Demand Workbench allows you to access and aggregate requisition demand existing in Oracle Purchasing to create new sourcing documents. Using the Demand Workbench, you can:
Access requisition information for any organizations to which you have access (you cannot combine requisitions from different organizations).
Create auctions and RFQs with either a standard purchaser order or blanket purchase agreement outcome.
Maintain the relationships between the negotiation document lines and the backing requisitions throughout the Sourcing lifecycle, including multiple rounds of negotiation.
To use the Demand Workbench, you identify requisitions for which you wish to source, and then use those requisitions to create a sourcing document.
Searching for requisitions
You access the Demand Workbench by clicking the Requests tab on the Negotiations Home page. You see all requisitions in the Oracle Purchasing requisition pool to which you have access based on your default view and your default organization.
To select a different organization, select an entry from the Organization drop down menu. This menu displays all organizations you are authorized to access. To select a different vies, select the view from the menu. If you change organization or view, only the requisitions for that view/organization are displayed.
Using Views
there are four predefined searches (views) that are available with the Demand Workbench. Additionally, there are any personalized views that you have created. To use a view, select the view from the View drop down menu and click Go.
You can use these views to search for requisitions as follows:
My requisitions - This view displays all requisitions assigned by the buyer. You can assign requisitions to a particular buyer when you create the requisition in Oracle Purchasing.
Unassigned Requisitions - This view displays requisitions that have not been assigned to a sourcing buyer.
Requisitions with a suggested supplier - This view displays requisitions for which the requisition preparer defined a supplier when creating the requisition.
Requisitions with a new supplier - This view displays requisitions that suggest a supplier who has not yet been defined to the system (Oracle iProcurement can create requisitions with a suggested supplier who is not in the system).
Personalized views - You can create your own personalized view that displays only those requisitions in which you are interested.
To search for requisitions, you can use the views that already exist in the system, any of your personalized views, or you can use the Advanced Search function to define detailed search criteria by which to search.
Using the Advanced Search
You can use the Advanced Search function to define any combination of search criteria that is necessary to locate appropriate requisitions. To use the Advanced Search function, click Advanced Search.
Advanced Search allows you to search for requisitions using a combination of values for Buyer, Category, Ship-To Date, and/or Supplier.
You can add additional search criteria by clicking Add. A pop-up menu appears displaying all possible search fields. By selecting a field, you can add it to the other existing search fields (for example, you might wish to search on the item description).
When performing advanced searches, you can choose to require entries to match all the search values or allow them to match any of the search values.
Select "Search results where each must match all values entered" to require the entries to match all the search values you enter. For example, qualifying requisitions might be required to have the buyer be John Smith and the ship-to locations be New York. In this case, to qualify, the requisition must match both conditions.
Select "Search results where each may contain any value entered" to allow entries to match any number (or all) of the search values. For example, qualifying requisitions might be allowed to have the buyer be Patricia Stock or the ship-to location be San Francisco. In this case, the qualifying requisitions can match either or both search values.
Viewing results
When the search results display, you see all requisitions that matched the criteria for the view/search (for organizations to which you have access). For multi-line requisitions, there is an entry for every requisition line. If you see a requisition with multiple lines, but some of the lines are absent from the list, those lines have already been processed.
You can sort the results by clicking any column header. You can see information for the requisition and requisition line by clicking the Requisition and/or Line links. If the suggested supplier has a profile defined in iSupplier Portal, you can view the profile information by clicking the Source link.
Creating Sourcing Documents
Once you have located the requisitions you wish to include in your sourcing document, you use Demand Workbench to create a new negotiation document:
Select a document outcome from the dropdown list.
Will your negotiation result in a Purchase Order or a Blanket Purchase Agreement? The values you can specify for this profile option are the values defined in the Purchase Document Styles, similar to the dropdown on the document Outcome field. Document Outcome is a mandatory field.
The profile option PON: Default Outcome for Sourcing Documents enables your administrator to specify a default value for the outcome document type in the Sourcing Demand Workbench. The default value in the document outcome dropdown list is the value your administrator specified in the profile option.
Click the Select check box adjacent to the Requisition row to select the requisition lines you wish to include in your new document, and click Add.
If the requisition lines should not be used in a sourcing document, click Return Lines to remove them from the requisition pool and change their status to Rejected in Oracle Purchasing.
To review the lines that were created for the document, click Lines.
The Document Builder page displays the lines that have been created for the sourcing document. By default the lines are combined according to the rules below. If you wish to change the grouping of requisition lines, select Requisition from the Requisition Grouping menu and click Go.
If you wish to remove a line from the document, select the link and click the Remove icon. The line is returned to the requisition pool and is available for use by other buyers. If you wish to start the creation again, click Clear.
If satisfactory, click Create. You are taken into Oracle Sourcing with a new sourcing document created. Demand Workbench uses the requisition information to create the lines on the new document.
Creating Negotiations from Spot Buy Requisitions
In Demand Workbench, a buyer can view Spot Buy requisitions and can autocreate them to negotiations.
Using the Source column, a buyer can view the supplier(s) before the autocreate process.
The Source column displays the name of the supplier(s) that were suggested by the requester during the creation of the Spot Buy requisition. If there are more than one suppliers for the Spot Buy requisition, the link Multiple appears on the Source column. Click the Multiple link to view and select the supplier you (as the buyer) wish to create the RFQ or purchase order for. If no supplier is assigned, you, as the buyer, need to select a supplier in the Document Builder region.)
