What is the difference between a Sealed and Unsealed Procedure Type?
On the 'Solicitation Properties' page, under the 'Procedure type' tab, you can choose between a sealed with preselection, sealed without preselection, and an unsealed procedure type.
Sealed Procedure
If you choose either one of the two Sealed Procedure types, the system will automatically add "phases" to your planning, designed to seal the solicitation based on dates you as the buyer choose. These "phases", such as 'offer-phase' will appear in bold, indicating that they cannot be removed. The reason these cannot be removed from the planning is because these phases must occur in this certain procedure type.
Here is an example:
When selecting a sealed procedure and then proceeding to click on the planning, you will notice bold phases. An example of a bold phase is the 'offer-phase' or, the period of time in which suppliers can submit their offers. This phase will begin on a date you choose, and end on a date you choose. Because this is a Sealed procedure type, the system will lock the dates you select once the offer phase begins, and once this happens, you cannot change the dates of the phase, nor see the offers being sent until the end date of the offer phase.
The difference between Sealed With Preselection and Sealed Without Preselection is that in the former, you can add an extra phase to request certain information from perspective suppliers to see if they are qualified to participate. If they meet these requirements, you can allow them to the solicitation. In the Sealed Without Preselection, there is no extra preselection phase.
Unsealed
If you choose for an Unsealed Procedure Type, you will actively have to switch between Solicitation phases yourself and create your own planning. You can switch between phases on the ‘Solicitation Properties' page, under the 'Procedure-Type' tab, by selecting the desired phase.
You always start your Solicitation in preparation.
Switch to the Publication phase when you want to Publish your Solicitation on Negometrix3.
You proceed to the Offer Phase whenever you want to allow vendors to start populating and submitting their offers.
You also have to close the Solicitation yourself by switching to the Evaluation Phase (followed by Awarding). Switching to the Evaluation phase allows you to start evaluating offers submitted by vendors.
In the Awarding Phase you are enabled to communicate the outcome of the Solicitation with the vendors.