"How will I award my business?"™

“How will I award my business?”™ is the first question buyers should ask when designing a sourcing process. It may appear counter-intuitive but identifying award criteria from the outset forces buyers to define the ultimate objectives and any constraints.

Trade Extensions consultants are skilled at working with buyers to identify award criteria and even when the objective looks clear - achieve the lowest cost solution, for example - there are many things to consider. Not all suppliers will be able to meet the buyers' service levels; buyers may only be prepared to introduce a new supplier if costs are significantly lower and they may want to limit the overall number of suppliers. Therefore, a simple objective to achieve the lowest cost solution could ultimately mean achieving the lowest cost solution working with a maximum of five pre-qualified suppliers, one of which may be new on condition that the overall cost is 10% less than the previous year.

Asking “How will I award my business?”™ means these constraints are not overlooked and ensures the relevant information is collected during the RFI and RFQ stages.

Collecting the correct information allows buyers to receive the full benefit of Trade Extensions optimiser in the analysis phase. Numerous scenarios can be analysed very quickly so buyers can ‘play’ with the data and answer unlimited ‘what if?’ questions. The optimisation phase often finds solutions buyers would never have previously considered and that is only possible by collecting the information required to answer “How will I award my business?”™

“How will I award my business?”™ is a trademark of Trade Extensions AB

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