Buyer Toolbox Supplier Toolbox

Economic Engine Buyer tools are designed to create time saving value for your professional purchasers and contract administrators. Purchasing costs can also be lowered potentially by increased competition among vendors.

All of our tools are easy to use with no special software and only minimal training required. All you need is internet access and an email address.

Ten easy steps to saving time and money:

1. Pick purchasing modules to be used in your Private Marketplace.
2. Receive online or personal training from customer support when you are ready to place your first online bid request. No previous training necessary.
3. Fax your present vendors an invitation to join your Private Marketplace. Customer Support will help them register and respond to bids.
4. Receive electronic bid responses from your vendors.
5. Make addendums to your bid or answer vendor questions online.
6. Evaluate initial Bid responses with help from Customer Support.
7. Award Administration feature allows to split bid awards easily.
8. Online Catalogs for Requirement or Indefinite Quantity Contracts can be set up.
9. Tracking and reporting capabilities are as complete as the information placed in the Marketplace.
10. Integration to either front end or back end ERP systems can be easily accomplished.

Our online bid and response capabilities help create unique solutions to meet your company’s needs. These purchasing modules help you not only save time and money on phone, fax, mail communications, but at the same time we train your vendors to do business your way.

Pick purchasing modules to be used in your Private Marketplace.

The Economic Engine Software has many modules for you to choose from that will help fit the way you do business now. The modules will conform to your purchasing procedures already in place, initially helping you by helping to eliminate phoning, faxing and mailing your vendors. Once your vendors are trained by our Customer Support, from that point on your business will be able to be conducted online with a higher degree of performance and accountability.

User hierarchy and approval processes to manage all purchasers in your organization can be established and maintained within the Economic Engine. Existing business procedures can be copied so internal approval processes do not have to be changed, just done online. You can have a final authorization process in place before award sent to any vendor.

Receive online or personal training from customer support when you are ready to place your first online bid request. No previous training necessary.

The Economic Engine software is designed to accommodate the way you normally purchase goods and services, so learning to post bid information online will be very similar to what you do now, except walking to and from fax machine to either send bids or receive responses, or in some cases, both. It is easy to attach prepared documents for the vendor to view and download. This procedure will again help replace most of your fax and or mailing procedures presently in place. If your company has software in place that helps prepare the bids, we can simply integrate into your present system to allow the bids to be emailed to your vendors. Once the vendors have responded to your bid electronically, Customer Support will walk you through the evaluation procedure, again which is designed similar to how you currently evaluate bids. In general, you will only have to learn what areas of the software which help streamline your vendor communications and external purchasing procedures. Once an individual buyer has been through the procedure of posting, evaluating and awarding a bid online the first time, they seldom have problems with the next one. If they do, Customer Support will be available to answer questions via phone or email during your business hours.

Fax your present vendors an invitation to join your Private Marketplace, Customer Support will help them register and respond to bids.

Once your company has been initially set up with its own Private Marketplace, we will give you some example letters for you to fax to your vendors. We recommend that you only send only to the vendors that fit the commodity type of the current bids. That way your vendor will be more apt to respond by getting registered as there are business opportunities awaiting them within the software.

We provide a website link for you to place on your company’s website. This allows vendors to sign up directly to your Private Marketplace, without any further assistance from you (our customer support will handle any registration or software questions they may have). Generally over a year or so, you will have placed bids in the majority of your companies commodity and service codes, so that most of your vendors are now registered and are just awaiting the next email bid notification in their subscribed area. No more faxing or mailing of bids notifications once your vendor signs up the first time.

Supplier Development

Economic Engine can help you find qualified new suppliers, while educating and developing current suppliers. Communicate with your suppliers in real time. Have all your suppliers in one location – your private e-marketplace. We do all the education and training for your suppliers so they understand how to maximize the offerings of your e-marketplace and its benefits to their company. Research thousands of potentially new, credible suppliers by having access to view their company information and invite them electronically to participate in your e-marketplace. Easily identify certified and self-certified women and minority owned businesses. Manage your supplier diversity program by providing opportunities to company’s that fit your outreach needs. Based on the outreach you can provide executive reports to verify your company’s goals and dedication.

Receive electronic bid responses from your vendors.

Even if your company has an automated way of faxing bid opportunities, it is a good chance you still have to receive a vendors proposal back in the form of a fax or mail. The ability of the vendor to respond electronically will help guarantee that numbers aren’t transposed incorrectly or smudged or unclear faxes are not misread. The ability for your vendors to know that their electronic response will definitely end up on your desk top is generally more comforting to them than a faxed or mailed response that might possibly get misplaced.

Make addendums to your bid or answer vendor questions online

If your vendors are registered on the system, a buyer can answer a question or publish an addendum online and each vendor will have immediate access to the new information without a phone call, mail or fax. The ability for a buyer to know the vendor downloaded and viewed the initial bid documents along with any addendums or questions can help assure the buyer that responses should be forthcoming, as with a fax or mail, there is generally no guarantee it got in the right hands. Sometimes finding all vendors that have been sent the initial documents and making sure they all got any addendums to the bid can be a tedious task for someone in the purchasing department. This software makes it easy.

Evaluate initial Bid responses with help from Customer Support

Once your bid due date has arrived, you can call Customer Support and have them walk you through the evaluation process. The ability to view vendor substitutions and either approve or disapprove is accomplished with ease, as the software brings them to your attention. Once this task is taken care of the software will place all the vendor responses on a spreadsheet side by side for you to evaluate. (No more copying faxed or mailed bid response line items to one master copy for evaluation.) Pick and choose multiple vendors based on price only, or lump sum to one vendor if your purchasing guidelines allow. You as the buyer get to determine what evaluation criteria you will use for commodities as well as services. The Economic Engine software allows for Request for Proposals for services and Quality Based Solicitations to be done online, as well as commodities.

Your buyers can eliminate phone, fax, and mailing of most documents. Economic Engine can instantaneously send multiple line item RFQ’s and RFP’s to multiple suppliers at the touch of a button.

Create and manage vendor lists for your specific needs. You may designate which suppliers within your marketplace are to receive your bid information. This can be done by geography (buy local) or by diversity status (if you have a diversity program), or other specific vendor information, or you may elect to open the bid up to any and all vendors based on their commodity codes, to assure the utmost competition for price and other evaluation criteria you company may have. You have the ability to determine who sees your bids online, your valued experienced vendors, or their new potential competitors, or a combination of the two.

Award Administration feature allows to split bid awards easily.

Bids can be awarded electronically on the system. Awards can be split between two or more vendors at the touch of a button to allow for maximum pricing advantage to the buyer. Whether combining the installation with the commodity, or separating out, the buyer has the option per line item. If the buyer wishes to notify the winning bidder(s) and the losers to create more competition on the next bid, then a module can be added to email all the results of the bid once accepted by the winner(s).

Online Catalogs for Requirement or Indefinite Quantity Contracts can be set up.

Once the bid is awarded and accepted by the vendor, each line item will be placed immediately in a private catalog for specific buyers to use. These contracts can be made available to all specific buyers in certain areas of the company or companywide. By implementing the catalog procedure you can combine bids of different departments accruing substantial savings through non duplicating workflow and potential pricing advantages.

Tracking and reporting capabilities are as complete as the information placed in the Marketplace.

The Economic Engine software allows your company to track any information going into the system along with the ability to generate your own reports based on this information. You can evaluate your company as a whole in specific areas of purchasing, or even a specific buyer’s performance. These reports can be generated and displayed for anyone using the system or specific people you may designate. Because they are done online, you will be able to create and access these reports in real time. Generate tracking reports on spending habits based on numerous fields that are updated by your vendors. Create custom reports online for specific personnel: FOIA, Supplier Diversity initiatives, etc. The ability to have vendors update their information for you to manipulate can be very attractive to companies that want to make sure outreach is done in certain vendor areas.

Integration to either front end or back end ERP systems can be easily accomplished.

If an ERP system generates your internal purchasing requisitions, we can allow those buyers in the end user area access to create “fill in the blank” bids that can be forwarded to the desktops of specific buyers who finish up the process before going to bid. We can also integrate our economic engine software easily into your purchase order process. This integration could allow your accounting department to approve funds based on cost estimates prior to bid going out online, or approve bids after evaluation but before award to ensure funds are set aside. Once the vendors have accepted their bid awards on the system, we can have that information flow back into your present accounting package. We have found our software modules can be utilized efficiently with or without integration. Even though you would think that integrating would be the best choice, there seems to be areas of procurement that require specific functions be done via mail. The stand alone modules are easily adapted to buyers in specific areas of the company so that a major overhaul of your purchasing department is not necessary.