Analysis Overview

Table 1. Analysis Overview
#	Stage
1	To analyze bids, you must first create scenarios. You can include the following elements in a scenario: Factor weights Business constraints Delivery constraints Note: After an RFx is closed, the LowestCostOutcome and SingleSource scenarios are automatically generated.
2	In this stage you can run, or schedule for running, the scenarios you create. Only after a scenario is run, you can view the analysis and select it for awarding.
3	After you run a scenario you can analyze the results. This helps you to decide how the RFx should be awarded. The analysis provides reasoning on why certain suggestions were made. Select the winning bidder(s) based on the scenario results Use the scenario results to change or create another scenario that better meets your needs
4	Selecting Scenarios for awarding Based on the analysis, you can choose a scenario for awarding.

Total Purchasing Cost
The total purchasing cost for a scenario represents the sum of all the bids recommended for award in the scenario. It does not take into account the performance costs, delivery penalties, and cost adjustments.

Performance Cost
Performance cost is the cost associated with performance factors such as bid field scores and questionnaire scores.

Penalty Cost
Penalty cost is the cost that is associated with factors such as late or early deliveries and bid adjustment factors.

Total Analyzed Cost
Total Analyzed Cost is the sum of weighted analyzed costs of all items and of all suppliers.

Total Performance and Other Cost
The total performance and other cost for a scenario in an RFx is the sum of performance and other costs of all items and for all suppliers.

Scenario Infeasibility
A scenario is declared infeasible after you run it if the conditions defined in constraints overlap and make it impossible to suggest bid recommendations. It can also happen when there is a conflict between constraints and bids entered by supplier.

Optimal Results
Optimal results contain details of awards suggested by the scenario. The optimal results page can be viewed after a scenario runs successfully. The page contains the primary and secondary award suggestions and the reasoning behind the suggestions.

Reasoning
The Reasoning page is a part of scenario analysis. It displays how the scenario configuration affected the award suggestion and the factors that were considered.

Award Suggestions
After you run a scenario, you can view the awards suggested by the scenario, for each item, on the Optimal Results page. The award may be for a single supplier or split between multiple suppliers. These are only suggestions and you can choose to award the RFx differently.

Automatically Generated Scenarios
The scenarios that the system generates after an RFP, RFQ, or English Reverse Auction is closed, are known as automatically generated scenarios.

Factor Weights
Factor weight is a weight that is assigned to various performance factors when creating a scenario for bid analysis. Awards are suggested for suppliers with the best bids taking in account the selected factors and the weights assigned to them.

Optimization
Optimization is a feature within the application that uses bids, bidding rules, and scenarios to provide the best possible total sourcing cost. The optimization process is activated when you run a scenario. The application analyzes the bids based on the scenario and suggests awards for the most optimal solutions.

Business Constraints
Business constraints is a model of a real world constraint on purchasing activities. Business constraints are a mechanism to add limiting conditions within a scenario. The conditions could be based on existing business contracts, procurement policies, or business rules. For example, a favorite supplier rule, award limit rule, supplier count rule, total cost rule etc can be defined in a scenario.

Capacity Constraints
Capacity Constraints is a rule that governs the amount of items that can be awarded to a supplier. Using a capacity constraint, business can be awarded to a preferred supplier or the volume of business for a supplier can be limited. Suppliers can also create a capacity constraint to indicate the demand that they can support.

Supplier Count Constraint
Supplier count constraint is the maximum or minimum number of suppliers to whom a user wants to award business.

Supplier Cost Constraint
Supplier cost constraint is the excess cost incurred when doing business with certain suppliers. This cost gets added to the bids, and the awarding suggestions are made by taking into account the excess cost.

Delivery Constraint
Delivery Constraint is a constraint that lets the buyer take into account the delivery date proposed by a supplier when analyzing bids. By means of a delivery constraint, a buyer can set a range of acceptable dates for delivery, and assign a per day penalty for either late or early delivery.

Supplier Constraints
A mechanism that suppliers can use to indicate the volume of business or the number of items they can provide to the buyer organization are known as supplier constraints.

Viewing Analysis
After the scenario has run successfully, you can view the award suggestions based on various configuration settings and constraints applied in the scenario.

Viewing Business Volume Discounts
You can view the business volume discounts offered by the suppliers.

Viewing Scenario Summary
You can view the scenario summary for RFPs, RFQs, and English auctions.

Viewing Reasoning
You can view the reasoning for RFPs, RFQs, and English auctions.

Reviewing Scenario Infeasibility
You can review the scenario infeasibility for RFPs, RFQs, and English auctions.