In a Reverse English Auction, the bidders place bids on lots within a defined time frame. Lower bids are considered better compared to the competition. The lowest bid meeting the award criteria is considered the winner.
Create an Auction event
To create a new auction event, complete the following steps:
- On the Events page, select Create event
- Enter the event name in the Event name field
- Click Auction as the Event type
- Choose English as the auction type
- Click Create event
- From the Overview tab, click Edit event information to add a description and a welcome message.
- Save your changes.
Schedule the auction:
As an auction is a single-round event, there is a start and an end date, with no option to add rounds.
- Navigate to the Schedule option in the Design menu
- Select the Bidding start time and the bidding end time, and save your changes
It is recommended that you limit the number of rows in a bid sheet to a maximum of 20, and the number of columns to a maximum of 10 to enable Bidders to quickly view their bids, and to make relevant updates. If an auction exceeds the amounts of lanes or bidders, a multi-stage RFQ may be a better fit.
Adjust Event settings:
During an auction event, your bidders are all likely to be online at the same time, and feedback is displayed as each bid is submitted.
For the bidding method in an auction, we recommend that you select Online using Sourcing Optimizer. This setting makes submitting bids more efficient for bidders and enables them to respond promptly to feedback.
In the Event Settings tab on the Design menu:
- On the General tab, select Online using Sourcing Optimizer as the Bidding method
- Adjust the Bid change limit setting by limiting the bid value difference allowed between bids by a percentage
- Optional: Toggle on Minimum bid decrement to allow Bidders to improve their bid value when submitting bids. To enable this setting, you must first assign the Bid Decrement role to a column on the Bid sheet columns page
- Define the feedback type for the auction to allow feedback to be displayed to Bidders