As a supplier, you use the Negotiations Home page to complete all your sourcing tasks. Use this page to do the following:
Search for negotiations in which to participate.
View information on any negotiations to which your company has been invited.
Respond to negotiations.
Create and submit responses to negotiations.
Monitor the progress of any published responses.
Create and monitor any deliverables required by negotiations in which you are participating.
View information on any awarded, rejected, or disqualified responses.
Maintain your profile.
To be able to successfully conduct business on Oracle Sourcing, you must be able to quickly locate negotiations of interest. There are several ways to search depending on the kind of negotiation you are looking for.
To search for your active and draft responses:
If you are currently participating in a negotiation, or are in the process of preparing a response for a negotiation, information on your responses is displayed under Your Active and Draft Responses section of the Negotiations Home page. At a glance, you can view you top five active and draft responses. The details you can view are Response Number, Response Status, Supplier Site, Negotiation Number, Title, Type, Fair Opportunity Notice, Time Left, Monitor, and Unread Messages.
Click the Negotiation Number link to see details about the negotiation.
Click the Response Number link of an active response to see the details of your current response.
Click the response number link of a draft response to continue editing the draft.
If the solicitation is a Fair Opportunity Notice, the Fair Opportunity Notice column displays a value of Yes, otherwise it remains blank.
Click Unread Messages to view the unread message.
Click Full List to view the list of all your responses that have not been awarded, rejected, or disqualified.
To search for negotiations to which you've been invited:
If a buyer has invited you to participate in a solicitation, you will see an entry for that negotiation under Open Invitations. To access a solicitation, click the Number link for that solicitation. You can see the details of the solicitation and decide whether or not to participate. If the solicitation is a Fair Opportunity Notice, the Fair Opportunity Notice column displays a value of Yes, otherwise it remains blank. To see a complete list of solicitations to which you have been invited, click Full List.
To search for all open negotiations:
In addition to the negotiations to which you have been specifically invited, there may be many other open negotiations which you may wish to investigate and participate in.
On the Negotiation Home page, enter search criteria from the list of values and click Go. You can search for open negotiations using criteria such as:
Title - the title of the negotiation
Number - the negotiation number
Contact - the buyer who created the negotiation
Category - all negotiations having an item from that category value
Line - all negotiations belonging to the same line type
Event - all negotiations associated with a Sourcing event
After you have selected a search criteria and entered a search value, click Go. The Results: Negotiations page displays all negotiations that meet your search criteria.
To access a solicitation, click the Number link. This will take you to the negotiation summary page. Here you can view information on the solicitation and submit a response.
Related Topics
Viewing Negotiation Details Before Responding
To view your negotiation details before responding:
Under Open Invitations, click the Negotiation Number to access the Negotiation Summary page for the negotiation in which you are interested.
Alternatively, use the Search Negotiations fields to access the Active Negotiations page. Click the Negotiation Number to access the Negotiation Summary page.
The negotiation summary page displays all the current information for this negotiation. This includes such information as the open and close dates, negotiation terms, any header information and any notes or attachments at the header level or line level. The countdown clock at the top of the page shows you the time left before the negotiation is closed.
Clicking the Lines link displays information on the negotiation lines, including such information as the negotiation quantity, the current best response (if the buyer chooses to display this) and the number of active responses. If the buyer chooses to allow you to access response information, clicking the number link displays information on responses to this line. To see a line's attributes, price factors or notes/attachments, click the description link in the Line column.
Clicking the Controls link displays the response controls set by the buyer when the negotiation was defined.
See: Understanding Response Controls.
Clicking the Contract terms link displays any negotiation contract deliverable defined to this negotiation.
If the item has attributes, cost factors, or price breaks associated with it, you can view information on the item attributes by clicking the View link under the Details column. The Notes and Attachments section displays any text messages from the buyer and any attached files. Attachments can be viewed by clicking the paperclip icon.
Suppliers can respond to public solicitations and private solicitations to which they have been invited. To respond to a solicitation you must:
Find a negotiation, in which to participate.
Submit your response (bid, or quote).
See: Submitting Responses
Monitor the action in the negotiation in which you are participating.
