Reputation in a Request for Proposals Electronic Platform

Faced with increased pressure to reduce costs companies in every industry are placing emphasis on procurement as it represents the single largest expense at most organization [1]. Procurement can mainly be performed in three ways: through catalogs, auction or request for proposals. RFPs are seen as the most effective way to identify the price of non-standardized goods but also as a time consuming and costly process. ECommerce solutions are being developed to help reduce inheriting coordination costs as well as to increase competition among suppliers. In this later case, results are however not as brilliant as one could foresee in comparison with the millions of companies using the web on a daily basis. This paper reviews evaluation mechanisms and reputation indexes. It also presents the solution retained to help companies minimizing their business risk by developing a collective memory that will be shareable among and outside the organization to help find new suppliers and evaluate current ones. ________________________________________________________________________________