Best Practice Sourcing in Your Approach to Market

TechnologyOne has developed a new solution called Sourcing within Ci Anywhere (CiA) Supply Chain Management that enables organisations to manage their approaches to market end-to-end in one system.

The TechnologyOne system enables organisations to maintain a centralised supplier database, manage supplier information, track performance and assess the suitability of suppliers for various projects.

When an approach to market is activated within the enterprise system, suppliers can provide submissions in response to that request. Sourcing provides data and submission security and manages attached documents or similar material. The Supplier Portal streamlines interactions with suppliers and supports active suppliers and tenderers to view and download any relevant approaches to market. Through the portal, suppliers can view an organisation’s active approach to markets and provide submissions in response to them.

However, before an approach to market commences, organisations must develop best practice sourcing policies with defined conditions, such as ensuring that a sourcing activity over a certain value goes through a specific process, for clarity and efficiency. In this article, we’ll explore how organisations can utilise the advanced TechnologyOne system by preparing and planning their approach to market to ensure a more streamlined and effective result.

Preparing Your Approach to Market Using Sourcing

An approach to market through your TechnologyOne system can be managed in numerous ways, such as a request for information, proposal, quotation, or tender approach that organisations will respond to using a set of pre-defined processes. In all cases, suppliers are invited to provide a response submission to an organisation’s request.

Implementing Sourcing — Best Practices to Adhere to

With any new module or business implementation, a project approach needs to be confirmed. The organisation should have a good understanding of what they want to achieve by mapping out each process and the objectives. Facilitating a solution design workshop is best practice as it will incorporate key business stakeholders to identify and define project deliverables. A design document should be produced and agreed upon as the basis for work to be completed.

Define Stages

Individual stages can be defined within an approach to market depending on its complexity. Examples include registering a procurement, completing a process evaluation plan, preparing documentation, registering submissions, evaluating and finalising selection, and communication and finalisation. Each stage offers various options as to how it can be completed. These include manually progressing to the next stage, a timed window to complete, and the need to complete a workflow or business process before moving to the next stage. Note, stages before an approach to market (e.g., building the business case for procurement) are dealt with separately.

Document Generation

Documents can be generated at the completion of a Sourcing process. Types of documents that can be generated include the generation of a requisition, or a contract based on the successful submission. Once the document is created, it can follow the standard requisition or contract workflow within the purchasing and contracts modules.

Alternatively, a new approach to market can be triggered; for example, moving from a request for information (RFI) to a request for quotation (RFQ). 

Advanced Sourcing

Advanced Sourcing has additional capabilities compared to basic Sourcing. These include additional stages, the generation of contracts and open invitations. Advanced sourcing enables Business Process Automation (BPA) to be incorporated within each stage. This enables organisations to promote effective controls, ensure policies are being adhered to, include approvals, and provide further flexibility for data capture required for each stage. BPAs can be as simple or complex to fit various organisational requirements. BPA can utilise other modules of the TechnologyOne suite, such as Forms, TScripts and ETL. This added capability ensures that sourcing configuration will meet an organisation’s specific requirements.

Regardless of how complex your approach to market processes are, utilising the functionality of Sourcing within TechnologyOne CiA will help reduce costs and make the experience for everyone involved more streamlined, automated and efficient, and ensure there is clarity from beginning to end.

For more information about how your organisation can unlock the true power of TechnologyOne Ci Anywhere, get in touch with one of our insightful consultants to discuss our solutions. 

About the author

Written by Daniel Moynihan, Principal Consultant

Daniel is a principal consultant with over 16 years of experience with ERP systems and over 9 years with TechnologyOne, its products and solutions. His broad experience extends across local government, education, financial and community services, and not-for-profit. He specialises in providing TechnologyOne Financial, Supply Chain and Corporate Performance Management consulting, design implementation, and training in Ci and Ci Anywhere.