Alternate Options / Alternate Proposals

Overview

Alternate Options is a feature that allows you to define the maximum number of Alternate Proposals a vendor can provide for a project.

This feature allows vendors to upload multiple submissions for the same buying decision and lets you control what information they need to provide in order to upload an alternate submission.

To specify how many Alternate Options you wish to approve for your project, click the Configurations dropdown menu in the Create Project or Edit Project window:

NOTE: This feature is opt-in, so you'll need to contact support@gobonfire.com to have it enabled for you.

Requested Information

By default, all Requested Information (Documents, Data, or Questionnaires) is common. This means that when a Vendor submits an Alternate Proposal, they will not be asked to provide files that should be the same across multiple submissions. For example, you may want the "Signed Bid Form" to be common as it only needs to be signed and provided once per Vendor.

In order for a Vendor to be able to submit an Alternate Option, you need to make at least one of the pieces of Requested Information Unique Per Alternate by navigating to the desired piece of Requested Information, selecting the Actions then Edit option, and checking off the Unique Per Alternate checkbox (see pictures above).

Unique Per Alternate specifically means that vendors must provide a unique document when submitting an Alternate proposal.

Criteria

Not only can you make the Requested Information Unique Per Alternate, but you can also set up your Criteria to be Unique Per Alternate (by default they are all Common). For Unique per Alternate Criteria, Evaluators will need to provide a score for both the Primary and the Alternate submission; otherwise, the Evaluators will only need to provide a score for the Primary submission, and this score is linked to the Alternate Submission.

For example, you will likely want to set up your Pricing criteria as Unique Per Alternate if the vendors are providing different prices for each submission. To make a criteria Unique per Alternate, you simply check the Unique per Alternate checkbox located to the right of the Criteria's name:

Unique per Alternate criteria will be tagged accordingly under your Criteria section:

Submission Instructions

The Submission Instructions for the Vendor will appear as follows outlining the requirements for the Unique per Alternate Options for the project: