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

• Overall video
• Access the proposals received on an RFP
• View the proposals and make your choice
  
  • Sort the proposals
  • Navigating through each proposal
  • Plan a meeting
  • Select an expertise
  • Novelty: Statement of Work (SoW)

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Overall video

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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.

• Clause: When a clause has been set up in the relevant entity, and after you have already received proposals to your RFP, you may view the acceptance date and time of the clause in the proposal details, providing clear and concise tracking of compliance.

   

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Navigating through each proposal

To view and qualify a proposal, click on it or, use the action menu , click on View Details. This gives you access to a module showing each individual proposal. This page contains four key tabs where you may find key details of each proposal, actionable options and navigational arrows so you may easily go from one proposal to another. 

The tabs available in the proposal page are: 

• Profile: resume (if any) and profile details of the Consultant
• Proposal: proposal details filled in by the supplier (rate, availability date, sales pitch, daily fees if applicable and contact information), the submission and last modification date of the proposal
• Messages: messages between you (or your colleagues) and the business manager or freelancer from the proposal
• Negotiation (if activated in your account): If the Negotiation module premium feature has been activated on your company account, you will see this additional tab

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Qualify a proposal

Regardless of the tab you are in, you will see on the right side of the Proposal module a set of key information to help in your decision-making process:

1. Action buttons: they will depend on where you are in the evaluation workflow (more details later in the article)
2. An evaluation workflow: to quickly know at which step you are of the qualification process
3. A comparison table: to allow you to compare the rate and availability date of the proposal to the ones indicated in the RFP
4. Internal notes: you can write a comment on the proposal received. You can edit or delete it until a proposal is appointed for the project. This comment will be shared with your colleagues having access to the proposal.
5. RFP details: by clicking on this, a panel will expand with the main information of the project RFP

Each proposal will have a status associated to let you know at which stage it is. For more details on each status you may consult the relevant article (proposal status).

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. Keep in mind that once you have set a proposal as Interesting, you can select the profile for your project and fill in the form. When it is complete, you can click on the action button in the right top corner. 

  • Send selection to buyer: If the proposal amount is higher than or equal to the buyer validation amount set in the spending line and there is a workflow requiring buyer validation, the proposal status will become Selected and the RFP buyer will need to review and Approve the selection to appoint the profile and create the project.
  •  Validate and create project: If the proposal amount is lower than the buyer validation amount set in the spending line (and purchase request (PR) option is not activated), the proposal status becomes Appointed and you can follow the progress of the project via the Projects tab.
  • Validate and send PR: If the proposal amount is lower than the buyer validation amount set,

    in the spending line (and the PR option is activated without custom workflow). The proposal status becomes Appointed and the PR is created. 

• 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.

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.

Approval by the RFP buyer

As a buyer,once you have reviewed the proposal selected by the Operational manager, you can click on Unselect if the proposal doesn't fit, or on Review to open the approval form. If all the information of the form is correct, you can click on the validation button (you will see one of the following depending on your workflow):

• Validate project creation: if the purchase request option is deactivated. The proposal status becomes Appointed and the project is created.
• Validate and send PR: If the PR option is activated without custom workflow. The proposal status becomes Appointed and the project is created.
• Validate and send to operational: If PR option is activated with custom workflow. The proposal status becomes Approved and the project is created. The Operational manager will then need to appoint the proposal and fill in the custom fields if there are any. 

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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.

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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

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.

Novelty: Statement of Work (SoW)*

When the feature called Statement of Work (SoW) is activated in your account, it may help to streamline your current procurement process. The SoW is a document containing information from both parties (client & supplier) as well as details of the project to be carried out. 

Its main function is to support purchase requests, making it easier to justify purchases, allowing you as a client to create comprehensive and accurate statements of work directly from the selected suppliers' proposals. 

Generating a Statement of Work: 

1. Within proposal's details, once you have clicked on Select, click on Statement of work in the Summary section on the right
2. In the window that will appear, check and complete the data in the pre-filled form. The data displayed is based on the elements included in the Request for proposal (RFP) and selected proposal to reduce the time required for data entry and ensure consistency. If needed, you can modify any of the autofilled values to ensure the accuracy of the entered information. Once all the information is correct, you can click on Next
3. Then, you have the possibility to attach PDF documents (max 5 files) to the SoW, as annexes. After doing so, click on Preview
4. The preview of the SoW will be displayed for you to check the information one last time before the final generation
   • You can go back to change any information by clicking on Edit
   • If all the data is correct, you can click on Download. It will generate the SoW as a PDF and download it to your computer

5. You can then upload this file to your e-signature tool to share it with the selected supplier, or send it to them via email, to validate the start of the project in your e-procurement tool