Due to significant differences between different Vendor prices in India, it is required to cross-check the prices before providing them to Salesperson.
This SOP will list the steps of the process of prices evaluation from India Vendors.
Getting started with prices evaluation
The prices between different India Vendors vary a lot and to avoid problems with providing too high prices to Customers it is imperative that Purchasing Person and Salesperson cross-check and compare prices with what was already uploaded in the System before quoting Customers. In India prices could vary anywhere between for example 2.00 USD/box and 14.00 USD/box. If the price of 14.00 USD is given to the Customer instead of 2.00 USD, it will create a really bad precedent as Customer will think that AdvaCare makes up prices based on nothing, and it will be really difficult to backtrack it and give Customer the price of 2.00 USD. Therefore, it is necessary for both Purchasing Person and Salesperson to do what possible to evaluate the price before it is provided to the Customer.
Process of evaluating quoted prices
1. After the prices from the Vendor are received, before uploading them Purchasing Person needs to search all the prices for the same product in the System, one by one. It is usually enough to search by product code to see all the prices for this specific product, however, sometimes the code has changed or the same code product was never quoted before. In this case, Purchasing Person must make sure there are no prices to compare for similar products. For this purpose, Purchasing Person needs to search by product name and the relevant form.
2. It is better to compare prices from India Vendors with other India Vendors for reference, however, if there are no prices from India Vendors it is possible to compare prices with China Vendors.
3. Purchasing Person must make sure that prices received are correct and make sense, for example are prices per vial/ampoule or per blister or per box? The prices that should be uploaded have to be per box. Does the MOQ make sense? Is the MOQ per box or per piece? Only MOQ per box needs to be uploaded in the System. Any other possible mistakes in pricing?
5. If the prices or MOQs turn out to be wrong, Purchasing Person must ask the Vendor to clarify or provide the correct prices/MOQs.
6. Once the prices are compared and corrected, Purchasing Person needs to quote the prices for the RFQ. Generally it is better to upload the prices regardless of whether are unreasonably high to have history and be able to refer to these prices in the future.
7. Once the prices are uploaded, Purchasing Person needs to send a task to Salesperson to notify of the findings after price comparison - just to give a general idea whether the prices are too high or not, and to inform that prices were uploaded.
8. If the prices seem too high comparing with other prices in the System, Purchasing Person needs to keep looking for a manufacturer that can provide prices within the normal range.
IMPORTANT: Prices comparison can be done before any Vendor quoted any prices, however reference prices should not be used as target prices unless confirmed with Purchasing Manager for a specific case.
How to compare the prices
The System records every price uploaded and allows to compare the prices easily.
1. Enter Purchasing module.
2. Inside Purchasing module, click 'Purchasing' on the top menu bar and choose 'Quotes'.
3. 'Quotes' page provides the view of all products ever quoted. This page is a very powerful tool and gives a lot of raw data, which needs to be further filtered to see the information relevant to a certain product or and RFQ. In this table the System shows important data such as Vendor, Product/Packaging, Quote (pack)/Quote (piece), USD cost (recalculated from any other currency based on exchange rate and tax rate), Quantity, Date and Source Document.
4. To search all the products quoted for a certain RFQ, input the SO number into 'Search' field, and choose 'Search Original SO for: ...' option from the dropdown.
5. To search a certain product quoted for any RFQ in the past, input the product name or product code into 'Search' field and press Enter.
Note: To search by product only the name has to be entered. Any other attribute such as form, dosage, type, etc. has to be searched separately. For example, to search for Amoxicillin capsules 500mg user has to search by product name 'Amoxicillin' first.
6. To search by product attribute (such as form, dosage, etc.), input the attribute value - for example, 'Capsule into 'Search' bar and choose 'Search Product Attribute for: ...' option from the dropdown.
7. To add one more attribute value to the search by, for example when user needs to add both dosage and form which are different attribute values, input the second attribute value - for example, '500mg' into 'Search' bar and choose 'Search Product Attribute + for: ...'.
Note: The difference between point #6 and point #7 is the symbol '+' that is necessary to search by more than one attribute value. If wrong option is chosen, the System will show the results based on 'OR' criteria - either 'capsule' OR '500mg' from the examples above. To see the results based on 'AND' criteria - 'capsule' AND '500mg' - user must choose the option with '+' from the dropdown.
8. To work with huge amount of results it is better to use 'Group By' option, which can group the results by Vendor or Product. Click 'Group By' button under the Search bar and choose the relevant criteria (Vendor or Product) to see the results.
