Negotiation is an inevitable part of the buying process. C1’s Auction Management & Bidding Software allows procurement professionals to automate the complete vendor interaction over the web for the price negotiation. It streamlines the procurement process, improves accuracy and consistency, saves time, greater collaboration with the suppliers, and assures that you will get the best deal for your requirement.

1) Auction Management

In procurement, auction management refers to the bidding process for achieving the best value while procuring/selling intended products or services. It deals with an opening bid, various analyses, and evaluations along with identifying the right suppliers. There are numerous ways of e-auction methods but two of them are predominantly used and they are as follows:

a) Reverse Auction

Reverse auction helps buyers to achieve the best deal for the lowest price. In a reverse auction, the buyer sets a base price for the auction to initiate and the selected suppliers bid against each other for the lowest value to win the contract. It helps in reducing the cost and turn around time, which is crucial for every business. It also provides real-time bidding solutions that bring a high level of profitability, control, and simplicity thus making the whole process quick and efficient.

Reverse auction benefits for the buyer are- price discovery, increased buying reach, and capacity to negotiate, improve supply market knowledge, and helps tremendously in cost reductions. While it does appear that only buyers seem to gain from reverse e-auctions, the suppliers also stand to gain a lot. Some of the benefits for suppliers are it improves supply market intelligence, increases transparency in the bidding process and a level playing field for suppliers ensures that they put their best foot forward.

b) Forward Auction

In forward auctions, bids increase by fixed increments in value rather than decrease. A typical Forward e-Auction consists of several potential buyers bidding for goods and services provided by a single seller. The process of forward e-auctions starts from the seller posting his item on the auction portal, buyers registers and compete for contracts/tenders through bidding, and finally, the buyer who makes the highest bid during the auction wins the contract. The seller aims to achieve the best value for its contract in the shortest time frame possible and to maximize the returns and discover the right price they reach out to prospective buyers. An example of forward e-auction requirement can occur when a bank plans to sell or liquidate its NPAs.

Forward e-auctions help in price discovery in a competitive environment, curtailing clerical costs, decreasing arbitration time and paperwork, increases reach, and transparency.

2) Vendor Selection and Tender Award

Once the auction is conducted, the selected vendor is awarded the tender with an LOI and a purchase order.

Challenges

Auction management requires to deal with certain challenges such as cybersecurity, Badware (also known as spyware or malware) hassles, and risks, creation of flexible and user-friendly dashboard, complete transparency with real-time dissemination of information, extending market reach for buyers/sellers and reducing costs.

How we can help

As we all know, the importance of auction management in the procurement process. C1 India provides a comprehensive solution for auction management. Our 360-degree approach to auction management solution helps buyers & sellers to achieve better prices with real-time dissemination of information, increased buying/selling reach, direct cost reductions, reduced cycle times, better-managed processes with automation, increased market transparency and provides an equal opportunity for all the selected participants. Our solutions have in-built evaluators to help you analyze and plan auction as per your procurement needs.
Some features of our robust e-auction platform are as followed:

• User-friendly and highly customizable dashboard with a separate login for buyers & sellers
• Multiple auction types
• Unique login link for suppliers, reducing support requirements
• Manual/Upload facility for entering the e-auction information
• Auto-bid facility and Auto Extension of auction
• Easy Integration with leading accounting systems
• Detailed audit log tracking all actions
• Multilingual and multicurrency support with SMS and email alerts with real-time tracking.
• MIS Reporting