Purpose
The Request for Bid (RFB) business process allows companies to invite bids from vendors and suppliers. You can solicit bids from a specific set of vendors, or you can open the bid to all of the vendors listed in the Vendors log, as long as the Vendor record contains a valid email address. Each bidder receives an email notification of the bid invitation and login credentials to a private and secure Unifier workspace from which they can submit a bid. The Unifier interface is highly simplified so it does not require training to use.
Business process characteristics
Requests for Bid is a project-level business process with line items and a work flow. It collects all bids in a bid comparison sheet to help you compare received bids. When a winning bid is selected, it auto creates a Contracts record and auto populates the upper form and tabs with the vendor and award details. An individual help file is available for this business process.
Groups associated with this business process
- Assemble Initial Bid Package Step: Project Coordinators
- Bid Package Finalization Step: Project Managers. All Project Users can be copied.
- Package Revision Step: Project Coordinators. All Project Users can be copied.
- Bid Invitation: Project Coordinators. All Project Users can be copied.
- Analysis and Award: Project Managers. All Project Users can be copied.
Statuses
- Pending, a non-terminal status
- Approved, a terminal status
- Rejected, a terminal status
- Withdrawn, a terminal status
- Canceled, a terminal status
Additional Information
There must be a bid URL and bid manager defined in the company properties.
- Enabled for publish path.
Files attached to business process forms or to line items will be automatically published to pre-defined folders in Unifier's Document Manager. Attachments in company-level business processes will be published to specified folders in Company Documents and those in project-level business processes will be published to folders in a project's Documents log.
Benefits
In Unifier, files that are attached to a business process form or to its line items from your computer or local system are uploaded, by default, to the Unpublished Documents folder in Document Manager when sent to the next workflow step or by clicking Submit in non-workflow business processes. It requires administrators to publish them from there to the Documents folder. By establishing a publish path, file attachments are directly published to pre-designated folders in the Document Manager for team members to view, comment and collaborate.
Location
To view the published file attachments of a project-level business process record: In a project's Navigator, click Document Manager and select Documents. In the Folder panel, locate the pre-defined folder with the same name and view the published documents.
To view the published file attachments of a company-level business process record: In the Company Workspace Navigator, click Document Manager and select Company Documents. In the Folder panel, locate the pre-defined folder with the same name and view the published documents.