by Category | Total spend refers to the sum of purchase orders line amounts. Off contract spend refers to those purchase order lines which do not have BPA/ CPA reference. The graph only renders when there is a single value for currency code chosen either explicitly or implicitly. The x-axis shows the category code, and Y axis is the stack comprising contract and off contract spends. |
Item Summary Region
This region displays a summary of the item within the following tabs:
The Item Details tab
This tab displays the following information from the column set drop down menu:
The Details option displays relevant details as captured in the Item Master. All the attributes are existing fields in Item Master definition. For non-inventory items, the application populates only Item Description, Category, and List Price columns.
The Price and Spend option displays currency, unit price details, total spend with and without BPA/CPA reference and the sum of contract and off contract spend.
The Quantity Summary option displays the sum of currently available (available to reserve) quantities across inventory organizations accessible to the project manager and buyer, the sum of overdue quantities on purchase orders that are open for receiving overdue, the sum of net ordered quantity ((quantity ordered – quantity cancelled) – total delivered quantity) across all open purchase order lines, and the sum of ordered quantities across all approved requisitions that have not been placed on a purchase order yet.
The Procurement Documents option displays the negotiations, requisitions, agreements, and purchase orders applicable to the selected item.
The Lead Time option displays the lead time details for the selected item.
The Projects tab displays the summary of the projects for which the item has been planned or ordered.
The Approved Suppliers List tab displays the approved suppliers for the selected item and enables the project manager and buyer to analyze the suppliers using the Action drop down menu.
Procurement Details Region
This region displays details of all purchasing documents where the item is referenced at least once in any of the following document lines:
Negotiation
Agreements
Requisitions
Orders
Select Actions in the column set drop down menu and view these purchasing documents from the respective sub-tabs. Project managers can only view these documents. Project manager's access to these documents is based on the access rules governed by the prevailing Oracle Purchasing setup and responsibilities assigned to the project manager. Project buyers can edit or take action on the individual purchasing documents based on the access restrictions set up within Oracle Purchasing and the responsibilities assigned to the buyer.
Project managers and project buyers can perform the following action while analyzing the items:
Compare two or more items using the Compare action available on the right side of the Item Details table.
Additionally:
Project managers can compare and replace an item with the item specified on the procurement plan using the Compare with Procurement Line action available on the right side of the Item Details table. Replace item is possible only when the plan line is in draft status. Project managers can replace an item only with another item in the same purchasing category. They need to manually change the quantity and planning rate of the replaced item, if required. Where there is no match (for item number, description, and category) or where the budget exceeds what's on the plan line, or where the earliest need-by-date cannot be met by the lead-time, the application uses an alert icon to catch your attention to the potential problem of replacing the item. See: Analyzing and Replacing Items to Procure, Chapter 3: Planning Procurement: Project Manager Actions.
Project buyers can compare an item with the item specified on the procurement plan for analysis purposes using the Compare with Procurement Line action available on the right side of the Item Details table. See: Analyzing Items for a Plan Line, Chapter 4: Processing Procurement: Project Buyer Actions.
Project managers and buyers can analyze suppliers who can supply items for a project using the Supplier Analysis page. The Supplier Analysis page is based upon suppliers, bringing in data sources from multiple modules together in one page to help gain insight about the performance of the supplier, the relationship your organization has with the supplier, and how one supplier compares to others.
Historical procurement information provides great insight into the on-time delivery, quality and price-compliance trends of the supplier, and also provides quick summary of the relationship your organization has had with the supplier. If you have installed Oracle Supplier Lifecycle Management or Oracle Supplier Hub and have configured user defined attributes for suppliers, then the powerful search and filtering features of Oracle Endeca make it easy to find the right supplier using all the extensive information you have collected about the supplier, such as insurance, environmental compliance, financial stability, or quality maturity information. You can be sure you are selecting the best suppliers when you use the analysis page to investigate each supplier's history. Buyers and project managers can also see the current status of a supplier, including which projects have orders, negotiations or any existing agreements with a supplier, how much has been spent or is committed to be spent with the supplier and how well the supplier has performed with regards to supplying the ordered items or services.
Project managers can access the page by clicking on Analyze Supplier from Procurement Plan, Plan Line tab. Project buyers can access the page by clicking on Analyze Supplier from buyer command center and Add Supplier from RFI/RFQ Invited Suppliers page. They can directly access the page from the Supplier Analysis menu. Additionally, project buyers can access this page as follows:
From within Oracle Sourcing, buyers can invoke the new Supplier Analysis page to select a set of eligible suppliers that meets the Sourcing event's eligibility criteria.
From Offer Comparison and Evaluation pages, the advanced supplier search pages are accessible to compare supplier's performance based on selected parameters and buyers can choose the most suitable supplier. When project managers access the Supplier Analysis page using this option, the Supplier Analysis page is pre-filtered for the list of suppliers whose offers are being compared.
From Supplier Search pages within Supplier Management Administrator / User flows.
Essentially, the Supplier Analysis page offers a dashboard to the Supplier Management User, providing the following:
Ability to receive alerts that needs the supplier manager's attention for example, when a payment hold is placed on a supplier.
Ability to refer to historical Supplier Performance data – on quantitative as well as qualitative aspects.
Quantitative aspects are measured from transaction data. The following are considered in the current release:
On-time delivery performance
Quality performance (inspection / delivery rejections)
Price compliance (variance between Agreement / PO Price Vs invoice price)
Ability to search through seeded and user-defined attributes to satisfy complex search requirements. Ability to bookmark these so that they can be easily accessible in the future.
Ability to select suppliers from the result list, notify them or create RFx directly from this page.
This page provides additional information to the project manager and buyer when they need to analyze information about the suppliers who can fulfill orders for a procurement plan line.
Heading Region
This region displays date and time stamp of the last ETL update.
Search Region
The Search component allows you to submit keyword searches and provides type-ahead suggestions displaying attribute values that match the typed text. When you perform a search, the search term is added to the Selected Refinements component. As you type, you may be prompted to select a matching attribute value, or simply search for the entered text.
Selected Refinements Region
The Selected Refinements component displays all values that you have selected to filter data, and allows you to quickly make adjustments to the current refinement by removing items or clearing all filters from the list.
Bookmarks Region
The Bookmarks component allows you to save a given navigation and component state and return to it at a later time.
Available Refinements Region
The Available Refinements component allows you to filter data based on the currently available values or value ranges for selected attributes that are displayed within attribute groups. Expand the attribute groups to view and select attribute names.
Suppliers Region
This region displays the supplier metrics under the following headings:
Suppliers: Total number of unique suppliers in the result list based on filters applied.
Approved Suppliers: Total number of suppliers who appear in the approved supplier list for at least one item / category.
On-hold suppliers: Total number of suppliers who have at least one active hold (hold all payments, hold all purchase orders etc).
Active agreements: The number of blanket / complex purchase agreements which are currently active for the suppliers.
Orders - total number of orders issued to all the selected suppliers.
Change requests - total number of supplier initiated change orders (all statuses).
Ordered items - total number of unique items ordered from the selected list of suppliers.
Supplier Analysis Region
This region displays the following charts and graphs:
| Tab | Chart Title | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | Supplier Performance | X-Axis: On-time delivery rating (default) / quality rating / price compliance rating Y-Axis: Quality rating (default) / On-time delivery rating / price compliance rating Bubble size: Total spend (OU functional currency) Chart does not display data when there are multiple functional currencies. |
| Relationship | Holds by Supplier | Number of holds by hold type, by supplier. |
| Relationship | Supplier's Geographic Distribution | Number of suppliers by country. If a particular supplier is selected, then drill down is enabled to the supplier state. |
| Approved Supplier Lists | Approved and Local Suppliers | Shows total spend on the project split by approved versus unapproved suppliers (ASL) or by local versus non-local suppliers (supplier country versus task location) by period (year / month). Chart does not display data when there are multiple functional currencies. |
| Approved Supplier Lists | Number of Suppliers by Product Services | Number of suppliers by products and services category. |
| Procurement History | Spend by Supplier | Contract versus off-contract spend by currency by supplier. Chart does not display data when there are multiple functional currencies. |
| Procurement History | Spend Trend | Contract versus non-contract spend by currency and need-by-date, each supplier is a line with a different color. Chart does not display data when there are multiple functional currencies. |
| Change Request Trend | Change Request Trend | Number of change requests by year, supplier. |
Supplier Information Region
This region displays supplier information within the following tabs:
The Supplier tab in this region provides an overview of the supplier and the performance details. Additionally, project managers and buyers can view the detailed information of the supplier. Project buyers can add the selected supplier as source of supply only if they navigate to this page from the command center where they need to analyze supplier for a plan line and then add as source of supply.
The Relationship tab in this region displays the active purchase orders, blanket purchase agreements, and negotiations. Additionally, it displays holds applied on active documents, total count of orders, total spend, number of negotiations in which a selected supplier participated, negotiations in which the selected supplier was awarded, average spend per year, receipt and use details.
The Addresses tab in this region displays address details of the selected supplier.
The Projects tab displays the projects for which the supplier is associated to a purchasing document. The Approved Supplier List displays the ASL approval status, item, supplier category, and manufacturer details of approved suppliers.
Documents Region
This region displays details of the following purchasing documents associated with the suppliers:
Purchase Orders
Agreements
Negotiations (to which the suppliers have been invited)
Select Actions in the column set drop down menu and view these purchasing documents from the respective sub-tabs. Project managers can only view these documents. Project buyers can view the negotiation, proceed to compare, and award the suppliers. See: Comparing Suppliers and Awarding.
Project managers and project buyers can perform the following action while analyzing the suppliers:
Compare two or more suppliers using the Compare action available on the right side of the Supplier Details table. The comparison enables you to view the supplier performance in terms of on-time delivery rating, quality rating, price compliance rating, order count, total spend, blanket purchase agreements, negotiations awarded, and participated negotiations.
Compare two or more agreements using the Compare action available on the right side of the Agreements table.
Select one or more agreements and compare with the plan line in context using the Compare with Demand action available on the right side of the Agreements table. When no plan line exists in context, the application displays an error. The basic requirement for comparison are as follows:
If the plan line has an inventory item, comparison is possible only with agreement lines of the same item.
If the plan lines has a description-based item, comparison is possible only with description-based agreement lines of the same category.
If the agreement is inactive, or if there's a problem in adding the agreement line as source-of-supply, then the application displays an appropriate error message.
If you do not want to retain the context of the plan line, then you can click Remove to remove the plan-line context.
The Create Source of Supply action is available only to the project buyer. Buyers can click the '+' icon which takes them to the Create Source of Supply page for the plan line, where all information is defaulted. Click Apply or make applicable changes and then click Apply.
Additionally, project buyers can perform the following actions:
Add as Supplier to Negotiation - When a buyer navigates to the Supplier Analysis page while using the Add Supplier feature during negotiation creation, they can select one or more suppliers and add them to the negotiation. Clicking on the action adds the selected suppliers to the negotiation and the application displays a confirmation message. Clicking on Return to Previous Page link takes you back to the Negotiation Suppliers page. If you add a supplier who is already added to the negotiation, then the application displays a note indicating the situation. You cannot add suppliers to a negotiation without any negotiation context.
Add to Document Builder - Using this action, you can add one or more suppliers to the document builder. When you perform this action with a plan line in context, the application adds the plan line to the document builder along with the selected suppliers. If you add a supplier who is already added to the negotiation, then the application displays a warning message. You can add suppliers to the document builder from the Invite Suppliers page using the Add to Invite List action available on the Supplier Overview page.
Add to Negotiation - You can add a plan line to a draft negotiation using this action. The application groups the additional quantity arising out of this plan line with the selected negotiation line, and establishes a link between the plan line and negotiation line.