Having led and witnessed so many sourcing processes over the past decade-and-a-half, I think I\u2019ve heard every possible bidding supplier complaint. The funny part is that there are complaints at both ends of the spectrum.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ve seen suppliers complain about more casual bidding processes, suspecting that another bidder was given preferential treatment because there were separate discussions held with each bidder. I\u2019ve also seen suppliers complain about strict bid processes that prohibited one-on-one, personal meetings with bidders because they consider themselves more of a \u201ccollaborative\u201d supplier as opposed to a \u201ctransactional\u201d supplier.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is this: any time a supplier loses (which will be any time that you have two or more suppliers bidding), someone is going to be unhappy. Your job is to make your stakeholders and your organization happy within ethical boundaries, not every bidding supplier.<\/p>\n
So as long as you conduct your sourcing process ethically, stick to what you said you would do, and disclose what you said you would disclose, you can feel satisfied that you\u2019ve done your duty to satisfy your customer. Unless you\u2019re in government procurement where suppliers are taxpayers and, therefore, your customers in some perverted way and are \u201centitled\u201d to be treated like fine china.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean that you shouldn\u2019t care about relations with losing suppliers. A healthy and honest debriefing can help all parites walk away if not happy, at least at peace.<\/p>\n
That being said, a poor debriefing can pour salt in the suppliers\u2019 wounds and make you look bad. I would define a poor debriefing as one where you are very secretive and refuse to share who the successful supplier was and what advantage they had.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to be specific like \u201cSupplier A offered a price that was $13,002.87 lower than yours.\u201d But simply saying \u201cWe selected Supplier A based on a lower price\u201d sufficiently protects Supplier A\u2019s confidential pricing while providing fair insight to the losing bidder.<\/p>\n
NOTE: It\u2019s better to discuss these things in terms of the advantages of the winning supplier rather than the disadvantages of the losing supplier. Criticism invites arguments.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I\u2019ve seen too many purchasing professionals make themselves look bad by failing to follow these simple guidelines. I hope this short little rant helps you prevent yourself from being one of them.<\/p>\n
So what do suppliers want?<\/p>\n
They want what they expect. And you can shape what they expect with a well-written RFP that explains what the process is, why it is that way (ideally mentioning the benefit to suppliers), and what the losing bidder will learn (and not learn) at the conclusion of the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having led and witnessed so many sourcing processes over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n