Inviting Supplier Participants to Guided Sourcing Events

Participants are the contacts for your suppliers who are invited to respond to the event. Project Owners search for and select the suppliers that are to be invited to the event using the Suppliers panel.

Suppliers are added to the event in this panel by using the Invite Suppliers button to invite approved and registered SAP Ariba Sourcing suppliers.

The Invite Suppliers search appears with the available filters on the left side of the screen. Once the supplier is found, the box next to the supplier selects them, and the Invite button in the top-right adds them to the invitee list.

You can also create new suppliers and contacts.

When filtering for suppliers, you can select Get values from the event, depending on your user preferences. This option copies the Commodity, Region, and Department from the event attribute values when selected. The suppliers shown are those who satisfy the criteria in the filtering area.

After selecting the suppliers you want to invite, select Invite.

Watch the video on how to invite new participants to guided sourcing events.

SAP Ariba uses a machine learning model to recommend suppliers for guided sourcing events based on:

• Item name
• Event name
• Department
• Commodity and region, both at the event and item level
• The MaterialNumber and MaterialCode fields
• Supplier history in past events, including invitations and contracts

If SAP Ariba Sourcing has recommended suppliers for the event, a band appears at the top of the Suppliers panel stating We have x supplier recommendations. x is the number of suppliers that SAP Ariba Sourcing is recommending.

The Add recommended suppliers panel appears with all recommended suppliers:

• The Recommended for column shows the number of items the supplier is recommended for.
• If the items link is selected, the project owner sees a popup with the reason the supplier was recommended: invitations to past events, for example.
• At the top of the Add recommended suppliers panel, you can search suppliers by name, contact name, or supplier ID.
• Select the supplier name to open a supplier card with information about the supplier.

To use these intelligent recommendation features, the machine learning models must be trained.

For more information on supplier recommendations, refer to Inviting Suppliers to Guided Sourcing Events Using Intelligent Supplier Recommendations.

Guided sourcing allows you to create a new contact for a supplier.

A contact is a person who is a member of a supplier or supplier organization. It's common to have multiple contacts for the same supplier.

To create new contacts, follow these steps:

1. Choose Create and then select New Contact.
2. Search for supplier's name
3. Complete the Enter contact profile fields.

Guided sourcing allows you to create a new Supplier request form within an event:

1. Choose Create and then select New Supplier.
2. on the Supplier Request form, enter the required General Supplier Information.
3. Enter the Primary Supplier Contact.

While you're creating a supplier request, SAP Ariba searches the database to see if there are existing suppliers or previously denied requests with the same information and identifies duplicates. If the supplier you're requesting already exists in your site, or if approvers have previously rejected the suppliers, you can cancel the request.

Requested suppliers aren't automatically added to the event where you created the request. If your supplier request is approved, you must then edit the event to add the new supplier as a participant. The approval requirements for supplier organizations depend on the supplier management method your site uses.

Once suppliers are added to an event, project owners can use several columns in the supplier table to take action.

Project owners can select the link in the Organization name column to view the supplier’s profile data. The supplier’s info, contacts, sourcing activity, contracts, qualifications, and certificates can be found there.

More Actions allows you to remove the supplier or preview the event as the supplier:

Preview as supplier allows the project owner to see the event as the supplier see the event.

When you're done previewing the contents as the supplier, click End Preview in the upper-left corner to exit the preview mode.

• The Invited to bid on link displays the items or lots that the supplier can bid on.
• The Is this an incumbent supplier? switch allows you to mark the supplier as an incumbent at the event level.

  • Incumbent suppliers are the current suppliers providing the goods or services for which the project owner is creating the event.

  • This information is useful when making your awarding decision.

• The Is this an excluded supplier? switch allows you to exclude suppliers at the event level.

You can remove participants through the actions menu, or the Uninvited button, if added by mistake:

Suppliers that are added are invited to bid on or respond to all items in the event. If there are certain items that they must not respond to, they can be uninvited by editing the items individually. To easily locate the items that you wish to remove them by clearing the checkbox, choose the link in the Invited to bid on section.