Software
Can I access my Data after an Event?
You can access your data after an Event through the Event History icon on your dashboard
How do I get Upgrades?
Since this is an online application, updates will be applied automatically so you are always running the latest version.
What methods of communication can be used?
The invitation from the Host to the participants for the Event can be sent out from the market dojo system. Alternatively the Host can send the invite out to the participants using their own e-mail system or via a phone call by referencing the invitation code.
When all parties are registered, it may be easier to use the integrated online Message Board for the Host and participant to communicate directly without the need to use an external e-mail system. This is essential when the Event is actually running due to the speed of communication required.Contact details are provided throughout the software for participants and Hosts to contact each other directly by e-mail or via the phone.
Are the bids legally binding?
All bids placed are legally binding. The duration that these prices will be held for should be specified in the ‘Request for Participation’ document. Please see our guides on this.
What can you negotiate online?
In very broad terms, you can negotiate online anything that you can negotiate face-to-face, with the caveat being that in a face-to-face discussion there only need be one participant to strike a deal with. In an Online Negotiation, you require at least two, preferably more, participants to be actively competing with one another on even terms in order to promote a movement in price by either party. Here are some of the types of items we have seen negotiated online from our experience, and this is by no means an exhausted list:
Indirect Commodities: Office Supplies & Equipment, IT Hardware, Software & Maintenance, Printing Services & Materials, Temporary Labour, Landlines, Mobile Phone contracts, Envelopes & Paper, Transport & Logistics (Land, Air and Sea Freight, Newspaper & Leaflet Distribution…), Couriers & Postage, Utilities & Raw Fuels (Gas, Electricity, Diesel, Coal…), Packaging, Cabling & Electrical Connectors, Electrical Components, Factory Consumables, Uniforms & PPE , Conveyors, Insurance, and many others.
Direct Commodities: Both Scrap and Virgin Raw Materials (Plastics, Metals, Ceramics, Timber, Cardboard…), Machined Parts, Sand Castings, Forgings, Injection Mouldings, Blow Mouldings, Thermoformed Pots, Foil Lids, Die Castings, Pressed Parts, Cold-Formed Parts, Fasteners, ATMSafes, Chemicals, Printed Circuit Board Assemblies, Wire Harnesses, LEDAssemblies, Stone Crusher Jaws & Mantles, Seals & Gaskets, Food Stuff (Rice, Tomato Powder, Cous Cous, Strawberries, Black Cherries…), Fabrics & Leather, Automotive Components (Mirror Heads, Seat Covers, Tyres, Sirens, Brake Drums, Brake Pads…), and many others.
Services: Lawn Mowing, Road Sweeping, Laser Cutting, Car Rental & Leasing, Mail Fulfillment, Electrical Contracting, Building Services, Facilities Management Services, Electrical Design Services, and so on.
Miscellaneous: Property, Antiques, Jewellery & Precious Metals, Gas Turbines, Football Tickets, Art, Used Machinery & Equipment, Warehousing, Capital Projects and so on.If you are ever in any doubt as to whether a particular category or item of yours is suitable for an Online Negotiation Event, please read our guides and also contact us so we can give you our honest opinion.
Terminology
Where does the name market dojo come from?
We have tried to find a name which suits the activity. During the process of setting up an Event, you will analyse and go out to ‘ market’. The Online Negotiation Event happens in a private marketplace and we help you find the market price. The market is central to the activity, hence the first part of our name.
The second part is more lateral. Dojo is commonly known in the western world as a ‘training place’ or ‘exercise hall’. market dojo is certainly a place where you embark on training before an encounter and it promotes a competitive focus. However, in Japanese, Dojo literally means ‘place of the way’ or ‘sacred hall of learning’. We certainly aim to enable you to find your way to market and to learn a few things during the journey.One final meaning is a ‘place of enlightenment’ although we leave this opinion for you to judge!
What is a private marketplace?
The Online Negotiation Event with market dojo is only open to the participants whom the Host would like to include. The Event is completely hidden from anyone who has not been invited. Therefore it is the opposite to an open market, such as eBay, which lacks this level of professionalism.
What is a Qualification Bid?
The Qualification Bid is the price level at which a participant is able to have their bid accepted for any Lot in the Online Negotiation Event. Think of it as a reserve price if you like. However, a key difference between a reserve price and the qualification price is that with a reserve price your bid is accepted but you get the feedback that your price level is insufficient for you to be successful, whereas with the qualification bid your bid is not accepted until you meet or surpass the qualification price level. In both cases, it is rare for the participant to know or be informed of the actual value of the reserve or qualification price levels.
The reason we use a qualification bid rather than a reserve price is that a participant can submit a reserve price that is accepted by the system and can lead to no further bid revisions being made. This, in turn, can lead to the participant not being considered by the Host. With a Qualification Bid, the participant gets instant feedback as to whether or not they are successful in contention for the Event item, product or service. At the same time, the Hosts can use the Qualification Bids to enhance the likelihood of success in the Event by achieving a target price for the Event Lots before the Online Negotiation has even started.
