Example of Inviting Additional Suppliers to an Active Negotiation

Suppliers can access your negotiation in different ways: suppliers can find your negotiation by searching online; or you can explicitly invite a supplier to participate.

For example, you can research suppliers from the supplier search page and then specifically invite them by adding them to the supplier invitation list while creating the negotiation document. Then when the negotiation is published, invitation notifications are sent to the suppliers you indicated. Also, you can invite additional suppliers after the negotiation has been published or even if the negotiation has been opened for responding. You might want to invite additional suppliers if the response prices you are receiving are not to your liking, if the responses are not meeting negotiation targets, or if new suppliers contact you and ask to be allowed to participate. When you invite a supplier, you specify a main contact to receive notifications. You can change the main supplier contact at a later time if needed, and you can specify an additional contact if necessary. If the supplier has multiple sites registered, you can optionally identify a single supplier site to participate in the negotiation. If you specify a supplier site as well as a supplier on the invitation, only contacts registered with that supplier site can view and participate in the negotiation. Some suppliers can be registered in the application but have not yet applied for approval to conduct spend transactions with your buying organization. Such suppliers are called prospective suppliers. You can add these suppliers to your invitation list. They will receive invitations and can view and respond to the negotiation. They cannot be included on purchase documents until they are approved for spend transactions, however allowing prospective suppliers to participate in the negotiation allows their spend authorization requests to be evaluated at the same time that the negotiation is proceeding.

How You Add an Additional Supplier

Consider you have a public sector RFQ that is soliciting quotes for the construction of a new public library. When you publish the negotiation, invitations are sent to all construction companies with which you have worked in the past, After reading information on the RFQ, a plumbing company contacts you and asks to participate in the bidding, so you add the company to the negotiation.

How You Change a Supplier Contact

You are renegotiating a contract with a company you have dealt with in the past. You update the new negotiation and publish it, but the company contacts you and informs you that the previous negotiation contact has left the company. Using information from the supplier, you update the negotiation to reflect a new contact at the supplier. Note that the original contact is removed from the invitation list and no longer receives any notifications about this negotiation. The new contact receives notifications going forward.

How You Limit Participation to a Specific Supplier Site

There may be situations where because of certain tax regulations or supplier organization, a negotiation is only appropriate for a supplier site located in a particular country, or a site that performs a particular type of processing. In these cases, you may want to select a supplier site. Then for that supplier, only contacts registered for that site can participate in the negotiation.