In procurement

Procurement

Procurement is the acquisition of goods or services. It is favourable that the goods/services are appropriate and that they are procured at the best possible cost to meet the needs of the purchaser in terms of quality and quantity, time, and location...

 technology, ERFx (or eRFx) is an acronym for Electronic Request For [x], where x can be Proposal (RFP)

Request for Proposal

A request for proposal is issued at an early stage in a procurement process, where an invitation is presented for suppliers, often through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific commodity or service. The RFP process brings structure to the procurement decision and is meant to...

, Quotation (RFQ)

Request for Quotation

A request for quotation is a standard business process whose purpose is to invite suppliers into a bidding process to bid on specific products or services. RFQ, generally means the same thing as IFB ....

, Information (RFI)

Request for Information

A request for information is a standard business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes....

 or Tender (RFT)

Request for tender

A request for tender, commonly abbreviated to RFT, is a formal, structured invitation to suppliers for the supply of products or services. In the public sector, such a process may be required and determined in detail by law to ensure that such competition for the use of public money is open, fair...

. Other pseudonymous acronyms include ITT (Invitation to Tender) and PQQ (Pre Qualification Questionnaire). All relate to a similar activity: a buyer requesting information from potential suppliers for the purpose of evaluation and comparison. Often this is part of a tendering exercise. The more structured this information is, the easier it is to compare the suppliers. For example, it is more effective to ask 20 multiple choice questions than it is to ask 2 essay questions, as long as suppliers have an opportunity to provide commentary to qualify their answers. Therefore eRFX software should help the buyer to compare suppliers in useful ways - apples vs. apples.

eRFx software is a subset of eSourcing software (software that helps buyers to source suppliers), which is in turn a subset of E-procurement

E-procurement

E-procurement is the business-to-business or business-to-consumer or Business-to-government purchase and sale of supplies, Work and services through the Internet as well as other informations and networking systems, such as Electronic Data Interchange and Enterprise Resource Planning.E-procurement...

software.

Common features

eRFX software is, in some respects, a subset of survey software in that it enables the user to create questions and solicit answers to those questions. Other features reflect the subtleties of tendering:

• Creating questionnaires or surveys
• Applying weighting to questions or sections which will determine the final total score.
• Issuing the questionnaires to respondents (generally a link to a web page).
• Enabling respondents to save answers, sometimes with features for preview and teamwork.
• Scoring responses
• Calculating weighting totals and providing reports / charts etc. to find the best respondent

More advanced features include:

• Rich Questions - Some RFx products provide the ability to create questions that combine many answer elements such as file attachments, essay-style answers, and auto scored multiple choice questions. Others provide a more basic spreadsheet style line-by-line requirement set.
• Multiple scoring sets (scorecards) - the same answers are scored multiple times by different analysts.
• Multiple weighting sets - different individuals or groups can produce different weightings to reflect their priorities. For example, Sales & Marketing might have a different view to the Accounts department.
• Detailed Auditing - buyers operating in highly regulated markets may need to provide a detailed audit trail of their actions.
• Communication - some systems provide messaging services for buyers to communicate to suppliers and vice versa.
• Regulated Environment Rules - The scope of these may be curtailed in some environments (Public Sector, especially the EU), where it is stipulated that all suppliers must see exactly the same information from the Buyer.
• Vendor Response Importing - In some sectors the same vendors respond to similar RFXs repeatedly. RFx software can cut down duplication of effort in such areas by providing tools for vendors to import (and edit as required) previous answers. Scoring information entered by evaluators can be imported at the same time, thus providing time savings and greater consistency.

Service Features

Vendor	On Demand Service	One Off Projects	Specialism	Per Project Pricing
GEP	Yes	Yes	Full eProcurement Suite	?
Ariba	Yes	No	Full eProcurement Suite	?
Emptoris	?	No	Full eProcurement Suite	?
Iasta	?	?	eSourcing - Auctions and RFx	?
Ketera	Yes	?	Full eProcurement Suite	?
SupplierSelect	Yes	Yes	Specialist eRFX	$1,000
Scanmarket	Yes	Yes	eSourcing(Spend analysis, eRFx, eAuctions, Contract Management	?
WhyAbe	Yes	Yes	Auctions and RFx	Free

Product Features

Vendor	Rich Questions	Score Sets	Weight Sets	Audit Trail	Communication	Regulatory Rules	Response Importing
Ariba	?	?	?	Yes	?	?	?
Emptoris	?	?	?	Yes	?	?	?
Iasta	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Ketera	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
SupplierSelect	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Scanmarket	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes