How to Plan a Successful E-Auction

The following steps can be considered to plan and execute a successful E-auction event.

1. Analyzing the marketplace

Depending on the type of Services and Items the buyer wishes to buy or the seller wants to sell via auctions- the individual should have an understanding of the demand in the market and the kind of audience they want to target.

The factors to be considered while analyzing the marketplace

• Current big deals happening between relevant industries
• If the current trend is buyer or supplier dominant market
• Demand of the supply and services
• Future predication on the demand and supply trend
• Behavior of the audience and locality – Eg: If you want to buy some IT services from rural area-based company compare to Metro cities, you may need to settle with old technology with higher pay

2. Transparency in the communication with Vendors or Buyers before auctions

The specific definition of the requirement to note down

The suppliers or buyers must be communicated about the need with proper technical and other terms & conditions (Delivery and payment terms specifically) The auction should be planned as per the availability of participants to get maximum engagement during the live bidding

The participants should be informed about the benefits of auctions such as

• E-bidding is fair chance to each participant to get the business
• It reduces the timeline of negotiation as compare to traditional methods (In person meetings, on call or email discussions)
• E-bidding gives the transparency about the competitive market to participants
• It gives equality to each participant to place bid on the common information given before and during the auction

3. Pre-Bidding

If there are certain services or items that are new to buyer or seller, pre-bid is the best opportunity to understand the ongoing trend & Market situation and later plan the best strategy for online bidding instead of directly planning E-bidding

The pre-bidding process can be beneficial to understand if E-bidding is actually needed or not and if needed, which E-Bidding strategy is the most suitable to get favorable results.  E-bidding participation training workshops for participants

4. Selection of tool for conducting E-Bidding

This is the most crucial step to planning a successful Auction. -The tool may have very fancy features and graphical views but if it is not easy to use for Participants and hosts, it may impact the interest of the users.

The type of support is given by the E-auction Service providers Type of features provided by the E-auction tool in a simplistic manner and in more user-friendly ways

5. Keeping the auction extensions flexible

During the E-bidding process, there should be some auto extension minutes at the end time of the auction to give fair chance to all the bidders.

For example, if there is one bidder who hasn’t participated in the auction for the first 25 minutes and at the last minutes, he gives the quotes (lowest/highest) and other participants who were bidding throughout the auction don’t even get a chance to give their final price at the end.

Just to avoid such conflicts, there should be some mechanism of auto extension if the bids are coming in the last few minutes

6. Award of Business to Participants

The E-bidding event should only be planned if there are intentions of giving business to one or more participants.

The host should not conduct auctions only to get the best prices from the market and later give the business to someone who wasn’t even part of the E-bidding process.

E-Auctions is the most preferred procurement strategy for remarkable saving, quick negotiation and as the subject indicates, we at MavenVista provide you the one-stop solution for your strategic sourcing and saving through our VENDX E-Auction module.