What do a multinational technology company, a dominant player in the world of cloud computing and virtualization, and one of the globe’s largest gaming companies have in common? They’re all using Sakon’s Quote Management Tool, a user-friendly platform to easily manage the quoting and provisioning of communications services.
Purpose-built to be highly configurable by our clients, Sakon’s Quote Management Tool includes customizable templates that enable configurable RFIs for technical details, as well as purpose-specific email templates, such as Quote Request, Follow-Up, and Best and Final Pricing. These templates help streamline and simplify interaction with vendors. Another valuable component that streamlines this interaction is the Vendor Portal. Our clients’ vendors can use the Vendor Portal to quickly and easily respond to quote requests directly in the application; that eliminates the need to rely on email responses and spreadsheets.
The value proposition is simple: Sakon’s Quote Management Tool provides the ability to manage quotes from the start of a bid all the way through ordering and fulfillment processes. Users have access to real-time notifications, RFI questions, a vendor library, and customized email templates and analysis. Our built-in algorithms help our clients easily review, compare, and grade vendor responses and pricing.
Mike Deasy, Vice President of Product Management at Sakon, recently discussed the value of Sakon’s Quote Management Tool for our clients:
Mike Deasy: Sakon’s Quote Management Tool provides a single dashboard where customers can manage vendors during the competitive bid progress. In addition, with the push of a single button, your award selections flow into Sakon’s order system, which streamlines and simplifies the procurement process. That’s how Sakon’s Quote Management Tool delivers a one-stop shop to competitively price and fulfill your services.
Typically, employees at companies that want bids for new circuits will reach out to one or more telecom vendors by email. The employees wait to hear back from the telecom vendors and they’ll send multiple follow-up emails or make calls to vendors that don’t respond. Unfortunately, this manual process provides no global visibility into the vendors that respond--and those that don’t.
Global visibility is important when the employee’s manager asks why a particular vendor didn’t respond to a quote. Without Sakon’s Quote Management Tool, the employee has to search through their email, locate the message they sent to a vendor, and then collect the evidence. That puts the employee in the hot seat--and it takes up their time.
With Sakon’s Quote Management Tool, the employee can access the dashboard and report to their manager about the vendors that have responded, as well as the reason associated with a vendor’s winning bid. In addition, our clients should be aware that Sakon has trained more than 20 major telecom vendors around the world on using Sakon’s Quote Management Tool, so they’re already familiar with its functionality.
Why is it valuable to have a side-by-side comparison of telecom vendors?
Deasy: The ability to do a side-by-side comparison among telecom vendors allows our clients to quickly and easily visualize the pricing and capabilities across each vendor. This capability helps your company do an apples-to-apples comparison of vendors’ proposals.
What’s historical vendor pricing? How does it help our clients?
Deasy: The employee responsible for sending the company’s bids to vendors can rely on Sakon’s Quote Management Tool for an historical look at responses from the telecom vendor. For example, the employee can access the tool and then report to management that the vendor only responds to quotes approximately 70% of the time.
Here’s how that could work for your company: Sakon’s Quote Management Tool provides a vendor scorecard showing that 8 requests had been sent to one telecom vendor and the vendor elected to opt out of 2 while responding to 6, whereas another telecom vendor received 10 requests and only responded to one. Vendor quotes include the responses to technical questions, the RFI, as well as the price and installation times of the circuit. If a telecom vendor decides not to participate in a bid, they can communicate the reasons in Sakon’s Quote Management Tool. This information also helps for reporting purposes.
With this detailed information at their fingertips, IT and procurement leaders can have a strategic conversation with a telecom vendor about the lack of responsiveness and/or future opportunities for partnership. Users of the tool can use the average price across all vendors to see if they can negotiate a better price from those vendors who exceed the average price.
How can Sakon’s Quote Management Tool help manage the quotes received by your company?
Deasy: Our clients’ vendors can use the Vendor Portal area of Sakon’s Quote Management Tool for a single view of the quotes that have been received. This helps to streamline communications for vendors within the portal. Additional benefits include no pricing spreadsheets and no emails back and forth with vendors--it’s all in the Vendor Portal.
If you are interested in Sakon’s Quote Management Tool, contact us today.