Create an outline of the overall (PLCP)
1000-2000 words
Section: Summary section will include the following:
1. Executive Summary (or an introduction to your Procurement Life Cycle)
2. Conclusion or recommendation
Section: 1
Consumer buying decisions are determined by different factors among these factors are Socio-cultural factors. Social-cultural factors refer to matters pertaining family and their social class, group preferences, etc. Psychological factors, these include perceptions, motivations, attitudes, and beliefs. Economic factors, these refer to the willingness indicated by synthetic indicators. There are also demographic factors among these are population, population growth, and occupation age structure.
Elements of sourcing plans:
Sourcing plans involves a procurement process that aims at improving and re-evaluating the company's purchasing activities. In the service industry, sourcing plans refer to service solution. The aims of these service solutions ensure that the businesses services meet the customer's needs. For these sourcing plans to be beneficial to the organization they require clear plans, these plans are the elements of sourcing plans. These elements of sourcing plans include,
1. Broadcasting the aim of broadcasting is to increase the exposure of the company's products or the employer brand. This is to help expand the company's influence and increase the company's sales. Broadcasting can include distributing of job posting creation of email campaign and using social networks to aggregate management (Laguna, 2014).
2. Searching. Every organization needs a highly capable searching database to help sift through the large amounts of data that a company is exposed to while it only requires very small portions of that data. Having a way to reduce the time it takes to perform these searches can help the company save time and resources that would have been used to do the same work manually.
3. Attracting the best personnel given the vast number of applicants recruiters need to improve their search capabilities and habits to get the best quality candidates (Laguna, 2014).
Elements of terms and conditions
Organisational overview:
This provides a description of the organization indicating the mission and the projects involved (Five paths, 2017). This helps to provide the seller with background and stability as required by the project.
Project goals
Indicating the goals of the project helps provide a way to gauge the progress of the project and also provide the seller with a way of telling how the project will serve the needs of the business.
Target audience:
This describes the mode of delivery of the organization's goods, and also it helps in determining how large the audience is. This element also includes any technical needs that the audience may require and the ways through which they will interact with the site.
Project requirements:
This element helps indicate the guidelines and the requirements of the project. It also indicates the expectations upon testing and the completion date of the project. It is also in this element where it's indicated the prices where the seller's bid should range.
Proposal format
Here there is the description of the elements required in seller's bids including budget, cost breakdown for every delivery, the tasks that will be involved and the timeline, the roles of the staff and the responsibility (Five paths, 2017).
Elements of quotation and proposal
1. Header testimony
2. Opening statement
3. Scope of work statement
4. Scope of work detailed description
5. Project deliveries and description
Provide a statement of work with defining technical, quality, and delivery requirements with national schedule and cost baselines
Introduction/Background
ABC Ltd has undertaken a website redesign project as a way of implementing its strategic plan for improving marketing and customer service. The aim of the revision of the company's website is to improve the content of the site and also the customer interaction in making it more users friendly. The company also want to incorporate the views of its customers to come up with tailored consulting solutions for the new website.
Scope of work
The work in the website redesign includes planning, execution of laid plans and training for the new website facing internet for the company. The vendor chosen will be responsible for the redesign of the new website going according to the specifications provided by the company. All the decision to be made in the undertaking will require being approved by the company (Business Insider, 2014).
Period of performance
The project is estimated to take an approximate of one year, beginning from 7 January 20xx. All the work must be completed within the set schedule. In the case of any modifications the company and the vendor will be contacted for the necessary discussions.
Schedule milestones
RFP release 7 January 20xx
Vendor selection review 03 February 20xx
Performance begins 05 February 20xx
Website redesigns review 14 April 20xx
Website implementation 17 July 20xx
Training complete 23 September 20xx
Project complete 15 November 20xx
Project closure 20 December 20xx
Acceptance criteria:
The final acceptance of the project will reside with the company Y's president. The Vice President will be accompanied by two advisers; they will go through all the set stages to ensure the completeness of the project. They will also ensure that that the target scope of work has been achieved. Once the vendor presents the report the VP will either sign off on the work for the go ahead to the next step or write back to the vendor indicating the corrections that should be made.
Other requirements:
All the members of the vendor's team will have to provide security forms to the company, and the access badges to access the facility. All of the vendor's team members will be granted access to the company's servers. The will also receive temporary company accounts to use while working there. The entire programming test will be performed in the lab. Before the network outage, all company servers will be backed up (Business, insider, 2017).
References:
Laguna, K. (2014). Brandon Hall Group/ The Five Elements of a High-Performance Sourcing Strategy. Retrieved from https://www.brandonhall.com/blogs/the-five-elements-of-a high-performance-sourcing strategy/
Business Insyder. (2017). If You Include These 10 Elements in Your Proposal, You are Likely to Close. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-include-these-10 elements-in-your-proposal youre-2010-8#the-project-deliverables-description-5
Five Paths. (2017). Writing a Request Proposal. Retrieved from https://www.fivepaths.com/resources/writing request-proposal
Section: 2
Management:
The procurement lifecycle plan provides the key steps that are involved when procuring goods or services. The plan guides the procurement team or management through the procurement process, and as such three documents play a significant role in the managing supplier requirements. They include the request for information (RFI), request for quotation (RFQ), and Request for Proposal (RFP). Besides, it also includes employing an appropriate approach to documenting and managing contracts.
