E-Procurement for Small Businesses
Many small businesses want to save money on their purchases of many different types of supplies and office equipment can purchase these items online and save a considerable amount of time and money. Regardless if your small business needs office furniture, credit card processing, payroll services, copiers, telephone systems, or computers you can save money and time with the services of e-procurement.
There are numerous websites that are the technical equivalent of a matchmaking services. They permit small businesses to send requests and product descriptions to vendors and then wait for price quotes and compare the prices to obtain the best deal. In addition, small businesses can purchase the items they need without traveling to local stores, picking up the telephone, looking through product catalogs, or having to look through the Yellow Pages. Here are some of the different services these websites can provide. These websites will bring the supplier and the purchaser together by choosing the appropriate suppliers from a numerous national and local businesses. The service providers and manufacturers currently sell products by Xerox, Pitney Bowes, Konica Minolta, Toshiba, NEC, Mitsubishi, Gateway, Toyota, Intuit, and others.
The purchaser will prepare a request for quotes (RFQ) which will describe the product they are want to purchase with the purchaser’s contract information and the specifications for purchasing. Usually within just hours of the submission of the purchaser’s RFQ, it will become the supplier’s lead after the supplier receives it. These websites will help the purchaser find the products that they want to purchase because they offer advice for numerous services and products such as industrial equipment, IT, telecom equipment, marketing and insurance services, financial services, postal services as well as free purchasing guides. The suppliers can customize the service by selecting the services or products that they want to offer and designate the geographic locations to target to generate the most leads based on the category that they want to receive in a month. These websites will charge the suppliers a fee which is usually $5 to $15 for each lead they receive. The more that is spent the more opportunities the suppliers have on which to bid.
There are also free services that allow small businesses to use supplier groups that can submit RFQs to multiple suppliers that are prequalified. The service will then notify the suppliers who will then submit their quotes. The service will allow the small business to add messages or notes to the price quotes so that they can define the delivery costs, provide warranty or guarantee information, and list the unit prices. Purchasers can also elect to hide the supplier’s price quotes from other suppliers, attach images and word documents to the RFQ so as to better define the requirements, and reveal their identities or stay anonymous.
Click here for more information about <a href="”>e-procurement and <a href= "”>china mobiles. Author: James Keyes.
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