See: Monitoring Responses
Navigate to the Negotiation Summary page for the negotiation to which you wish to respond by clicking its Negotiation Number link under the Open Invitations section of the Negotiations Home page. Alternatively, you can enter search values into the Search Negotiations fields and click Go to list all negotiations in the system, including ones to which you were not explicitly invited to. On the Active Negotiations page, find your negotiation and click the Negotiation Number link there.
When a solicitation amendment is published, as a supplier, you have to review change description, acknowledge the amendment, and then resubmit the offer, after making any revisions.
You can see details of the negotiation on the Negotiation Summary page. If less than 24 hours remain for the negotiations, the countdown clock at the top of the page shows the amount of time left before the negotiation closes in real time.
To submit response online:
On the Negotiation Summary page, select Create Offer from the Actions menu to create a response to the negotiation.
If the buyer has defined Terms and Conditions, you are asked to read and accept the negotiation terms and conditions. After reading the terms and conditions, click Accept.
On the Create Offer page, depending on the contract type used on each line, you click the Update button and enter the relevant details.
See: Common CLM Functionality for more information on Contract Types
If the solicitation controls are selected for allowing suppliers to enter unsolicited lines in offers, the Create Offers > Lines page displays an Unsolicited Lines region to enable suppliers to add the relevant unsolicited lines information.
The Header tab of the Create Offer page allows suppliers to enter the required header details. If the solicitation is of type Fair Opportunity Notice, the supplier may select an IDV from the Internal IDV or External IDV LOVs, to reference the IDVs that were part of the original umbrella program. Thus, even unsolicited lines can refer to IDVs that were part of the original umbrella program. Enter the other field values such as Offer Valid Until or Note to Buyer, as required. When done, click on the Lines tab.
The Lines tab displays the following regions: Solicitation Lines, and Unsolicited Lines. The Solicitation Lines region defaults the line information from the original solicitation. Fields such as Offer Price are available for entry. Click on a line number link to see more line information from the solicitation.
The Unsolicited Lines region enables suppliers to enter unsolicited lines (CLIN/SLIN structures) as part of their offer. Suppliers may have additional goods/services that they wish to offer that might be related to the solicited items, but are not specifically listed in the solicitation. Please note that the supplier needs to manually complete the line items details for the unsolicited line.
To create an unsolicited line, select Create CLIN from the Actions LOV and click Go. The Create Offer: Line page displays, with the following regions: Main, Related to Solicitation Lines, Additional Item Information, Federal Customer Designation, Notes and Attachments. The main region enables you to enter line details such as Description, Quantity, Offer Price, etc. If the default values for Unit Of Measure, Category, Contract Type, Cost Constraint on the Negotiation Configuration page have been selected, these default values will display in the relevant fields. If the buyer has opted that these values are updateable by the supplier, suppliers can replace the default values with any other valid values.
In the Related to Solicitation Lines region, click Add Solicitation Lines to select the solicitation lines you wish to associate the unsolicited line to. The Add Solicitation Lines LOV displays, and you need to select one or more solicitation line to link the newly created solicitation line to. Click Select after choosing a line, and return to the Create Offer: Line page. In the Related to Solicitation Lines region, the original solicitation line details are displayed. Select Alternate or Additional from the Relation with Solicitation Line LOV to specify the nature of the association or relationship between the original solicitation line and the newly created unsolicited line.
Enter any other relevant information in the other regions. Attributes, Cost Factors, Quantity Based Price Tiers, Price Breaks regions are not available in the create Offer: Lines page.
Priced Exhibit Lines (non-CDRLs and non-Informational, Non-NSP / No Cost) lines are similar to priced CLINs and SLINs, except that they have a different Line number such as A001, A080 etc. These lines are called priced ELINs. Priced ELINs are displayed in the offer as are other CLINs and SLINs. Offer Totals include the priced ELIN values as well. No Cost / Not Separately Priced ELINs are used in the same way as No Cost / Not Separately Priced CLINs and SLINs.
Use the Manage CDRLs button to enter the Price Group and Estimated Price on the deliverable. The Mange CDRLs button opens the Data Deliverables page, using which you can update the deliverable information. If the solicitation has been created with a deliverable, the Manage CDRLs button displays, otherwise it does not show up in the Create Offer page.