If the requisition line has a transaction currency that is different from functional currency then the RFQ document is created in the functional currency, and appropriate currency conversion takes place to display the line amount in the functional currency in the RFQ document.
Grouping Requisition Lines
If you select multiple requisitions or a requisition with multiple lines, Demand Workbench consolidates multiple requisition lines with similar characteristics into a single sourcing document line. Multiple requisitions lines are grouped together if they have the same values for the following characteristics:
Item category
Shopping category (only if the outcome is a Blanket Purchase Agreement)
Item number
Item revision
Item description
UOM
Ship-To address
Line type
Need-By Date (provided the value of the PON: Use Need-by Date for Default Grouping profile option is set to Yes)
Adding Lines to a Negotiation
You can add Lines to a Negotiation by searching for a RFQ or Auction, selecting Add Requisition Lines option from the Actions menu and then selecting and adding lines from the Demand Workbench page. Alternatively, you can select the Add to Auction, Add to RFQ from the Document Builder's Type LOV.
Then select the Auction or RFQ number to which you wish to add the requisition lines. The Document Builder area displays the Auction / RFQ Number search LOV. Click the magnifying glass icon to search for the award or modification to which to add the lines. After you have selected a draft Auction or draft RFQ, select the requisition lines you wish to add to the Auction / RFQ and click Add. After you have selected the requisition lines, the Recently Added Items list displays the selected line information.
If another user locks the solicitation, then you see a message stating that the negotiation is locked, after which you can decide whether to continue or cancel the operation. Click Update to open the Update Document Builder: Add to Auction / RFQ page. You can re-select an Auction / RFQ by using the search LOV to replace the original document with a new one that you wish to add lines to.
The Update Document Builder: Add to Auction / RFQ page enables you to re-select a solicitation or amendment and also to group requisition lines with the same or similar fields:
Item Number
Item Description
Item Category
UOM (Unit of Measure)
Item Revision
Transaction Reason Code
Line Type
For example, if you have an identical or related item number for two items on two different requisition lines, they can be grouped into a single requisition line based on the item number. Lines are grouped if the grouping criteria match.
See: Viewing Backing Information for AutoCreated Lines
The Requests region consists of a Group By LOV with 2 values: Default and Requisition. The defaulted value is Default. If you select the Requisition method of grouping, the application adds requisition lines to the solicitation as individual lines. The Default method of grouping enables you to make changes/updates to the line numbers so that you have more control over the grouping of the lines. If the lines from the requisition are found to be the same or similar by the application, the Default method of grouping makes the line number of the requisition editable. This means that you can modify the line number to group it with another line if required, provided the grouping follows the rules specified above.
Editing the New Sourcing Document
After the Demand Workbench creates the new sourcing document, you continue with the normal creation process.
In general, you can edit your document as you would any other sourcing document except for the non-modifiable information taken from the backing requisitions. Backing requisition information can be modified according to the rules in the table below:
| Backing Requisition Information | Modifiable? |
| Operating Unit | Display only |
| Ledger Currency | Display only |
| Line Type | Display only |
| Item number | Display only |
| Item revision | Display only |
| Item description | Display only |
| Category name | Display only |
| Unit of measure | Display only |
| Quantity | For quantity-based lines, this is modifiable. If multiple requisitions have been grouped, the quantity represents the sum of the individual requisition quantities. For amount-based line, this is always 1. |
| Ship-To address | Display only |
| Line level attachments | Modifiable |
| Need-By date | Modifiable. If there is a single date, it becomes the Need-By date. If there is a range of dates, the earliest becomes the Need-By date. |
| Bid start price | Modifiable. If multiple requisitions have been grouped, the lowest price becomes the Bid Start Price. |
Using the Negotiations Created from the Demand Workbench
In general you use a negotiation created from the Demand Workbench the same way as other RFQs/auctions. Note, however, the following points:
If you take the RFQ/auction to multiple rounds of bidding/responding, the backing requisition information is updated to point to the new RFQ/auction.
If you cancel an RFQ/auction with line items originally created using the Demand Workbench, the backing requisitions are returned to the requisition pool. Also, if you only partially award a line item quantity, the unawarded quantity is returned to the requisition pool.
Once you have completed awarding the RFQ/auction, Oracle Sourcing creates either a standard purchase order, or a blanket or contract purchase agreement and sends them back to Oracle Purchasing along with references to the originating requisition.
Creating Personalized Views
If you frequently use the same advanced searches to restrict the display of requisitions, you can save these advanced views. These are called Personalized Views. To create a Personalized View:
On the Unprocessed Requests page, click Personalize.
The Personalized Views page displays the system views and any private views you have defined to the system.
If you wish to delete or modify a personalized view, select the view and click either the Delete or Modify icons.
If you wish to deactivate a view so it does not appear in the View drop down menu on the Unprocessed Requests page, select No from the Display View menu and click Apply.
To create a new view, click Create View.
On the Create View page, define your new view.
Give your new view a name.
Optionally, choose to make this view your default view.
Optionally, specify a view description.
Specify the default number of matching requisitions to display (the default is ten).
Use the instructions above on advanced searching to create the appropriate search conditions.
Once you have defined your view, you can click Apply to save your definitions, or click Apply and View Results to save your definition and immediately execute it as well.