Help Home/Creating Negotiations
Generally the winner of a negotiation is the supplier who offers the lowest price. However you may want to consider supplier responses to other line attributes in addition to price being offered when determining the best response. You can accomplish the by specifying weighting and scoring values for your line attributes. The system can then include the suppliers' responses to your line attributes when calculating the best response. See Adding Line Attributes to Negotiation Lines for information about defining line attributes. See Basing Award Decisions on Line Attributes for an explanation of how weights and scores are used to determine the best response.
To use weighting and scoring when defining a negotiation:
See Creating a Negotiation Header. After you have defined the negotiation header, click "Lines" in the navigation bar in the top left hand corner.
On the Create: Lines page, Make sure you select Multi-Attribute Scoring from the Ranking menu. Select a ranking method if the Sourcing Super User has set the system up to allow you to change ranking methods, and you do not wish to use the default. Select Online from the menu and click Go.
On the Lines: Create Line page, use the instructions in Adding Lines to a Negotiation to enter the line data and other required and optional line information.
To enter a line attribute, navigate to the Attributes table and click Add Another Row .
When the page refreshes, enter your line attribute information. *Indicates a required field:
*Attribute (up to 240 characters) Name your line attribute (for example: Mileage; PPM Defect Rate; Grade).
Group Select one of the predefined attribute groups . Groups are used for categorizing attributes .
Attribute Type How the supplier should respond to the attribute. Responses can be required or optional. Or the attribute can be for display only. To weight an attribute, it must have an attribute type of Required.
Value Type Select the type of characters suppliers can enter for this attribute when responding: Text (letters or words, digits), Number (digits only, decimals allowed), or Date (numbers in date format). The value type also governs the characters you can enter in the Target Value field.
Target Value (up to 4000 characters) Optionally enter a target value for the item (for example: Fewer than twelve thousand miles per vehicle; Fewer than eight defects per million parts manufactured). The target value represents the best or most desirable response from the supplier.
Display Target Indicate whether you want suppliers to see your target value.
Weight The relative importance of this attribute among the line's other wieghted attributes. Assign values one to 100. The sum of all the line's weights cannot be more than 100. Weights are used by the system when calculating the best response.
Score Clicking the Score icon accesses the scoring criteria page. You use this page to specify scores for the attribute values you anticipate receiving.
Click Score.
On the Create Line: Enter Scoring Criteria page, specify the acceptable values for this attribute and the score each value receives, with 100 indicating the most desirable value and 0 the least. Note that two values can have the same score. For example, assuming an attribute of color. The possible values might be red, blue, and green, and the score values might be 100 for both red and blue, but only 50 for green. Note that there is a limit of 30 characters for the values.
For text value types, enter and score every acceptable value. Respondents can select these values from a List of Values.
For number value types, assign a score to a single number or a range of numbers.
To specify a single number, enter that number in both the From and To fields.
To specify a delimited range, enter the beginning number in the From field and the ending number in the To field. Range values are inclusive.
To specify an open-ended range, enter the limiting number in either the From or To field. For example, to include all numbers less than 1000, enter nothing ( or 0) in the From field and 1000 in the To field. To include all numbers greater than 5000, enter 5000 in the From field and nothing in the To field.
Do not overlap values. Any numbers you don't score are assumed to have a score of 0.
For date value types, enter a valid date. Date values obey the same rules as number values. You can score a specific date, a delimited range of dates, or an open-ended range of dates.
If you need to add and score more values than fit on the page, click Add 5 Rows. When you have entered all your scores for this attribute, click Apply . You are returned to the Create Line page .
Repeat the preceding steps to define and score any additional attributes.
If the quantity is important to your auction, click Score to the left of the Quantity field. Use the instructions above on scoring number value types to specify scores for any quantity levels you may receive. By default, the full negotiation quantity is scored as 100. When you have scored your quantity levels, click Apply.
Note: Make sure to allow partial Quote/Bid values when you define your Negotiation Controls in the subsequent step otherwise you will receive an error message .
If a Need-by Date is important, enter a date or date range. To score the dates received in a response, click Score and use the instructions above on scoring date value types to score the date values you expect to receive. After scoring Need-by Date, click Apply.
After you have finished scoring your item attributes, you are returned to the Create Line page. Enter weighting values in the Weight field for every attribute you scored (the Weight field will be unavailable for any attributes defined as Optional or Display Only). Specify how much weight each attribute should be given when evaluating supplier responses. If you choose to add or modify scoring information for a line, you can click Score to access the scoring criteria page again.You do not have to weight every required attribute, but you must weight any attribute you have scored.
Enter a number from 1 to 100 to indicate the relative weight of each attribute .
The sum of all weights cannot be more than 100. Click Recalculate to see the currect total of your weight values for this line attribute .
Each number should indicate the relative importance of that attribute within the other weighted attributes.
To set the weights for all attributes equally, click Equalize Weights. If there are an odd number of attributes, the system will assign weights as equally as possible .