Negotiation Lines

Your negotiation lines are the heart of your negotiation. Here you describe the items and services you want to purchase.

On the Edit Negotiations: Lines page, you can easily define all your negotiation information, pricing information as well as other aspects of the line you want to negotiate with the prospective supplier.

As you create your negotiation lines, use the information in the following tables to complete your line fields

• Required and Basic Fields

• Price Calculations and Controls

• Additional Line Information

• Spreadsheet Import

• Alternate Lines

Required and Basic Fields

As you create your negotiation lines, you enter values into fields. In the following tables, these fields are marked with asterisks. You must enter a value for this field, although in many cases a default value is present already and is displayed. Which fields are required varies depending on the negotiation outcome. Some fields only appear if the negotiation outcome is a purchase order, while other fields only appear if the negotiation outcome is a purchase agreement. The following table displays the required and basic fields and which negotiation outcome uses them

The following table shows the fields of a negotiation line and in which negotiation outcome they appear.

Field	Used in Which Negotiation Outcomes	Meaning
Line	All	The number of the line in the negotiation
Requisitioning BU	Standard Purchase Order (auction)	The business unit requesting the item or service.
Line Type	All	The type of line, for example goods or services
Item	All	Item identifier
Revision	All	The latest revision number of the item
*Description	All	Text description of the line
*Category Name	All	Category containing the item
*Quantity	Standard Purchase Order	Number of units being negotiated for
Estimated Quantity	Blanked Purchase Agreement	The expected number of units to be purchased over the life of the agreement.
*Unit of Measure (UOM)	All	Unit of measure
Estimated Total Amount	Blanket Purchase Agreement	The estimated amount of business (in the negotiation currency) that you expect to pay for this line
Minimum Release Amount	Blanket Purchase Agreement	The minimum amount which can be released against an agreement.
Location	Standard Purchase Order	The name of the address where you want the item or service to be delivered. Not entering a location results in the default location being used.
Requested Delivery Date	RFI	The date the buyer would like to accept delivery of the line
Requested Ship Date	Standard Purchase Order	The date the buyer would like the supplier to ship the line item units
Current Price	All	The price currently being paid for one unit of the item
Start Price	All	The item price at which responses to the negotiation should begin
Target Price	All	The price the buying organization wants to pay for one unit of the item
Display Target Price	All	Whether to display the target price to a responder
Note to Suppliers	All	Any text notes or comments for the suppliers
Allow Alternate Lines	All	Allows the supplier to respond with a line different from the defined negotiation line
Edit	All	The edit icon.

Pricing Calculations and Controls

There are two optional fields you can use to control and report on price competition. The Start Price value controls responding and requires that the supplier enter the initial response at a price lower that the Start Price value. The Current Price value specifies how much you're currently spending for one unit of the item or service. If you enter a current price value, Oracle Sourcing can calculate and display the savings. The savings values are useful later when analyzing competing responses.

Additional Line Information

In addition to price, there is other information you can add to your lines and negotiate with your potential supplier.

Cost factors identify additional costs which may be associated with the item or service. Such additional costs could include customs duties, storage, or transportation. You can identify these costs with your negotiation line and include supplier responses into the total cost of the line when analyzing responses.

You can use price breaks and price tiers to negotiate pricing structures. You can create price breaks for negotiations with a purchase agreement outcome based on location, quantity, and start/end dates. You can define price tiers for all negotiation outcomes based on quantity alone.

You can use line attributes to obtain detailed information about the supplier's response to the negotiation line. Line attributes target information other than price which could be important when evaluating supplier responses. You can allow suppliers to enter free form text, or require them to select from a predefined list of acceptable values. If the negotiation is a multiattribute negotiation, you can enter response score values, and the Sourcing calculates the score for a particular response. A line can have multiple attributes and each attribute can be weighted to reflect the relative importance of that attribute for the line.

There are two methods for adding attributes to a line. You can create and add multiple single attributes to a line, or you can add one or more predefined lists of attributes called an attribute list. If predefined grouping labels (called Attribute Groups) are defined in your application, you can use these labels to structure your attributes and attribute lists.

Lots and Groups

Category managers can define lots that contain a collection of lines, giving a hierarchical structure to the sourcing document. A lot may be an assembled product or lines may be organized into lots to obtain the most competitive response. Suppliers are required to evaluate the entire lot and place a response at the lot level. Suppliers may optionally provide line-level responses as well. Category managers analyze the responses and make award decisions at the lot level. When the category manager creates a purchasing document from the award, awarded lots are transferred to purchasing document lines.

Negotiation lines can also be organized into groups for ease of analysis and award. Groups are collections of related lines that allow category managers to model market baskets. Suppliers respond to individual lines within the group, and pricing information is automatically rolled up to the group level for enhanced analysis. Category managers can analyze and make award decisions for the entire group, or they can choose to select the best supplier responses for individual lines within the group. Awarded lines are transferred to the purchasing document, if the category manager created one from the award.

A lot is a complete negotiation line on its own. As such, it can have line attributes, cost factors, and any other characteristics a negotiation line. A group is simply a named collection of negotiation lines. Groups have no attributes other than price (which is the sum of all its line price values). Lots and groups must have at least one subordinate line defined. You can't insert lots within groups or groups within lots. You can add independent lines into lots and groups (although you can't move a line with a backing requisition into a lot), and you can move lot lines and group lines into other lots or groups.

Spreadsheet Import

You can use the spreadsheet import feature to streamline the creation of large numbers of lines. You simply export and save the spreadsheet template. Using the reference information, you complete the spreadsheet with your line information. Once the spreadsheet is completed, you import it back into the application. During the import process, each line is verified. If any error is found, all line information is reversed, and error messages alert you to the problems the application found. You can correct the spreadsheet and reimport to correct the problems.

Alternate Lines

If you want, you can allow your supplier to respond with an alternate line. This alternate response line is in addition to the supplier's response to the line you originally defined to the negotiation. The supplier might want to add a new line to suggest alternate response information such as a different set of price breaks, cost factors, line attributes, or UOM specifications. To allow alternate lines, on the Create Negotiation: Overview train stop, you must set the Allow Alternate Lines option to yes. Then when defining your separate negotiation lines, set Allow Alternate Lines to Yes.