I cannot even imagine going back to the old procedure - collecting offers by email and negotiating with each supplier individually in order to take the best decision," said Boyana Boynovska, Auxionize's Chief Operating Officer.
The platform, created by Walltopia’s CEO Ivaylo Penchev, connects buyers and sellers of business products and services, thus optimizing the procurement processes.
Before leading the operational activities at Auxionize, Boyana Boynovska gained extensive experience working with the platform, while she was the logistics department head at the world leader in the design and manufacture of artificial climbing walls. Walltopia's facilities have been installed in retail and entertainment sites in more than 70 countries. "This involves the daily management of various types of cargo services to dozens of locations around the world," says Boyana. "Auxionize showed me that all these processes can flow in a much more efficient way."
To start an auction, the buyer needs to create an IPS. For this purpose, they have to find the products he needs in the product catalog. If they are not included in it, they need to create them.
Dimitar Georgiev gave an example of a pre-auction – one for construction materials, which contains over 400 sets of carefully formalized interchangeable products, divided into different sheets and groups - similar to an Excel spreadsheet. Sellers bid for specific products for each position and these offers are easily comparable. "For the duration of the pre-auction, sellers gave feedback to the buyer on the specifics of various products, delivery terms and other details, and the buyer made changes in a timely manner. As part of the pre-auction, the offers submitted by the sellers are not binding on the buyer, they are aimed at informing him about the current market prices and terms.
Once this process is complete, the buyer launches it as a standard auction with a single click," explained Auxionize’s CEO. The main convenience for sellers is that their bids are saved and shall be edited and confirmed, and for the buyer - that he does not have to prepare the entire auction again. According to Dimitar Georgiev, this process optimizes the communication between sellers and buyers. By having all the information about all the products he is looking for in one place, the client will be able to make the right decision on when, how and for how long he would have to conduct the actual auction.
The Pros
Who Know How
The Auxionize Team Explains How the Platform Facilitates the Business in the Procurement Processes
"The main objective of the new functionalities is for all participants in the platform to have a precise and clear idea of the goods demanded through auctions or nomenclatures," said Dimitar Georgiev, Co-Executive Officer of Auxionize together with its founder Ivaylo Penchev.
Linking demand with supply has been automated to a maximum degree - notification for a new auction or for products added to the live nomenclature is received only by suppliers who actually offer the required items, Dimitar Georgiev explained.
He pointed to another new solution allowing for effective buyer – seller interaction - the public drafts of future auctions, called "Pre-auction" in Auxionize’s terminology.
This is a period through which proactive sellers advise buyers on product specifications and sales terms.
Flexible Choices
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Even More Informed Clients
Interchangeable Product Sets or shortly referred to as “IPS” are another new feature of the platform. It allows buyers to group certain end products that equally meet their needs in a "bundle", and receive offers for all of them at a single location - in their nomenclature. This reduces the time for researching the prices of similar goods.
"When the buyer chooses specific equivalent end products, they become part of an IPS. This means that he is ready to buy each of them because they meet the same need," explained Ivaylo Hristov. An easy example of IPS would be the "Sales Team Phones" with 3 products that are specific models of a certain brand. In this case the buyer knows exactly the end-versions of the products he wants to buy. However, there are cases when the buyer does not know absolutely all the end products that could work for him, but he knows their main parameters and can enter them. For example, "Memory": 256 GB, "Color": white, black, red, "SIM: Dual, etc.", clarified Auxionize's product manager. This makes the decision flexible not only because when choosing the important criteria, this IPS of the buyer will be populated with all products that meet them. In addition, "If later on another platform user creates a product meeting the criteria set by the buyer, the newly created product will automatically become part of the buyer’s flexible IPS," explained Ivaylo Hristov. Thus the interchangeable product set will be automatically updated each time a new product meeting its needs appears in Auxionize's global product catalog.
Launched 8 years ago as a digital tool for B2B reverse bidding auctions, aimed at achieving the best prices for the buyer, nowadays Auxionize offers many more benefits for all participants in the supply and trade processes, following the successful introduction of a number of new features in the platform.
The products and services are divided into more than 50 categories, meeting a wide range of business needs - from materials for various types of production or construction activities to such used in the advertising activities of companies, including company celebrations. The new version of the platform offers a much longer list of categories thanks to the option for adding them dynamically, based on the needs of both buyers and sellers.
Transparent Deals Without Cumbrous Negotiations
One of the most developed categories in the platform is the Transport service category, which allows companies with large-scale production and export activities such as Walltopia, to organize all their logistic processes through Auxionize, Boyana explained. In the beginning, the task of an employee working in the Logistics division of Walltopia was to organize each shipment through an auction in Auxionize, while coordinating deadlines and other details with project managers. Over time, all the knowledge about the management of different types of transport services, their prices, participants and all other details have been transferred to a single location - the platform", explained the COO of Auxionize.
This knowledge is available to all employees at any time. It can be quickly analyzed and allows automation of any logistic service transaction. Thus, everyone can organize transportation according to their projects.