Elements of a Request for Information, Quotation, and Proposal (RFI/Q/P)
An RFI is used to collect well-documented information about the capabilities of various suppliers. The company may have some information about particular suppliers, but the RFI is used to solicit more information from those vendors concerning their capabilities regarding what the company needs. Also, it includes the responses that span the market seeking broad data and understanding that will guide in deciding the next step to take before actual negotiations begin. The inquiry provides information that will help in creating a database that helps in negotiations on matters the suppliers, including finances, facilities, attitudes, and motivations. Besides, the RFI provides information on the breadth and width of the supplier's product or service offerings.
A request for quotation (RFQ) refers to a standard business process that invites suppliers into a bidding process to bid on particular items or services(Int'L, 2015). The RFQs best suit standardized and commoditized products and services. However, with the help of RFQ, the management receives details of the suppliers' qualification, and that includes how the suppliers would meet the procurement requirements and their cost. In this regard, the company expects to receive details of the price per item or per unit of service that will be provided by the suppliers. The RFQ involves not only the price per item but also information like payment terms, contract length or quality per item that may be requested during the bidding process. It will also include details on quantities or volumes as well as the delivery details. Essentially, an RFQ provides information on how the supplier would meet the procurement requirements or rather supply a product or perform a service. It is worth noting that an RFQ will not include price proposals or other specific details.
An RFP is procurement solicitation that is sent to prospective vendors with whom a constructive relationship is under consideration. Thus the RFP involves more than just a request for price. An RFP provides the procuring company with the suppliers' basic corporate information and history, technical capability(mostly applicable in situations where the item being sought may not be met by varying technical means or has not previously been made).Also, includes financial information, which helps show that the supplier will deliver without any risk of bankruptcy, product information such as stock availability and the estimated completion period as well as the customer references that can always be checked to ascertain the firm's suitability, these include the education and experience of the vendor's employees on the particular project(Int'L, 2015).Therefore, the RFP provides specific data, quotations, and offerings from the supplier.
Guidelines for Evaluating the Elements Once Submitted by the Supplier
Once the supplier provides all these elements, we shall consider the individual information provided even before proceeding to the next step. While proceeding with the procurement process, the company will develop a model that follows a format to be used for comparative purposes. The company will evaluate all the products and services that are available to the suppliers that meet the company's needs. Vendors with products and or services that meet the organization's needs are considered. RFIs will also provide the company with the opportunity to find the most qualified suppliers which have better capabilities regarding strengths and offerings. Procurement will use the RFI responses from various suppliers to identify lower cost alternatives, strategic options as well as cost reduction opportunities even before embarking on actual negotiations. It is worth noting that an RFI is not an invitation to bid and as such not binding on either the buying company or the prospective suppliers, thus, may not necessarily lead to an RFQ or RFP(Westland, 2013). Once through with the evaluation of the RFI responses, the company prepares for an RFQ and RFP.
Once the company receives the RFQ responses on the specified due date, they are passed to the evaluation team for assessment. This serves as a pre-screening step in the procurement process. The evaluation team utilizes assessment criteria that are relevant to the company's requirements. Such an evaluation criterion will be clearly defined in the RFQ and must be followed to the latter when evaluating the responses. Skills which are critical to the success of the project are rated or given strong priority. Vendors that meet all the evaluation criteria are selected and included in the list of suppliers eligible to bid.Such suppliers are then qualified, and hence eligible to submit responses to an RFP.
Once the company receives the RFP responses from potential suppliers, it will review them to examine the feasibility and the health of the vendors as well as the ability of the vendors to actually do what is proposed. The company does this by following a detailed vendor screening process, shortlisting suppliers who should be invited for negotiations on matters pricing and other technical details. The screening process includes vendor scoring models that guide the evaluating team in selecting bidders who may participate in subsequent bids. Once both the company and the selected vendor(s) agree to the conditions of the proposal and the commercial and technical terms, then the next steps follow, which include contract signing and statement of work, and these would formalize the procurement transactions.
Approach to Documenting and Managing the Contracts
During the contract signing process includes the contract documentation, which is crucial because it exhibits binding obligation between the company and the suppliers. Contract terms and conditions must be written or documented as it relates to notices, contract changes, and warnings of unsatisfactory performance, clarifications, and other various aspects of the contract. In this regard, contract documenting includes the contract itself alongside all the relevant schedules, technical documentation developed by the vendor, requested and approved contract changes, results of any contract-related inspections, performance reports, and financial documents such as payment records or invoices.
Contracts play a fundamental role in procurement because it strengthens the relationship between the buying company and the suppliers of goods and services that the company needs to operate. In this regard, it is critical to embrace the most efficient contract management approach to avoid any significant risks(Carteret al., 2012). Two of the most significant risks associated with poor contract management approaches include contract non-compliance and savings leakage.
The first step in contract management must involve standardization and automation of the sourcing process. This includes elements such as templates, forms, and uniform sourcing language. Once these are in place, the organization won't waste time trying to initiate sourcing from scratch. Secondly, it would also be important to introduce the same level of standardization and automation to the contracting process. This would make it easy for all the company's employees to repeat the elements uniformly. The final step in the process involves linking sourcing and contracting. Linking of the two helps the organization eliminate the gaps that may be causing inefficiencies. By doing these, the organization would be able to proceed to the next level with more confidence.
References
Carter, R., Kirby, S., &Oxenbury, A. (2012). Practical contract management. Cambridge: Cambridge Academic.
Int'L, B. P. U. (2015). Albania business law handbook: Strategic information and basic laws. Place of publication not identified: Intl Business PubnsUsa.
Westland, J. (2013). The project management lifecycle: A complete step-by-step methodology for initiating, planning, executing and closing a project successfully. London: Kogan Page.