There are thresholds to limit the number of Suppliers that can be selected for a Marketplace RFx, and the number of Subcategories and Regions that can be selected for a Tender. The thresholds are:
- Limit the number of Suppliers selected for a Marketplace RFQ to 100
- Limit the number of Subcategories selected for a Tender to 20
- Limit the number of Regions selected for a Tender to 20
The intention is to ensure that Buyers target the most relevant Suppliers and reduce the impact on Suppliers of large volumes of notifications that don’t relate to their services, products or regions of service.
When sending out quote requests, you want them to be sent only to those Suppliers that can do the work or provide the product that you are after. The following information outlines how to work within the thresholds.
Working within Marketplace Thresholds
When you are selecting Suppliers that you want to receive quotes from, it is worth spending the time to limit the number of Suppliers, as this:
- Saves you the administration of reviewing, evaluating and responding to large volumes of Suppliers.
- Saves the Suppliers from committing time and resources to reviewing and responding to the quote when they have little chance of being successful.
There are several ways you can filter the Suppliers to help with your selections:
- Use a specific keyword search to identify Suppliers.
- Use the Distance filter to find the Suppliers that are located near where you need the work performed/delivered.
- If multiple Categories are selected, use the Category Match filter to see which Suppliers have said they can provide all the services/products you need.
Selecting a greater number of Suppliers does not result in better outcomes and may in fact result in lesser quality responses requiring more work to review. Selecting relevant, qualified and appropriately located Suppliers generally works best.
Working within Tender Subcategory Thresholds
When Suppliers register on the VendorPanel Marketplace they review and select the Categories that most closely align with the services or products they offer. By only selecting the relevant Categories, it helps them to only hear about Tenders that they can respond to. It is then the Buyer's responsibility to only select the relevant Categories for their Tender, which most commonly will be between one & five in number.
Once a Tender is posted, all Suppliers that have stated they can provide services or products that match the Category(ies) selected (as well as matching the regions) will be notified.
Our user data suggests that selecting a large number of Subcategories does not necessarily result in good outcomes. Selecting fewer, more targeted Subcategories will yield better results.
Working within Tender Regions Thresholds
When Suppliers register on the VendorPanel Marketplace they review and select the Regions where they feel they can provide a quality service or are happy to deliver products too. By deselecting regions they can’t service, it helps them to only hear about Tenders in the Regions they can service and have selected. It is then the Buyers responsibility to only select the relevant Regions for their Tender, which most commonly will be one region (or two if the location of work/delivery crosses over a regional boundary).
The list of regions the Buyer selects from when creating their Tender is the same list of regions the Buyer selects in their account as areas they service.
Once a Tender is posted, all Suppliers that have stated they can service that region are then notified, regardless of their office location.
In the majority of Tenders, Buyers will only need to select ONE region (though there are legitimate reasons for selecting more).
How will I know if I have exceeded a threshold?
If you have exceeded one of the thresholds, you will be unable to move past the Save & Post step of the Request Wizard. The message will be similar to the one below. Depending on the threshold exceeded, each message will be slightly different. Although it will clearly advise you of:
- The type of threshold that has been exceeded.
- The threshold value that has been set by your organisation. This will be either the default value (as above) or a custom one.
- The number of selections that need to be reduced.
From here, the recommended course of action is to return to the step outlined in the message and reduce your selections to fall below the threshold limit.
Can Thresholds be changed?
The aforementioned threshold values have been optimised based on historical user behaviour and response rates. Our data shows that these values will be suitable for the vast majority of RFx that are published via VendorPanel and requests, although we understand that there may be rare exceptions to these guidelines. In these instances, please:
- Contact the Support team to approve a once-off exception to the threshold that you have exceeded.
- If you feel that the thresholds are too restrictive to your overall use case, please contact your Customer Success Manager to initiate a review of your global settings related to thresholds.