Management of received proposals on a Request for Proposals

When your Request for Proposals (RFP) is published, you will receive proposals from suppliers. You can view them, sort them and plan a meeting with those you consider interesting, in order to select the right expertise. Let's see in this article how you can choose the expertise that best suits your project, on the platform.

Within this article

• Access the proposals received on an RFP
• View the proposals and make your choice
  
  • Sort the proposals
  • Qualify a proposal
  • Plan a meeting
  • Select an expertise

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Access the proposals received on an RFP

You can directly access the proposals of an RFP from the home page, by clicking on the number of proposals received on one of them.

Alternatively:

1. Go to the RFP tab and click on My RFPs to be redirected to the list of RFPs within your scope
2. For the RFPs with the status Published with proposals, open the action menu and click on See all proposals or on View to open the RFP, and then go to the Proposals tab. You are then redirected to all the proposals received on this RFP.

You can now compare the proposals received, view them one by one, take notes internally and download the candidate file to help you make your choice.

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View the proposals and make your choice

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Sort the proposals

In the grid, you can already compare the proposals thanks to the columns and filters available:

• Status: to know the meaning of the different proposal statuses, you can refer to our dedicated article
• Company: you can see if the proposal comes from a Service provider or a Freelancer, if it is a preferred supplier or not, and filter them accordingly
• Availability: date from which the supplier is available for the project
• Location: country where the supplier is located
• Submitted price: the rate proposed by the supplier is compared to the maximum budget you defined in your RFP and is displayed in green or red if it is below or above the budget.

If you have activated the Profile Codes and Rate Cards premium feature, then the submitted price will be compared to the rate card you have selected for your RFP.

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Qualify a proposal

To view and qualify a proposal, click on it or, use the action menu , click on View Details. This gives you access to the sales pitch, as well as the supplier's profile/candidate file, which you can download. You will be able to take internal notes within the proposal.

Depending on your opinion of the proposal, you can start to qualify it in three different ways:

• Interesting: you are interested in this profile, and you want to shortlist it

• Not interesting: you do not want to keep the proposal for the rest of the selection process. You will have to choose a reason among the following options:

  • Out of budget

  • Availability issue

  • Skills problem

  • Not enough experience

  • Other (specify)

• Spam: the profile submitted does not correspond to the profile you are looking for (example: you received a proposal for a junior Java developer when you are looking for a junior project manager). For an optimal and transparent use of the platform by all users, you must indicate the reason for this choice so that we can give feedback to the provider.

From two proposals qualified as Spam, the next proposals from this supplier will be accessible to the Clients only after a delay of several days.

If you qualify the proposal as interesting, you will be able to interact with the supplier by private message, plan an interview with the supplier via the platform or select them straight away.

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Plan a meeting

Once you have qualified a proposal as interesting, you can schedule a meeting with the supplier via the platform. To do so:

1. Click on Make an appointment
2. Indicate the date, time, duration, and location of the appointment and add a message to give more details if necessary, and click on Validate

To follow the status of this appointment, you can go to the RFP tab and click on Interviews. As long as the supplier has not responded, the appointment will be in the Interviews awaiting approval tab, and after confirmation, it will be in the Future interviews tab.

The appointment feature is not linked to your professional calendar. When the appointment is confirmed, you can send an email invitation to the supplier, with the link to the videoconference if necessary.

To retrieve the supplier's contact details, go back to the page with the list of proposals, click on the action menu, then on Contact. On the page that will appear, you will see their email address, as well as their phone number, if they have provided it.

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Select an expertise

Following the interviews, you can select the proposal that  interests you the most. To do this:

• Click on the proposal in question, which has already been marked as interesting
• In the window that opens, click on Select
• A new window will open to validate the proposal. Indicate the start and end date of the Purchase Order (PO) you have agreed on with the supplier, the PO number, and the number of working units of the project, then click on Validate

The Daily rate cannot be changed in this window. In order to modify it, you need the supplier's agreement via the Negotiation Module premium feature.

If you already have an internal order associated, you can put its PO number.

If a validation workflow has been set up where a Buyer has to validate the proposal, they will be notified of your selection and will then have to validate it in order for the project to start.

Once the profile has been validated, a notification is sent to the selected supplier to notify them, other non selected suppliers who responded to the RFP will also be notified that the project is now closed.