Outlining Bid Transformation

Bid Transformation auctions are used to collect additional cost components to more accurately compare awarding one vendor over another. Bid Transformation allows project owners to transform suppliers’ bids by adding cost terms and values to compare bids more accurately.

• Bid Transformation is enabled by a Bidding Rule
• Project owners transform suppliers’ bids by adding cost terms and values to compare bids more accurately
• The terms can be different for each supplier
• Each supplier sees "a bid to beat" that is adjusted based on how their own bid is being transformed

Bid transformation allows Project Owners to transform a participant’s bid by adding cost terms you define, and can be unique for each supplier, such as adding an import duty for one supplier and a switching cost for another. Yet, it enables each bidder to see a "bid to beat" that is adjusted for them and brings suppliers into competition with one another and creates a unified market where none existed before.

For example, companies will likely invite a mix of your incumbent suppliers as well as new suppliers to an event, and may want to consider using a Bid Transformation event to add a switching cost to new vendors. This will allow Project Owners to more accurately compare a bid from the incumbent with a bid from a new supplier, without informing the supplier about the cost factor. These types of events serve to allow the buyer to include various costs and charges for different suppliers using Participant Specific Initial values.

Create an event using the Bid Transformation template, and add line items that include all identified cost factors into the event as new terms, including the term(s) that vary across suppliers.

Complete all required fields by setting the Include in Cost factor to include the component into the cost, Answer Type, and its Acceptable Values.

A key component of Bid Transformation is to be mindful of the Response Required, and Visible to Participant values to be sure that the appropriate terms are visible and completed by the correct people. There may be terms that will be completed by the Project Owner creating the event, and not the Supplier Participant, and they should be marked hidden.

Ensure that Use participant-specific initial values? is enabled.

Once participants have been invited to the event, the List of Invited Participants at the bottom of the line item will allow the project owner to specify values for each supplier, that may or may not be hidden in the term settings.

In the example in the above image, the cost term Import Duty is being added as a multiplier, with varying percentages assigned to each supplier. If all three suppliers submitted a bid of $1000, the system would transform each bid using the total cost formula.

The system would transform the bid per the total cost formula for the project owner:

With Bid Transformation, the system will transform bids differently for each supplier’s view, and each supplier will see their competitors’ bids transformed to a value they must beat.

The first supplier to bid does not see any competitor bids, as there are no bids yet. The incumbent Supplier XYZ submits a bid of $1000. The system displays this bid of $1000 to Supplier XYZ as $1000. The system does not display any transformation to a supplier for their own bid.

The ABC Supplier logs in to bid and sees Supplier XYZ's bid of $1000 as $952.38. Note that this is different than the project owner’s view of the same bid because the system has transformed the bid, so the competition sees what price they must bid to beat Supplier XYZ.

A 5% import duty will be added to their bid, and the system calculated the value they must bid, which, when the added 5% import duty is added, will equal TechCorp’s bid of $1000. This is because $952.38 + (5% * $952.38) = $1000.

Watch the following for a demonstration on setting up Bid Transformation Terms: