Creating Opportunities

Introduction

Vendor Management is the process of creating and updating an opportunity, as well as allowing vendors to submit proposals to be considered for an opportunity. This involves collecting and maintaining opportunity information and documents from both contracting professionals and vendors. The Vendor Management (VM) solution provides a guided, automated experience for collecting this information. After an opportunity is created, simple, informative record interfaces, enabled by Appian Records, allow end users to view and update this information.

This page provides instructions for creating a new opportunity.

Creating and navigating a new opportunity

Creating a new opportunity is a guided experience that walks you through the process of entering the information you need to start the procurement process. Once initiated, you are guided through the following steps:

1. Importing from SAM.gov.
2. Entering general information.
3. Providing additional details.
4. Uploading opportunity attachments.
5. Specifying required proposal documents.
6. Posting the opportunity.

You must be a member of the AS VM Create or Update Opportunity PM Access security group to create a new evaluation. By default, the Contracting groups belong to this security group.

Creating a new opportunity

To start a new requirement, click + CREATE OPPORTUNITY from the Home or Opportunities page. The left side of the screen contains the various data collection steps required to create a new evaluation. You can click NEXT at the bottom of the form to go to the next step or SAVE & CLOSE to save a draft of the opportunity.

Note that after the information is entered, it will populate on the Opportunity record.

Importing from SAM.gov

When creating an opportunity, you have the option to import an existing opportunity using SAM.gov and auto-populate your Create Opportunity wizard. Click SKIP STEP 1 to skip the import from SAM.gov and create your opportunity manually.

To pull in opportunity information from SAM.gov:

1. Enter the opportunity ID in the search box and click SEARCH.
2. If an opportunity is found, verify with the information.
3. Click on the opportunity to confirm the selection.
4. Click NEXT.

Entering general information

Next, enter details relevant to the new opportunity, such as the ID, opportunity title, description, and instructions. If you imported from SAM.gov, some fields will already be populated.

To enter general information about the opportunity:

1. Enter ID, Title, Description, and Instructions for the goods or services you are procuring.
2. Select your Department/Ind. Agency, Sub-Tier, and Office. These fields provide context about who the contract is for.
3. Select a Type, Response Due Date, Response Due Date Timezone, Question Due Date, and Question Due Date Timezone. These will determine how long vendors have to submit their proposals and questions about the opportunity.
4. Select the Opportunity Visibility. This is used to determine whether your opportunity will be visible to all vendors, or only selected vendors.
   • If Private is selected, you can choose which vendors the opportunity will be visible to.
5. Click NEXT.

Providing additional details

The Details page is where you'll add details about the opportunity. You can provide an address for the Place of Performance, input NAICS and PSC codes, and select Set Aside Codes for the opportunity.

To provide additional details for the opportunity:

1. Add NAICS Codes or PSC Codes.
2. Select Set Aside Codes from the dropdown.
3. Provide an address for the Place of Performance.
4. Click NEXT.

Uploading opportunity attachments

The Attachments page allows you to upload documents and forms to the opportunity for vendors to view and fill out.

To set up the factors for your vendor evaluation:

1. Using the Upload button, upload up to 15 documents. Your users and vendors can view and download these documents from the opportunity summary page.
2. Click NEXT.

Specifying required proposal documents

The Required Proposal Documents page allows you to add documents that vendors need to submit with their proposal and indicate whether there are forms that need to be completed.

To add a required proposal document to your opportunity:

1. Click + Add Required Document.
2. Enter a Document Name.
3. If the document is a Form vendors should fill out, select one of the uploaded attachments.
4. Repeat step 1 add more documents and use the trashcan icon to remove entries.

Posting the opportunity

To post the evaluation:

1. Review the details you have entered.
2. Verify that there is no missing information and there are no validation messages.
3. When you are ready, click POST to finish creating the opportunity and make it visible to vendors.

Once you have posted the evaluation, a confirmation will display indicating that the opportunity has been started. From here, you can close out and track vendors' progress.

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