As part of our product roadmap, November 2022 had us focusing on the best way to close the existing RFQ process for both Buyers and Suppliers. Today, we are glad to release product updates that support the interaction during the post-award phase of an RFQ lifecycle i.e handling of purchase orders, invoices as well as engaging suppliers.

Below are the highlights of the product updates for this month;

1. On Procure: Autogeneration of Purchase Orders (POs)

As a Buyer, you can now automatically translate a winning bid into a Purchase Order and send it directly to the winning Supplier. Therefore, once you award an RFQ to a winning bidder, you get access to the new feature where you can:

• Create Purchase Orders (POs) in one simple step.
• Generate a fully branded PO with your logo and company details, complete with assigning Approvals and time stamps of activities i.e Prepared by and Approved by.
• Directly send Purchase Orders to suppliers with email alerts confirmations.

2. On Supply: Invoices from Suppliers

As a Supplier, you can now create Invoices in response to Purchase Orders you have been awarded within Scale. Each document is created within a standardised design that includes your business logo.

Suppliers are now able to:

• Autogenerate branded invoices from the Purchase Orders you’ve been awarded
• Depending on the payment policy of the Procuring Entity you are engaging, you can choose to use either the full or partial invoicing options.
• Submit invoices directly to the Procuring and receive an ‘acknowledgment of acceptance’ notification

3. Dashboards, Suppliers and other System Enhancements

Over the last month, we received loads of feedback on your experience using the system. And we moved fast to fix any UI issues that you raised. These product updates cut across both Procure and Supply as follows:

• First, we redesigned the Dashboards for both products to provide a useful summary of the key information and activity from your account. This means that all your important data and actionable items quickly accessed immediately you log into your account.
• Secondly, we totally overhauled the Suppliers Management section on Procure. The Suppliers section now makes it easier to create and manage the Groups/Categories and the suppliers within them.
• Lastly, we have optimised the loading speed documents and webpages across the platform. Everything you do should feel so much faster now, right? 🙂

What’s coming next…

As usual, here’s a quick roundup of the updates to expect within this coming month:

1. Direct Purchasing – For repeat orders, we are adding the ability to generate and issue Purchase Orders directly to Suppliers as a stand-alone feature.
2. Contract Management – The post-award stage of your RFQs is getting its own section making it easy to track and monitor all your contracts with suppliers.
3. Bid Evaluation Reports – Downloading of preliminary assessment reports of quotations and revelant documentation as submitted by bidders.

So, purchase orders, invoices, suppliers – that’s how busy our November has been. Even better, our December has already started on a promising note! We are planning to close the year with more technical milestones achieved to solve the procurement challenges you currently face.

Finding all this fascinating or got any questions? Let us know and we’ll give you a live demonstration of Scale in action! www.scale.co.ke/buyers