Standard auction guide

User guide for responding to a standard auction

Please review the section in the user guide titled Guide and glossary for auctions before participating in any auction.

Logging in
Open an internet browser and type in the following website address: www.ibm.com/procurement/sourcing/ and select the word ‘here’ to log-on. Type in your IBM id and password and select the Submit button. If you need further assistance to log-on to the tool, please go to the section entitled Emptoris SP Getting started" and topic called logging in and out.

Accepting and bidding within the standard auction
To review the summary of the Standard Auction, select the Summary icon to display the summary. Read the information on the IBM buyer, schedule and Terms and Conditions attachment. To view the attachment you would right mouse select the content hyperlink and select "save target as".

Review the auction
Select the view/respond to RFx button under the column header select. You will see a screen that asks you to confirm your acceptance of the invitation. Click OK to accept. Now you are ready to view and respond to the auction. To decline the invitation, select the Red Decline button. This will remove the auction from the RFx screen and send a notification back to the buyer.

Select the RFx attachments link to download attached files to your local system. From the attachments window, right click the file and select " save target as".

You can upload an attachment at the auction level, by selecting the add/view your attachments tab then select the add attachment button, name the attachment and select the location on your local system where the attachment you are looking to upload resides.

Select the link of the auction parameters to view the rules of the auction.

In the top right corner you will see remaining time, open and close time, and the status. Underneath the header you will see the description, type and contact information.

Select the link of the item name to view the item details or select the red "go to bidding" button to begin bidding .

Begin bidding
View the remaining time in the auction for the current item listed. View the auction parameter; incremental close time to see how many minutes apart each line is scheduled to close.

You can place a bid on the current item and then select submit bid button.

You can view the valid bid history window to see how your bid for this line item compares with the other suppliers bids. ( It is at the discretion of the buyer what other suppliers will see of each other's bids.)

You can select the take lead button to reduce your bid to be the lowest overall bid in the auction for this line item.

You can select the minimum decrement button to reduce your bid by the minimum decrement amount as defined in the auction parameters.

You repeat all the steps for the remaining line items in the auction.

You may also view any messages sent by the buyer and can create a message to send back to the buyer.

Logging out
Once you have completed your bidding, you can log out of the system by selecting the logout icon on the top right of your screen.