Sourcing Release 13 Objectives
Xeeva Sourcing Release 13.0 (R13) significantly improves the performance and usability of the system with a particular focus on making it easier to quickly define and execute tactical sourcing projects or events to rapidly realize savings. In particular, insights identified by Xeeva Spend Analytics can be directly actioned into Xeeva Sourcing as a new opportunity that the sourcing team can quicky act upon with minimal need for additional data input.
In R13, key features such as an in-app Excel experience, built-in master data synchronization and flexible supplier discovery mean sourcing teams can leverage Xeeva or company spend data quickly and easily in familiar formats, can concentrate on improving incumbent or key supplier arrangements, or improve their supply base by identifying appropriate new suppliers.
1. New Features
1.1 Spend Analysis Opportunities
With this feature, Sourcing users can receive insights from Spend Analytics as new opportunity types in their Sourcing pipeline view.
When an insight is added to the pipeline, the relevant items and spend period quantities associated with it are automatically aggregated into a candidate RFX item list as an uploadable file in the associated folder for that opportunity in the Sourcing repository.
Sourcing users can then take ownership of this automatically created and pre-populated opportunity from the pipeline, refine the approach, action the insight using the opportunity workflow through to completion, and easily upload the provided item list to their configured RFX/event at the appropriate time.
1.2 Excel RFQ Experience
This release incorporates direct Excel-like interactivity into the user RFQ experience, enabling both buyer and suppliers to view, edit, or respond to quotation items efficiently in the web UI itself. This means users can easily operate in-app and externally and offers both buyers and suppliers a consistent RFQ experience.
The in-app Excel view provides built-in error-checking and data validation rules, as well as the ability to move, resize, or add additional columns and calculations – all in a consistent way with downloadable views and features – providing online/offline consistency and the flexibility for users to employ whichever approach suits them best, or a combination of them for larger projects.
1.3 Supplier Discovery
Interactive discovery enables sourcing team members to identify and include suitable suppliers for their events by providing an easy-to-use search tool to discover suppliers by key properties and identify information such as their customer-configurable categorization (i.e. key, preferred, DoNotUse, etc), DUNS number, or Xeeva Marketplace status. To better support procurement policies and higher success, users can focus on identifying valuable potential suppliers in the relevant country or choosing from incumbents according to their internal/customer categorization levels.
1.4 Event Dashboard
The event dashboard provides excellent interactivity for users looking to track and view events across all opportunities, so that team members can effectively manage supplier engagement.
In addition to providing flexible search and intuitive high-level status filters, the results view can be interactively edited with Excel-like flexibility to sort, add, remove, resize, or reposition columns on-the-fly to quickly and easily to provide and personalize the data view best-suited for that user and their particular needs.
2. Enhancements
2.1 Auction Improvements
This release includes additional features and refinements to the auction module so that both forward and reverse auction modes with configurable business rules for bidding requirements can be easily defined and executed. Live-bidding views include a price-pressure dynamic graphic view that keep buyers appraised of live event progress and rankings and can provide suppliers awareness of the competitive bid activity and their respective positions.
In addition, a create-from-RFQ feature enables event managers to easily pre-configure auctions as a follow-up negotiating strategy to an earlier RFQ activity using those results.
2.2 Easy Upload
In addition to leveraging the embedded Excel experience, event managers can also bulk upload RFX items in an online or asynchronous mode, which can be used to add or modify longer lists of items. The upload facility also allows for setting of both external and internal line-item properties/rules and provides error checking logs from the uploading process to allow rapid remediation of invalid or inconsistent inputs.
3. Usability Improvements
3.1 Updated Themes & Navigation
Release 13 provides an updated and consistent navigation experience that enables users to quickly move between or within applications and to use a familiar breadcrumb model to navigate to other functions within the system. In addition, this updated look brings significant interactive performance acceleration to the user and reduces click-count with a simple, modernized UI feel.
3.2 Opportunity & Homepage
The dashboards have become more interactive through the provision of improved filtering with much faster operation and the inclusion of additional key properties, sort features, and hyperlinks ¬– making it is easier for users to monitor ongoing sourcing activities and also quickly inspect or take action on projects needing their attention or decision-making.
3.3 Repository & Attachment Management
Additional folders have been added to the Sourcing repository to make it easier to share and reuse common or standard company profiles, fact sheets, sourcing policy, and terms or conditions agreements both across internal sourcing teams or with suppliers. The repository search and attachment utilities have been merged so that document handling functions are integrated and consistent across the application. This also helps to ensure that external communication content is properly standardized and retained for compliance assurance.
4. Support Information
See XVA Platform for supported standards and browser versions or contact Xeeva.