The RFB business process has a reference process to a vendor list business process, which contains the pool of vendors to whom the RFB will be sent. This vendor reference process will populate the upper fields of the RFB at runtime. Unifier automatically launches this reference process, when the RFB is activated.
Once the RFB Business Process is active in Unifier, the bid procedure runs as follows:
You (the person who starts the bidding process and sends the invite):
- Start the bid procedure by opening the RFB, filling in the form, and sending it for internal review (if necessary).
- When the internal review is complete, you:
- Assemble the bid package and prepare the bid invitation for distribution.
- Send out the bid invitations, along with a user name and password so that the vendors can log into Unifier and submit their bids.
Once the bid invitations have been sent, you must wait, then, for the bid due date to pass.
The vendors:
- When the vendors receive the bid invitation, they log into Unifier and open the bid request.
- (Optional) The vendors can request clarification of any questions or issues before submitting the bid. (The vendors can use the Mailbox link on the bid request for this purpose.)
- The vendors then submit their bids.
You (the person who started the bidding process and sent the invite):
- When the due date for all bids is reached, you tabulate the bids for comparison.
- Open discussions about the bids, if necessary.
- Award the bid to a vendor and automatically generate a contract copying relevant details from bid record into the contract.
- Select a winning bid, after discussions with the members of your team.
In Unifier, you can create a contract from the winning bid (the bid that was selected from multiple bids) automatically, and the contract that is generated automatically will have a copy of the data from the winning bid (terms and negotiating amounts), if any.
See Select Winning Bid and Auto-create Contract sections for details.
Active bids in Bidder log
When you open the Attachments tab, the following blocks and sub-blocks will be present, depending on the bid status:
- Unpublished Attachments
- Addendums
- Published Attachments
- Original Attachments
All of the active bids can receive additional attachments, from the requestor. When the bidder opens or views the bidding in the log, the new or additional attachments will be shown under the Addendums block.
When a bid receives a new attachment, as addendums, then Unifier sends a new email to all of the bidders. Unifier sends a similar email when an existing bid attachment is removed.