SUPPLIER PORTAL AND NEGOTIATIONS

Zinni Mishra

Sr Oracle ERP Specialist

WSSC

Zinni.mishra@wsscwater.com1

Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission

Who We Are

Established in 1918, WSSC is currently among the largest water and

wastewater utilities in the nation, with a network of nearly 5,794 miles of

fresh water pipeline and over 5,600 miles of sewer pipeline. Our service

area spans nearly 1,000 square miles in Prince George’s and Montgomery

counties, and we serve 1.8 million residents through approximately 475,000

customer accounts. WSSC drinking water has always met or exceeded

federal standards.

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ORACLE EBS HISTORY

• WSSC Implemented Oracle EBS (GL, HR, Payroll and T&A) in

1997-98 & OTL and Employee SSHR in 2011-12 In 2015, We

went live with Inventory , Accounts Payables iSupplier

,Sourcing and Contract Management Modules

• We are in Process of Implementing iProcurement

,Purchasing Modules by End of this Year

• Presently we are in 12.1.3 and planning to upgrade to12.2

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1. Created a Custom Screen to show Active Solicitations along

with Interested Flag Check Box In the Supplier portal Where

Supplier can login in their portal, review active solicitation and invite them selves by checking the corresponding checkbox.

2. Increased Screen Display/ Added Required Field, Warning

Messages Tips using Personalization

3. Added Delete Duplicate Supplier Contacts Button in the in

the RFQ/Auction and RFI’s Invited Supplier Screen using

extensionAssumption:

This presentation is designed with an assumption that audience has some knowledge of sourcing and Supplier portal module. However some of the concepts holds true for other areas as well.

Agenda:

During this presentation we will go through some of the

enhancements we did to WSSC Sourcing and Supplier Portal as

per requested by the Buyer group as below.

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Steps:

• Created Custom Self Service Page

• Created a new submenu and attached the custom screen to the

submenu

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After this enhancements : Suppliers can view open unrestricted

negotiations and can add them selves to the invited list if they are

interested to participate in the negation .

Agenda Item 1:

Before Enhancement : Suppliers were added to negotiations Invited

Supplier lists by Buyers only.

Requirement: WSSC Buyers wanted to give Supplier ability to invite them

selves to open unrestricted negotiations using their supplier portal login.

• The Solicitation Screen lists all the Active negotiations which are not

restricted to invited Suppliers.

• Suppliers can view this screen after logging into portal

• Suppliers can view the negotiations by click on the Solicitation# link

• Suppliers can add them shelves by checking the interested flag

check box

• Once the suppliers check the Interested Flag they will be added

automatically to the Invited Supplier list.

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Cont. Agenda Item 1:

Custom Screen :

Example: Lucky Supplier Added himself to Negotiation 392 and 392,1

by checking the interested flag after logging to his supplier portal

Lucky Supplier got added to negotiation 392 and 392,1.

Now Lucky Supplier will get all the communication related to these

negotiations through Workflow Notifications.

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Cont. Agenda Item 1:

Increased Screen Display Personalization

Before: In Invited Supplier screen Only 10 records were showing per

page . Buyer had to scroll to 100 to 200 pages some time because

they were only able to view 10 records per page.

After : No of record display changed from 10 to 150 rows. This reduced

the effort more than 10time.

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Agenda Item 2:

Requirement: WSSC Buyers wanted to increase the display size for invited

Vendor list screen.

This number can be changed as per requirement. This can be used for

any other OAF pages if applicable

A new Required field added using personalization which will

force the buyer to double check the” restricted to invited

suppliers “ rule before submitting the negotiation

If buyer did not enter a Value in the required field it will throw

an warning message as below and wouldn’t let the buyer to

go to the next screen

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Cont. Agenda Item 2:

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Personalization Step:

In the below example Warning Message been Added using

personalization

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Cont. Agenda Item 2:

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Steps:

In the Supplier Registration Page Tips Added to the Tax Registration

Number field Which will give more details about Vat Field

Added Bold Messages in Red to give extra attention about entering

W9 form

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Cont. Agenda Item 2:

Adding Delete Duplicate Supplier Contacts Button to sourcing page:

Before : Buyers search Suppliers using commodity code and add

them in the invited supplier list. Some time Same Supplier gets added

to the invited supplier list multiple time as they have more than one

commodity codes.

Buyers have to go to individual pages, select duplicate suppliers and

delete them individually.

After : Using Extension a “Delete Duplicates” Button Added to the

invited suppliers screen which let the Buyers delete all the duplicate

Supplier records at one click

This functionality saves lots of time and effort for buyers when there is

a long list of suppliers and duplicates in the Invited Supplier List.

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Agenda Item 3:

Added State Names LOV using Extension:

Before : Suppliers were entering different addresses in the state column.

After : When country name entered as United States, state names LOV

will appear. Supplier can only choose from the LOV values .

When Country is other than United States Supplier the state field will back

to a free field .

This eliminated different kind of data entries by suppliers for state names .

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Agenda Item 4:

OAF Page Personalization:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18727_01/doc.121/e12646/T406873

T411478.htm

iSupplier User Guide

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18727_01/doc.121/e16345/T392236

T392242.htm

Oracle Sourcing Tips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itdrCVyms0M

Reference links:

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