Maintaining positive supplier relationships is a key aspect of maximizing your use of OMX. This article will outline what you can do on OMX as a buyer, how to build and maintain relationships and why communication is an important part of the process.
What you can do as a buyer on OMX:
Post an Opportunity: Post an opportunity for a requirement that you are looking for. You can be specific or post a general call out or RFI for potential capabilities. You can limit your respondents by country, region, company size or ownership. OMX will send notifications to the companies that match (more info).
Review Responses: Interested suppliers will respond to your opportunity securely through OMX. You are able to view responses, uploaded documents and full company details from supplier's profiles within the platform.
Select Winning Bidders: Through OMX, you can compare the qualified suppliers' responses and full company profiles and award the business to the best match.
Verify Suppliers: Once you have worked with a supplier, you can verify their profile within the platform. Verifying your suppliers lets other companies know that they are a good partner to work with (more info).
Track your Suppliers and the Impacts from Opportunities: Within OMX you are able to track and manage your supplier relationships as well as visualize the potential economic impacts from the opportunities that you have provided (more info).
Building positive supplier relationships:
When using OMX to post opportunities it is important to establish and maintain a positive relationship with your potential suppliers. At OMX, we've learned that clear communication with suppliers throughout the bidding process is essential to maintaining this relationship. OMX recommends that you:
Provide Updates and Answer Questions: Provide status updates throughout the bidding process to keep suppliers informed and to minimize questions. When questions are asked, make sure to answer them in a timely manner. When a supplier is selected, let the other bidders know by updating the opportunity description.
Give Feedback: Tell the suppliers that you didn't select how they can improve. Sharing this information can help the supplier with future proposals. When you've had a positive experience with a supplier, make sure to verify their company profile in OMX to let others know.
Verify your suppliers: When you have worked with a company, make sure to verify their company profile to let others know that the information on their profile is accurate. Verifying a company is done anonymously.
Why is it important?
Building positive supplier relationships and following this etiquette can bring many benefits to both your company and the overall buying community. These can include:
- Identifying experienced and capable suppliers for your business
- Providing supplier verification to better the buying community
- Minimizing questions and confusion by proactively communicating with potential suppliers
- Creating a positive image for your company within the supplier community
- Tracking supplier relationships to estimate the impacts from that opportunity or to form the basis for future opportunities
- Identifying and establishing a relationship with potential backup suppliers for future programs or projects
Helpful supplier communication:
Based on our experience at OMX, we've put together some potential responses that can be sent directly to suppliers or posted as an update to all suppliers.
- Thank you for your interest. We have received your proposal and are evaluating our responses. (If you have a timeline that the suppliers can expect to hear back from you, let them know.)
- Thank you for your response. After reviewing the proposals we received, we have decided to move forward with another supplier. (If you can, tell the supplier why they were not selected.)
- Thank you for your interest. All suppliers selected for the next phase have been notified.