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Creating Supplier Policies

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to create supplier policies to guide procurement activities

Supplier Policies

Guided buying uses two types of supplier policies that affect the workings of RFQ forms:

Supplier and touch policies determine how much procurement department involvement is necessary for each RFQ.
Supplier selection policies narrow the pool of suppliers available for selection in RFQs based on attributes such as form type, amount, purchasing unit, commodity code, and preferred supplier level.

Note

Policies trigger only for fields in header, main line item, and header extension form components; they don't trigger for fields in additional line item form components.

Supplier and Touch Policies

Supplier and touch policies, such as N-bids-and-a-buy policies, take some of the burden off your procurement department, especially for low-value purchases. They allow your organization to structure no-touch, low-touch, and high-touch scenarios and define amount-based tiers for each category of purchase.

The policy and tier for each category determine:

Whether users can choose suppliers on the form
How many preferred suppliers are needed
Whether the user sees an informational message or error message when submitting a form
Which sourcing template is used to create the RFQ event or sourcing request
Whether an RFQ event is published automatically
Who reviews and accepts quotes from suppliers

Note

When users fill out a request form, guided buying finds the matching policy and tier based on the user's location, the category of purchase, and the monetary amount.

Examples

Your organization might have the following policies for advertising-service requests:

No-touch RFQ flow for amounts less than $100,000. Users must choose at least one preferred supplier to submit the form. The RFQ event is published automatically. The user who submits the form reviews and accepts supplier quotes.
Low-touch RFQ flow for amounts between $100,000 and $200,000. Users must choose at least twopreferred suppliers to submit the form. The procurement department reviews and publishes the RFQ event. The user who submits the form reviews and accepts supplier quotes.
High-touch RFQ flow for amounts greater than $200,000. Users submit the form without choosing suppliers. The procurement department chooses suppliers, publishes the RFQ event, and reviews and accepts supplier quotes.
High-touch sourcing request flow for amounts greater than $5,000,000. The procurement department completes the approval tasks for the sourcing request, uses it to create and publish an RFQ event in SAP Ariba Sourcing, and reviews and accepts supplier quotes.

Play the video to learn how to upload supplier and touch policies to guided buying.

Supplier Selection Policies

Supplier selection policies allow organizations to direct their users to suitable suppliers for the purchase.

The process of uploading supplier selection policies is similar to supplier and touch policies. Under the Admin menu, administrators can access the Policy Management page and import the supplier selection policy file. When you upload policies, guided buying creates new data and updates existing data. To delete an existing policy, select the delete button to the right of the policy on the Policy Management page.

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