How to Optimize and How to Do eTendering

If you’re in procurement, you may have heard the term ‘eTendering’ and might be wondering how to do eTendering, considering it’s been quite a buzzword. 

There are many benefits of eTendering, and that has a lot to do with its popularity. Essentially, it’s put in place to streamline your procurement process efficiently. There is a strong relationship between eTenders and ROI because efficiency and time savings turns into more profit. If you’re wondering how to do eTendering and are wondering what the steps are, read on to learn more about the process and how to optimize it.

 

What Is eTendering and Its Process?

Generally speaking, eTendering is the process of conducting your procurement processes digitally, in an online format. You’ll choose a certain portal, advertise your needs, be matched with a specific supplier, and walk through the contract process, the entire way to fulfillment. 

More specifically, the process looks like:

  • Determine the type of tender
  • Prepare a request for tender (this outlined contractual requirements)
  • Invite suppliers to the tender
  • Suppliers respond
  • Evaluate, including developing an evaluation scorecard
  • Award the business to one or many suppliers

When you’re just learning the ropes, you may not know there are different types of eTendering: open tendering, select tendering, multi-stage tendering, and invite tendering.

  • “Open” is open to any suppliers on the portal; select is open to just some suppliers
  • “Multi-stage” happens in stages when there have been too many supplier responses to help cull better suppliers until one can be chosen
  • “Invite tendering” is invite-only

Once you have a better answer for how to do eTendering and are on a portal you like, these will be intuitive.

 

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of eTendering?

 

The advantages of eSourcing and eTendering much outweigh the disadvantages. Overall, when you move to a digital platform and procurement software solutions, you’re looking at reduced costs and greater process efficiency. It may take some time to get used to a new system, but once you and your team are used to using whatever software you choose, you should be able to see real change, especially with ROI.

Once you learn how to do eTendering, some of the top benefits you may see include:

 

  • More savings overall. You’ll save money on most categories of spend. You’ll also do everything from identifying where your maverick spend is and reducing savings leakage after your tender is complete. 
  • Increased productivity. Going from “analog” to digital will bring an increase in productivity once you’re used to the system. Most clients see an average of 30% productivity gain.
  • Transparent spend. Learning how to do eTendering brings with it spend visibility across the board. If you’re using a procurement suite with other tools, you can also run spend analysis reports to take an in-depth look into where all money is going. 
  • Better supplier relationships. Through the use of eTendering, you’ll forge better relationships with the suppliers that matter—and as you go, you’ll build a database of your strategic suppliers, always having a go-to approved supplier list.
  • More productive bid evaluation. Everything is clear and right in front of you, so better evaluations and decisions are made. Also, using eTendering and a simple contract management tool, you can be collaborative with your team, and they can see where things stand as well.

 

How to Do eTendering: Types of Tools

 

When it comes to software, there are several choices out there. Some organizations still hold on to using spreadsheets, but they can be unreliable and not automated. Also, it can be hard to extrapolate what decisions they should make out of the information a spreadsheet has to offer.

A best-of-breed eTendering solution is quite popular and is the best choice for someone who wants to learn how to do eTendering. 

Here, all your procurement solutions are in one place: eAuctions, supplier databases, eTendering, etc. Some solutions also have scorecarding, second-round bids, as well as supplier performance options included, so you truly have an all-in-one system.

To learn more about how to do eTendering, or to request an eTendering demo, contact us at EC Sourcing Group today by calling 973-936-9672. We want to help you re-imagine procurement.