"Auxionize eliminates the cumbersome coordination between people from different departments, thus saving business resources," said Boyana. "The platform is getting better than the most perfect supply chain, because it allows every specialist in the company to buy products and services in their field of expertise," added the founder of Auxionize Ivaylo Penchev.
egotiations in Auxionize are fully automated. Every time a buyer announces that he is buying certain materials or services, all relevant suppliers will automatically learn about it and can bid at a single location in real time. Thus the client can easily compare competitive offers much faster in an environment providing transparency to all participants" explained the COO of Auxionize, Boyana Boynovska: “The platform allows company owners and managers to accurately monitor all transactions and obtain a clear picture of the entire supply process”.
Excelsior
Auxionize removes unnecessary coordination between people from different departments. And saves business resources.
Special project for
Idea and realization
Formalize This
One of Auxionize's main ideas is to allow easy comparison of offers for each product or service so that buyers can make the most informed decisions possible. The platform’s team achieves it by starting from the so-called formalization.
Buyers are not looking just for bolts or fiber optic cables in general. A buyer needs, for example, a tapered bolt with a metric thread with a diameter and length of 12x80 mm or an optical cable with 72 fibers. However, the "tapered bolt" and "72 fiber optic cable" products have a number of other parameters.
"The formalization in Auxionize consists of a structured description of each product through its parameters and their specific values", explained the platform’s Product Manager Ivaylo Hristov, who is mainly involved in this process.
One of Ivailo's roles is to review hundreds of technical sheets, catalogs and specifications, to sift through the essential information regarding a specific product and to cope with the jargon used in many of them. "Thus, a client looking for a "bug” will find a split bolt connector in the product catalog of Auxionize, and the client searching for a "soap" will find a wire pulling lubricant." said Ivaylo Hristov.
The Importance of a Thorough and Objective Product Description
The products that are most difficult to formalize are those of a more consumer-related nature, said Ivaylo. Products that manufacturers usually present with loud and subjective messages such as "The Strongest Instant Glue in the World", "Twice as Durable", "Glues Everything!" and rarely provide accurate information on the measurable parameter that is behind these marketing slogans. For example, the parameter we are looking for with regards to strength, is adhesion to steel, PVC, aluminum, presented in measuring units - N / mm2, MPa. For durability, we are looking for a percentage change in these parameters when exposed to certain external factors - water, motor oil, acids," explained Auxionize’s product manager.
ormalization helps the buyer find exactly what he is looking for - because products are categorized in the platform’s catalog based on their qualities. The values of each parameter are described in international units, not by the color of the packaging. The ultimate goal is ensuring that buyers and sellers use a common language in their communication, just like before the Babylonian language fragmentation," said Auxionize’s product manager Ivaylo Hristov. This common language saves time that would be spent for clarifying the details of a certain product or service. "For buyers, it represents a guide - the questions they need to ask themselves and answer in order to buy exactly what they are looking for. It provides sellers with good visibility of the items they describe correctly."
Product Manager
Ivaylo Hristov
The objective description of the products and services in the Auxionize catalog saves time to refine the details around them.
Besides organizing auctions for certain products and services, in Auxionize buyers have yet another option for purchases - they can create their own personal spaces in the platform, where they can add lists of materials and services they buy regularly. The Auxionize team refers to this solution as the "live nomenclature" because of the buyer’s ability to receive offers from multiple sellers in real time without having to send inquiries or auction invitations.
Bidding Without a Special Invitation
If the marketing department of a company, for example, has been assigned to build an impressive stand for an important exhibition, it would be more appropriate to place orders for such a project through an auction in Auxionize. However, when it comes to the supply of products that are regularly needed (such as business cards, brochures and other printed materials), the more effective solution would be a live nomenclature. It allows the buyer access to the current market prices without the need to waste time searching and negotiating, eventually turning the process into an endless reverse bidding auction. It is visible to suppliers and they can bid on it directly, competing with their competitors, and in order to see the prices announced by them, they must have the relevant subscription plan.
Chief Operating Officer
Boyana Boynovska
The founder of Auxionize Ivaylo Penchev (center)
with the platform’s Chief Operating Officer Boyana Boynovska
and the Product Manager Ivaylo Hristov
The buyer selects the products to be purchased through the auction and the relevant quantities, then determines the rules - start date, closing date, last award date, last order date, whether there will be an extension, whether the auction is open, closed, controlled access, visibility of the offer, whether they want sellers to enter their delivery terms and warranty, etc.
Determines the sellers they want to notify about the auction, attaches the required documents and GTCs and starts it. While the auction is active, sellers can submit bids, improve them, write comments to the auction, send a personal message to the buyer and monitor competitive bids according to the visibility level set by the buyer.
At the end of the auction, the buyer selects a winner, awards and places an order. Both buyers and sellers have various notification settings, where they can determine the auction-related events, for which they want to receive information.
AN AUCTION AT AUXIONIZE
a Successful
Auction
he platform is useful for optimizing the supply processes in construction companies, companies with various types of production, but also for many other companies making a large number of purchases on a daily basis," said Dimitar Georgiev. "One of our goals by the end of the year is to fully integrate Auxionize into at least 10 large and medium-sized companies," he added.
"I believe that the world will become global once again and Auxionize will connect buyers and sellers faster and more transparently than ever. Our ambition is for the platform to be used by companies around the globe within a five-year term."
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