Members Overview

Members are the people who will interact with the software throughout the sourcing event. Member management is the backbone of an event and is built upon a handful of important concepts.

Member Types

What a member sees and how they will interact with the event is determined by how you add them. The Members screen allows you to configure three types of members.

• Bidders: Bidders will read and reply to document packages and place bids.
• Collaborators: Buyer staff who will have the ability to make changes to the event.
• Guests: Individuals who will have read-only access to an event.

We'll start by covering bidder management.

Bidder Stages

Bidder participation is built upon the concept of stages. As a sourcing event progresses, it moves through different phases. The software mirrors this concept by assigning bidders to stages. The software defines these stages as:

• Pending: Bidders who are pending review. Also automatically assigned to bidders who have responded to public document packages.
• Identified: Bidders who have been identified as candidates.
• Pre-qualified: Bidders who have passed pre-qualification.
• Proposer: Bidders who are able to participate in auctions.
• Shortlisted: Bidders who have submitted pricing, and are participating in further review / negotiation.
• Awarded: Bidders who have been awarded some (or all) of the business, and need access to post-award documents.

Note that you can skip stages if they don't apply to your event.

IMPORTANT: Bidders cannot move backwards through stages. For information on how to remove or restrict a bidder's access to an event, see the related article list at the bottom of this page.

How Bidder Stages Affect Events

Assigning a bidder to a stage has two primary effects:

• Restricts access to document packages with the corresponding access level.
• Restricts access to the bidding interface.

Additionally, only Proposer level bidders (and higher) have access to the bidding interface. This makes it possible to construct your bid layout in private, prior to providing bidder access.

Below is a listing of the stages, and the corresponding effect on a bidder's access to event information.

Team: Collaborators and Guests

Collaborators and guests are the members of your team that will have access to an event. As mentioned in the member types section, collaborators are able to make changes, while guests are only able to see event information.

Adding and removing team members is as simple as clicking add / edit and making the required changes.

IMPORTANT: Staff at your organization configured with "admin" level accounts can see all events. If you wish to restrict staff to certain events, change their user account type to basic, and then add them as a collaborator or guest to the desired events.

How Members are Managed

Members are added through the Members tab of an event.

On this screen, you can:

• Add new members
• Update the stage for bidder participants

Additionally, each bidder has a detail page, which you can see by clicking on the their name. This page contains important details about the bidder's participation in the event, as well as tools for restricting access, or suspending them from the bid.

Tying it All Together

In summary, bidders and team members are configured as members in an event. Bidder access to document packages and the auction is determined by their assigned stage. You organization's staff can be configured as collaborators (can make changes) or guests (can see only).