You define Requirements to solicit high-level information about the suppliers who have responded to your negotiation. This information can come from the suppliers themselves or internal evaluators. You typically define Requirements in the form of questions.

Defining Requirements

You create collections of Requirements called Sections. You can later assign different Sections to evaluators for analysis and scoring. You are provided with a default container called Requirements. As you create your sections, you add them to the Requirements container.

To begin defining your Requirements:

1. In the Requirements area of the Create Negotiation page, select the entry for the default section called Requirements.

2. To add a new section, click Add Section.

3. On the Header: Add Section page, accept the default, Add Section, from the Add drop down menu to add a new section. Select Predefined Section to add an existing section that has been predefined by a Sourcing Administrator.

4. Enter a name for your new section.

5. If this is a two-part RFQ, select either Technical or Commercial from the RFQ Stage drop down menu to indicate the type of section. Two-part RFQs must contain both a Technical and a Commercial section. Once you have defined your section and identified it as either technical or commercial, you cannot change its designation without creating an amendment.

6. If you wish to create the section and continue on adding the Requirement for that section, click Apply and Add Requirement and continue with the next step. If you wish to create all your sections fist and then add then return and add the Requirements later, click Apply and Add Section and return to step 3 (you must specify the location of the new section, either before or after the previously created section).

7. On the Header: Add Requirement page, enter your Requirement question in the text box provided

8. Once you have defined your Requirement text, set the Properties for this Requirement as necessary:

   • Requirement Type Requirement Type describes how the Requirement is used within the negotiation. Values can be:

     • Display Only The Requirement is displayed to the supplier, but the supplier cannot enter a response to it. If the Requirement type is display-only, Display Target is set to Yes and Maximum Score is automatically set to zero. Display only Requirements merely notify suppliers of additional aspects in which buyers are interested.

     • Internal Internal Requirements can only be seen by buyers. If an internal Requirement is weighted, the total weight value seen by the supplier will not add up to 100. For example, if an Requirement is internal and has a weight of 10, the supplier sees no information on the internal Requirement and sees the sum of all weighted requirements as 90. If unweighted, new internal Requirements can be added while the negotiation is in progress. If weighted, new internal Requirements can be added if they are given a weight of zero or if their weight amount is subtracted from another internal Requirement. Internal requirements have Display Target set to No.

     • Internal Required Selecting this will make it mandatory for the internal scoring and evaluation teams to respond to this.

     • Optional Suppliers do not have to respond to this Requirement.

     • Required Suppliers must respond to this Requirement.

   • Value Type Select the type of characters suppliers can enter for this Requirement when responding: Text (letters/words, digits), Number (digits with decimals allowed), Date (numbers in date format), or URL (using the format http://www.oracle.com). The value type also governs the characters you can enter in the RFQ/Auction Value field.

     Note: Text is the most flexible value type. If you select Text, suppliers can enter letters as well as digits. If you select Number, participants can only enter digits; if you select Date, suppliers can only enter digits in date format.

   • Target Enter a target value for the Requirement (for example: 30 or more years in business) .

   • Display to Supplier Indicate whether you want suppliers to see your Target value.

   • Scoring Method Select the method by which you wish to score responses to this Requirement, if you choose to have those responses scored.

     • None - Responses can not be scored.

     • Automatic - The system will assign a score based on scoring information you define. If you choose Automatic, you must define the allowable values (or value ranges) and the score for each.

     • Manual - evaluators will enter scores for a particular response by hand when scoring a participant's response.

     Note that the scoring method chosen applies only to a particular Requirement. You can have a combination of both automatically and manually scored Requirements within the same negotiation.

     If you choose to enable scoring for this Requirement, you can also set the following fields:

     • Maximum Score (Manual scoring method only)

       You can set a maximum score allowable for this Requirement. The Sourcing Administrator may have set a default value for this property, but you can override it if necessary. When automatic scoring is enabled, the maximum score is derived from the list of possible values.

     • Knockout Score

       You can specify a value that sets a threshold that applies to supplier responses. If the score for a supplier's response does not meet this threshold, that response is removed from the shortlist and therefore not available for analysis or award.

     • Weight (Automatic and Manual scoring methods only)

       If you choose to use weighting, enter the weight of this Requirement. The value you assign should reflect the importance of this Requirement relative to all other Requirements for this negotiation. The higher the value, the more important this Requirement among the other Requirements. The total of all Requirement weights must be 100.

9. You can define which response values (or range of values) are acceptable for this Requirement. You can define the acceptable values yourself, or you can associate the Requirement with a predefined set of values. If you define acceptable response values, those values are displayed to the responder, who must provide an approved value.

   Note that if you chose the Manual scoring method, these fields do not appear. Also note that if you chose the Automatic scoring method, you must define both the acceptable values and their scores.

   To define acceptable values yourself:

   1. Click the Add 5 Rows button under Acceptable Values.

   2. Enter values for the following fields:

      • Response Value

        Enter an acceptable value for this Requirement. You may enter as many separate values as is necessary to identify all possible acceptable responses. The values you enter should reflect the Value Type (text, URL, Date) you specified for this Requirement. This is a mandatory field.

      • Value From/Value To (number and date type Requirements only)

        If your Requirement has a value type of number, you can enter specific numbers or you can define ranges of numbers. If you wish to define a single value, enter the number in both the From and the To fields. Otherwise, to define a range, enter the beginning value in the From field and the ending value in the To field.

   To associate a set of values:

   1. Click Apply Value Set.

   2. On the Apply Value Set page, enter the name or description of a value set (you can enter partial values).

   3. Click Go.