Glossary
Procurement terms, in plain words.
Short definitions you can forward to a colleague, with how iProcure handles each one.
- eRFx
- eRFx is the electronic management of requests for information, proposals and quotations (RFI, RFP, RFQ): building the event, inviting suppliers, collecting structured responses, evaluating them and recording the award in one system.
- Evaluation consensus
- Evaluation consensus is the step in which a sourcing panel, having scored supplier responses independently, reviews where their scores differ and agrees one score per criterion, recording the reasons and keeping each individual score.
- NDA gate
- An NDA gate is a control in a sourcing event that withholds confidential documents from a supplier until a valid non-disclosure agreement with that supplier is in place, then releases them automatically.
- Region pack
- A region pack is a bundle of country-specific configuration and connectors, such as tax rules, supplier identifiers, e-invoicing, e-signature, formats and language, kept outside the core of a procurement platform and applied per organisation.
- Reverse auction
- A reverse auction is a live, time-limited online event in which pre-qualified suppliers bid downward against each other for a defined requirement, and the lowest acceptable bid, or best overall offer, wins.
- RFI vs RFP vs RFQ
- An RFI asks suppliers for information to understand the market, an RFP asks for a proposed solution and price for a defined need, and an RFQ asks for a price against a fixed specification.
- Savings realisation
- Savings realisation is the measurement of how much of a saving negotiated in sourcing actually reaches the business, by tracking it through contracts and purchase orders to invoices paid at the agreed price.
- Source-to-pay
- Source-to-pay (S2P) is the end-to-end procurement process that runs from identifying a need and sourcing a supplier, through contracting and ordering, to receiving the goods and paying the supplier's invoice.
- Supplier-blind sourcing
- Supplier-blind sourcing is running an RFx or auction so that no supplier can learn which other suppliers were invited, how many there are, or what they submitted, through any page, email, export or file.
- Tail spend
- Tail spend is the large number of low-value, infrequent or unplanned purchases that sit outside managed categories and contracts: a small share of total spend spread across many suppliers and transactions.
- Three-way match
- Three-way match is an accounts payable control that approves a supplier invoice for payment only when its quantities, prices and terms agree with the purchase order and the goods receipt, within set tolerances.
- Two-envelope evaluation
- Two-envelope evaluation is a tender method in which each supplier submits a technical offer and a sealed commercial offer; the technical offers are scored first, and prices are opened only after technical sign-off.
Next step
See it live in 10 minutes.
Pick your region and the two modules that hurt most. We run your own category through the RFx spine on sample data. No access, no commitment, no build decision required.
- Supplier-blind RFx
- Independent evaluation
- Approvals from email
- Global & modular
Design partner's seat
Pre-launch and honest about it: you get the mechanism now. Design partners get a free 60 to 90 day pilot, a preferential launch price, roadmap input and a direct line to the founders.