When suppliers create an offer, or buyers create a surrogate offer on behalf of the supplier, the Lines page (Offer Lines tab) has the following Delivery Based Event fields:
Delivery Event (read only)
Period (read only)
Period of Performance Duration (read only)
Promised Period (updateable)
Promised Period of Performance Duration (updateable)
Suppliers, or buyers entering surrogate offers, are required to enter values for the updateable fields. The field values are saved along with the offer.
Click Apply to return to the Offer page, or click Apply and Create SLIN to create a CLIN/SLIN structure. The Create Offer page displays, showing you the offer details. Click on the Lines tab and note that the unsolicited lines numbers start from the next available numbers of the original solicitation lines.
When you have entered responses to all your line responses, and any specific requirements from the buyer, click Continue. This returns you to the Create: Review and Submit page.
You can click Offer By Spreadsheet to use the a spreadsheet to work with the solicitation data. Select the type of spreadsheet format you wish to use: XML Spreadsheet or Tab-Delimited. If you choose Tab delimited, you will also have to select which spreadsheet you wish to download: Requirement or line. Click Export. Save the spreadsheet file to a convenient location. Open the spreadsheet file and complete your work. Once done, select the format of the spreadsheet you wish to import. Browse to the location where you saved your spreadsheet file. Click Import. The system will validate the response information you entered in your spreadsheet.
Note: If you use MS Excel to open and work with this spreadsheet, then select the Data menu, select Get External Data, and then select Import Text File. Browse and select the downloaded response text file. In the Text Import Wizard that displays, select Delimited in Step 1 of 3 and click Next. In Step 2 of 3, ensure the Tab check box is selected, and click next. In Step 3 of 3, select the second column containing Solicitation Line Number and select the Text radio button. Click Finish. This ensures that your line numbers display in the correct format.
When you are satisfied with your bid, click Submit.
Note: If for some reason you do not wish to submit your response immediately, click Save Draft to save your response information for a later session. Your draft will be assigned a number which you can use later when accessing the draft for editing or completion. You can access your draft responses by clicking the Manage Draft quick link from the Negotiations Home page. You can access the draft for editing or for submission.
The supplier can create multiple active offers for a solicitation or revise an existing offer, if permitted by the buyer.
Using the appropriate supplier responsibility, navigate to the Negotiations page. In the Your Active and Draft Responses region, the offers you have created for the solicitation are listed. Click on a response number to view the offer, the Offer page displays. Click Create Offer from the Actions LOV and click Go. A warning message displays, telling you that you have already created an offer for this solicitation. You now have two choices: to create a new (alternate) offer or to revise the existing offer. Select the appropriate radiobutton and click Ok. If you choose to revise an existing offer, all the offers that you created till date for this solicitation are displayed.
From the Quick Links region, select the Active link to view all the active and draft offers you have created. Click Revise to revise an existing offer. The Create Offer page displays, where the details of the offer are defaulted in the fields. You can update the defaulted information. Click Save as Draft or Continue to save and apply the updates to the offer. Click Revert to Active Offer in order to replace the current draft offer details with the parent offer that was originally created. You get a warning message, asking if you wish to proceed with replacing the revised offer with the original offer or not. Click Yes to revert to the original offer.
When the buyer amends a solicitation, any offers submitted prior to the amendment have to be resubmitted after acknowledging the amendment.
Select an active solicitation that you wish to create an offer for. You can search for a solicitation by using the Search Open Negotiations LOVs, or by selecting from the links in the following regions: Your Active and Draft Responses, Your Company's Open Invitations, Quick Links.
When you find the solicitation, you need to select it by choosing the Select radiobutton and then clicking Respond. A Warning message displays, telling you that the solicitation has amendments which require your acknowledgement. Click Yes to continue and No to not acknowledge the amendment to the solicitation. If you click Yes, the Acknowledge Amendment page displays with the amendment details. When you have read the amendment information, click the check box to acknowledge that you have read the terms and conditions of the amendment and also click the Acknowledge button. You get a confirmation message that the amendment has been acknowledged successfully and that you can proceed to respond to the solicitation. Click Yes to proceed to creating your offer, then click Accept in the Terms and Conditions page to accept the terms and conditions of the agency. The Create Offer page displays, where you can create your offer for this amended solicitation.
Note: CLM enables surrogate entry of an offer on behalf of the supplier even if a draft offer exists in the system from the same supplier.
Related Topics
Responding to Deliverables Defined for a Negotiation
Deliverables are additional requirements a buyer may request of a supplier over the course of a negotiation. Deliverables are part of the contract terms the buyer may have defined and are typically additional pieces of documentation that must be provided by the supplier.
You use the Create Response page to enter your response to the buyer's negotiation. This includes responses to any contract terms the buyer has defined. Contract terms are displayed in the Contract Terms section of the page.
If there are deliverables, they will be listed in the Deliverables section. Each deliverable has a due date, and you must respond to these deliverables before their dates expire. If there is an exclamation mark icon in the Alert column, the due date for completion of that deliverable has passed and that deliverable is late. If there is an X icon in the Alert column, the responsible party failed to perform the deliverable.
Once you have completed the tasks outlined in the deliverable, you respond to the deliverable and update its status. Click the Update icon.
On the Update Deliverable page, you can change the deliverable status, or modify or delete an existing attachment, or add a new attachment.
Change the status to Submitted and click Done.
For more information on Data Deliverables, see: ELINs and CDRLs section.
From the Negotiations Home page, you can easily monitor the status of negotiations to which you have responded. The Your Active and Draft Responses section lists all negotiations to which your have either submitted an active response or to which you are still creating a draft response.
Click the Negotiation Number link to see details of the negotiation such as negotiation items, terms and conditions, and response controls.
Click the Response Number link to see details of your current responses.
The Active and Draft Responses page enables you to revise or withdraw your offer, depending on your requirement. For example, you may wish to revise or withdraw your bid because the amendment to the solicitation now contains terms and requirements that you had not anticipated. Please note that you can withdraw only active offers and also offers that are for solicitations that are currently open for bidding.
Open the Offer from the Active and Draft Responses page. The action Withdraw Offer in the Actions LOV enables you to withdraw an offer from the negotiation. Select Withdraw Offer from the Actions LOV and click Go. The Withdraw Offer page displays, and you need to enter a withdrawal reason and click Submit. You get a confirmation message that the offer has been successfully withdrawn.
Also on the Negotiations Home page, you can use the Response Quick Links to see the status of your awarded, rejected, withdrawn, and disqualified responses. Click the Disqualified and Withdrawn Responses to view the responses. You can select a response that has a status of Disqualified or Withdrawn and opt to revise it by clicking the Revise button. The Create Offer page displays, with a message that you have chosen to revise an offer that was withdrawn or disqualified. The values you entered in the disqualified or withdrawn offer have now defaulted in the fields of the revised offer. You can proceed to create an offer / response to this solicitation.
You can also use the Monitor negotiation page to view your response while the negotiation is in progress.
The View Responses quick links section of the Negotiation Home page enables you to view your awarded, rejected, and disqualified responses.
Click Awarded to view the Awarded Items page, which shows you all negotiation items for which you have been awarded business. The Awarded Items page allows you to drill down into detailed information about the negotiation items and your responses to them. The Awarded Items page shows the Response Number, Reference Number, Supplier Site, Negotiation Number, Type, Description, Promised Date, Award Quantity, Award Price, Outcome Document, and Reason.
Click Rejected to view the Rejected Items page that shows you all items to which you responded but were not awarded by the buyer. The Rejected Items page allows you to drill down into detailed information about the negotiation and your response to it. The Rejected Items page shows the Response Number, Reference Number, Supplier Site, Negotiation Number, Type, Description, Promised Date, Response Quantity, Response Price, and Reason
Click Disqualified to view the Disqualified Responses page that shows you all responses you have placed in any negotiation that have been disqualified by the buyer. The Disqualified Responses page allows you to drill down into detailed information about the negotiation and your response to it. The Disqualified Responses page shows the Response Number, Your Response Number, Supplier Site, Negotiation Number, Title, Type, Event Title, Time Left, and Reason. If the negotiation is still open, you can select your response and click Revise to update your information and submit a new response.
On the Negotiations Home page, click the Personal Information quick link.
The Update Personal Information page displays. You can update your Contact Title, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Job Title, Contact Email, Phone Area Code, Phone Number, Phone Extension, Fax Area Code, and Fax Number.
When you have finished editing your personal information, click Apply. Click Clear Changes to undo all changes you made. To cancel all changes, click Cancel.