Within a Requirement, you can decide the order in which a supplier is automatically selected for automated costs by Ranking - both through the Client Interface and through manually adding a cost onto a job.
Key Users have the option to define the priority of what suppliers are selected based upon in the Ranking Setup. Supplier Ranking enables users to assign a Rank to a supplier, suppliers with a higher Rank will be selected by the software for jobs first. Aside from Rank suppliers are selected against the following criteria: Preferred Supplier, Price, and Distance.
NB: Suppliers will have to be qualified & made live against categories within a requirement in order to be Ranked.
Defining Lots/Categories for Rankings
Head to the requirement and into the 'Categories' tab. In the Categories tab the Key User will be presented with a list of all the 'Lots/Categories' (which houses one or more cost descriptions) relating to that requirement. Ranking is done per 'Lot/Category'; the rules & supplier specific ranking can be ranked differently for each.
Within a 'Lot/Category' in the 'Cost Mappings' tab, you can see the Cost Description(s) assigned. You can also click Edit to change the name of the 'Lot/Category' and assign/remove Cost Description(s) from being attached.
N.B. A cost description cannot be used in more than one 'Lot/Category' on a Requirement.
Ranking Setup:
Head to the 'Ranking Setup' tab to determine your order of importance, i.e. the Rank for each area. Under this heading the Key User attributes a priority order to the categories against which suppliers are selected. The Default ranks are shown below:
- Lowest Price
- Preferred Supplier * (see note at bottom)
- Distance
- Supplier Ranking
Priority Order numberingg: 1 being most important, 4 being least and 0 will be ignored.
To change the order the criteria are prioritised edit the numbers in the boxes. Unlike with the organisations ranking, no two of these criteria can have the same rank.
Supplier Rankings:
To assign specific Supplier Rankings per 'Lot/Category' , head to the 'Supplier Rankings' tab. Here, the Key User will be presented with a list of all the suppliers from that requirement that have been made live for that 'Lot/Category' (including all the Cost Descriptions sitting under it).
These suppliers can then be ranked by inputting a number into the boxes next to their organisation name (with 0 being unranked and 1 being the highest rank) and clicking Save.
- Suppliers can be given the same rank which will mean:
- They compete on the next highest priority of criteria set-up after Supplier Ranking (e.g. Preferred Supplier, Price, distance).
- Users have the option to refresh the list that appears in front of them, putting the organisations into order by rank.
Preferred Suppliers - To designate a supplier as Preferred the Key User must tick 'Is Preferred Supplier' on the organisation’s main details page.
NB: By default, all suppliers will have the rank of 0 under ‘Supplier Rankings’. The default layout for the ‘Ranking Setup’ is the one mentioned above. This however may change depending on your setup of the software.