Devoted to purchasing, purchasing agents, and all things related

I recently wrote a couple entries titled Using the Internet in Purchasing in which I mentioned reverse auctions.  I received some great feedback from Alan Buxton of TradingPartners that I want to share.

He wrote in to make me aware of an article he authored a few weeks ago titled It's Not Just About Price in which he discusses multi-attribute auctions.

I just read the article and found it very interesting.  I am sure that vendors would be in favor of the concept, especially those that are not offering the lowest price because they always want to emphasize other aspects of the deal.

As Alan points out, one challenge is buyers having the right skill to assign weighted values to the different attributes.  In my opinion, that is trying to turn an art into a science, as the values are completely subjective, but must be assigned a numerical equivalent or they can't be calculated.  I understand the necessity to do so, which will lead to the real problem of internal agreement.

It must be extremely difficult to get various internal departments to agree on the weighting.  The real skill of the Buyers will come into place in reference to Buyers getting a group with competing agendas and interests to come to agreement.

Alan also mentions that multi-attribute auctions are becoming more popular in Europe as a result of public procurement policy rules.  This is good news for us because the more experience Sourcing professionals have with this concept, the more it will become refined and written about allowing us to learn from both the successes and the challenges in the process.