Vendor Comparison
Compare supplier quotes against your requirement and award a contract with a defensible, audit-ready trail.
The workflow at a glance
Create a project → upload your requirement + vendor quotes → extract → review → compare & score → (optionally) raise Technical Queries → award with sign-off.
1. Create a project
- From the Dashboard, choose New project. (Role: Editor)
- Give it a name (e.g. "Cooling Towers Q1").
- Open the project.
2. Upload documents
Upload two kinds of document into the project:
- Your requirement — the BoQ or technical specification you are buying against.
- Vendor quotes — one or more per vendor, in any format. A ZIP is fine.
The system classifies each document (requirement vs vendor quote) and, for vendor quotes, works out the vendor name. If a vendor name comes out wrong, you can fix or remove it later.
3. Extraction & review
After upload, documents process in the background. When they reach Completed, their specs, prices, delivery, and warranty terms have been extracted.
- Documents marked Review need a human to confirm low-confidence values. Open the document, check the extracted specs against the source (the source snippet is shown), and Approve or Correct.
- Use the View action to see a document's extracted specs at any time.
4. Run the comparison
- Open the Comparison view for the project.
- Choose Compare. (Role: Editor)
- Progress shows per vendor. Results appear automatically when done.
You get a matrix: every requirement as a row, every vendor as a column, with a compliance status per cell (compliant / non-compliant / missing) and the vendor's value. Mandatory requirements a vendor fails are flagged.
Scoring weights
Scoring blends technical, commercial, warranty, delivery, and ESG. To change the balance, set Scoring weights for the project. (Role: Admin) The recommendation follows your weights — it is not a black box.
Commercial detail (BoQ)
For line-item commercial comparison, add BoQ lines to a vendor's quotation. The BoQ total, when present, is treated as the authoritative commercial figure instead of the headline price — so the lowest sticker price is not mistaken for the lowest total cost.
5. Review cells (optional)
You can review individual cells — approve the extracted value or override it — from the comparison. Overrides are recorded and feed the review-progress bar.
6. Technical Queries (TQ)
For a vendor that is non-compliant or missing data, DocIQ drafts a Technical Query letter listing exactly what is missing or non-compliant.
- Generate/download the TQ letter for a vendor.
- Optionally notify the vendor by email; their response can be synced back and only the changed requirements are re-compared.
7. Remove a stale vendor
If a vendor was misread (e.g. an "Unknown Vendor" column), remove it: use the remove (trash) action on that vendor. (Role: Editor) It drops out of the matrix immediately; the recommendation updates automatically.
8. Award
- Open the award recommendation — every vendor's eligibility and weighted score, with the recommended vendor (the highest-scoring eligible vendor; a cheaper ineligible vendor is never recommended).
- Choose Award this vendor. (Role: Editor; Admin to override ineligibility)
- If the vendor fails a mandatory or ESG gate, awarding requires an ineligibility override (Admin).
- If your organisation has configured an approval matrix for awards, the award needs approval first — see Approvals & Governance. The approval is tied to the exact decision; if you later change terms, BoQ, vendor, or ESG, a fresh approval is required.
You can revoke an award; a revoke is recorded as its own decision.
9. Export
Download the full comparison as Excel or PDF, and TQ letters per vendor.
Tips
- Re-uploading a corrected vendor quote creates a new version; you can diff versions.
- Commercial terms are kept deliberately separate from the technical matrix.
- If the comparison seems stuck on "Running…", see Comparison Recovery (or ask an admin).