5 reasons sourcing tool customers use AWARD®

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

When initially talking to our team, people often ask the question why they need AWARD® when they already have a sourcing tool in place.

In fact, most of our customers do already have a sourcing tool such as Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, Atamis, BIP Delta or Proactis, in use.

AWARD® doesn’t replace the need for these tools, but rather it works alongside to provide a higher level of expert support, for their complex projects.

Here are just 5 of the many reasons our customers choose to use AWARD® in conjunction with their sourcing tool:

1. To reduce risk

When managing a complex project there’s a lot at stake. You’re responsible for eye-watering amounts of public money, high volumes of data, and managing a large number of stakeholders.

You can’t afford to risk losing time or money in the process, let alone making the wrong decision in your contract award, or leaving yourself open to bidder challenge.

Our customers turn to AWARD® as it has been specifically designed to support them with mitigating the risky business of complex projects.

By contrast, sourcing tools are designed to provide broad efficiencies for straight forward purchases, where far less is at stake and the process is standardised across the organisation.

AWARD® delivers transparency, confidence and control when you need it most: your high-risk projects.

Often these projects represent some of the largest and most important procurements an organisation will ever undertake, so why risk it going wrong by using the wrong tool? Our customers don’t.

But, for those day-to-day procurements, that’s where your sourcing tool comes in – AWARD® won’t replace that.

2. Flexibility 

High-risk projects demand flexibility in the procurement process and a depth that is not offered by sourcing tools.

AWARD® has been developed and adapted over the years to meet the challenges you face, the legal regulations you need to follow, and the types of projects you’re managing.

Whether it’s procuring military equipment or building a new hospital – our clients need flexibility and scalability in the tool they use.

Aside from the inherent flexibility of AWARD®, which supports a richer user experience, our solutions support the procurement process from market engagement, requirements capture and criteria development through to definition of value for money and robust reporting.

These elements can be used as required and tailored to the needs of your project: whichever one(s) you use depends on the needs and objectives of your project.

So, whilst sourcing tools still very much have their place in supporting your procurement processes, they lack the depth of support required by complex projects.

Here’s what a few of our customers have to say:

“We do some of the less complex, lower value evaluations in our sourcing tool – but we find it quite restrictive; AWARD®offers far more flexibility and we use it to evaluate our higher value, more complex procurements.”

“Our sourcing tool can handle the simple stuff and mini-call offs, but not evaluating a big tender with multiple stakeholders and different user requirements for visibility etc.”

“Our users like the flexibility of being able to allocate specific questions to evaluators who are experts within that field.

It’s easier to manage multiple evaluators too – some projects can have a team of 60 evaluators – the intuitive nature of AWARD® means that their onboarding is a simple and relatively speedy process.”

3. Integration

AWARD® doesn’t replace the use of existing tools.

As you’ll have read above, our customers are often also customers of Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, Atamis, BIP Delta or Proactis (to name a few) and use their tools alongside AWARD® to complete a full end to end process.

AWARD® integrates with other systems and with ‘single sign-on’ functionality it delivers a seamless experience for users and ensures easy access across the solution set.

Transfer of data between systems (such as from your sourcing tool, into AWARD®) is simple, secure and audited.

Using AWARD® doesn’t mean a total disruption to your current ways of working, it integrates with how you work to streamline your processes, reduce risk, save time and money, and ultimately achieve best possible outcomes every time.

4. For better outcomes

Customers come to us as the experts in complex procurement – AWARD® is the only solution in the marketplace that’s been specifically designed to support strategic procurements.

For the past 20+ years we have been supporting some of the world’s most important projects to deliver best possible outcomes.

AWARD® does more than help run your procurements, embedded with the very latest methodologies and expert modules, it empowers you to create a robust audit trail; ask your evaluators great questions through effective criteria setting; ensure value for money; work collaboratively; and securely store and manage data.

By using AWARD® you’re working to procurement best practice and with a recent study stating that public sector organizations could save 15% of their budget if they adhered to procurement best practice, why wouldn’t you want to.

5. To access enhanced capabilities

End-to-end sourcing tools have been around a while, with expanding feature sets and capabilities that focus predominately on volume and commoditising efficiencies.

For your day-to-day projects, they are perfectly suited.

But the evaluation capability presented by these tools tends to be restrictive by design and aimed at providing an efficient mechanism for procurement buyers to structure their decision-making with a limited set of criteria, individual reviewers or small teams of evaluators.

AWARD® offers many features over and above sourcing tools, designed specifically to support the more in-depth and varied requirements of complex projects including:

  • Unique, embedded thought-leadership modules specifically designed to support complex procurements
  • Collaborative weighting tool with process flow and guidance
  • Real Value for Money function to support definition of VfM approach
  • Structured Criteria Development module to support creation of robust, fit for purpose, defensible criteria
  • Supports multi-stage/multi-lot competitions/competitive dialogue/negotiated procedures
  • Click here for the full list

Conclusion

When working on a complex procurement, there are so many considerations to bear in mind – navigating your way through the pitfalls and challenges isn’t easy and making the correct decision is critical.

By its very nature, that final decision will have a big impact. By using AWARD® you can help ensure that final decision is the right one.

AWARD® has a key role alongside sourcing tools to provide that tailored, specific support for these projects, and our customers recognise that in their adoption and use of the solution as an addition to the likes of Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, Atamis, BIP Delta and Proactis.

If you’d like to find out more about using AWARD® alongside your current sourcing tool, get in touch here.

Further reading/viewing: