Some customer platforms have enabled the ability for select suppliers to run bids on their behalf. In these cases, it is always required that a customer user be part of the process. There are two ways you might run bids on behalf of your client on a SpotSource platform:

1) Your supplier company has been added to a "Run Bids" role group

This means that any of your companies users can log in and click on Start a Bid. In order to start a bid, you will have to select an approved client user who will oversee things with you. In this scenario, often, these users also are the ones who have the ability to Reveal Bids once they are submitted by the bidding suppliers.

If you expect to be able to Run Bids, but do not see a section for that at the top of your landing page when you log in, please contact support and let them know:

• Your company name
• The client and platform name (such as Agency Marketplace)
• Your sponsor at the client (who is the person that you usually work with that can verify you should have this permission)

Once you create the bid, it will be in draft mode. You can invite other team memb ers to help you run or manage the bid or project. In addition, there are several other things you can do, see more below.

2) Your client created the bid and invited you to run the bid with them

In this scenario, your company and it's users do not have the ability to start Bids or Projects on their own. They always have to be invited to them by the client who starts them. Once you are invited, you can invite other team members to help you run or manage the bid or project.

In both scenarios, there are things you are able to do

Here are a list of some of the other activities you can do when you are running a bid on behalf of your client:

• Invite team members
• Draft the project brief with your client team
• Build a shortlist of bidding suppliers (and review it with your client if necessary)
• When ready, click on "Launch Bid and Invite Bidders" to move the bid out of the Draft Stage and into the Live/Active stage. This also sends all the invites to the bidding suppliers at the same time to ensure a fair process.
• See when bid proposals are submitted (However, you may not be able to see the details of the submission until your client Reveals them, depending on the settings of your platform).
• Select and modify a score card that you can use with your client to rate each proposal (optional)
• Compare proposals
• Award a bidding supplier and their proposal 

We hope this is helpful. If you have other questions we didn't answer, please feel free to reach out to support.