Please note that it is not mandatory to select a Qualification Bid. The Lots can be left completely open whereby any bid is accepted provided each participant improves on their own previously submitted bid.
What is a Lot?
A Lot refers to a collection of goods or services which the Host would like the participants to bid upon. An Event can be made up of one or more lots.
The Lot may represent a single item or service, or a collection of goods or services. We recommend that the Host creates Lots that are aligned with the participant’s capability and interest and we recommend that this applies to the Event as a whole. A Host may split out an Event into multiple Lots for many different reasons. This could be due to a need to de-risk the final contract award between several different participants. It could be to focus the participants more on their core competencies or it might be just that the different Lots have slightly different participant bidding within them.When a participant bids on a Lot, they are bidding on the unit of Measure (UoM) within the Lot. This UoM could represent the price per kilogramme, the price per shipment or even the annual volume. The Lot also contains some other important fields:
Quantity: This is the quantity that is associated with the UoM. It might be an annual quantity or it could be a one-off quantity. Either way, it is up to the Host to specify this value.
Qualification price for the UoM: This is a price that a Host may set which the participants need to better for their bids to be accepted.
Current price of UoM: This represents the current price that you are paying for the UoM or estimate it to be. This will be used to work out the net savings from the Event in the case of a reverse auction or your estimated gain from a forward auction.
What is a Participant?
A participant is a company or individual who wishes to bid on an Online Negotiation Event. Participants do not have to pay to take part in an Online Negotiation Event as we believe this will affect the Host’s ability to find the true market price.
What is a Host?
A Host is the person representing the company running and managing the Online Negotiation Event and is looking to buy or sell particular goods or services. The Host will have paid to use the software and will be the person responsible for creating the Event, inviting participants and creating and uploading specifications. The participants should approach the Host with any questions relating to the Event.
What other terminology is used instead of online negotiation event?
We have heard Online Negotiation Events called many things before in our time. Here are a handful of alternative terms that you may be familiar with, many of which have the same meaning and ideology to what we offer here at market dojo : Online Auctions, Reverse Auctions, Forward Auctions, Dutch Auctions, English Auctions, Japanese Auctions, e-Auctions, e-RFQ, e-RFX, Online Bidding Events, Procurement Auctions, Sourcing Events, Strategic Sourcing Events, e-Sourcing, eRA, e-Procurement, and so on. We’ve stuck to Online Negotiation Events as we hope that aptly describes what is going on!
What is an online negotiation event?
An Online Negotiation Event is a method of negotiating a price agreement between a host and multiple participants through online software in order to identify the successful participant(s) to transact business with. The participants compete with each other in real time by using the feedback from the software to assess whether or not to adjust their price offering for the Event items, be it a supply contract, a service, a product or item. Think of eBay except in a professional and closed market environment where you can run both forward and reverse auctions. The host is fully in control of who is involved in the bidding, with full traceability of the communication and document downloads. It is widely regarded as an efficient way to settle the price negotiation compared to say a traditional face-to-face approach. In today’s global market it is certainly extremely convenient in many ways, for example overcoming language barriers, different time-zones and long distances, as it is all online for 24/7 remote access.
Who is market dojo?
market dojo is a UK-based procurement software company. We provide Online Negotiation software that helps businesses globally to efficiently negotiate the true market price for their goods and services. The platform offers advice on the best practice for online negotiation to maintain professionalism, supplier confidence and ensure that you will achieve success.
Scenarios
What if I want to share my Event with someone?
Within our Admin menu for the ‘Superhost’, that is the first Host to register for a particular company, you will find the User Hierarchy feature. Here you can add other Hosts and give them rights to view or edit others Hosts’ events. You can even assign others with Admin rights to look after things like your Participant Database. There’s no cost on adding others to view your events and you can add as many users as you wish.
What if I am ill during the Event?
As a Host, if you are ill during the event, it will still go ahead. If you are not able to change the start date then the best solution is to have someone else within your company monitor the Event.As a participant, if you are ill during an Event, the Event will most likely go ahead unless you can convince the Host to delay proceedings. If you are not able to delay the Event then the best course of action is to let someone else with your company participate but you need to let them know their boundaries!
Can I give my log-in details to someone else?
Your log-in details are confidential and should not be shared with anyone [exception below if you are ill]. If someone else from your company would like to Host or participate in an Event, then they would need to register and generate their own username and password. However, since an Event, whether you’re hosting or participating, is tied to a user, they would not be able to see the Event even if they log in from the same company. However, as a Host, you can give other Hosts permission to view or even edit your event(s) if you wish, by using our User Hierarchy feature (see ‘What if I want to share my Event with someone?’ below).
Can I use market dojo if I don’t have the internet?
Unfortunately, we don’t have an offline version available at this time. We may develop this in the future if there is demand but the Online Negotiation Event itself will always require the internet.
What if the internet goes down during the Event?
We have specifically designed this software to be used online. It is the only realistic method of enabling a real-time bidding activity. With internet availability being increasingly accessible in the office, at home, in coffee shops there are normally alternative ways for getting online. As you create an Event, your settings are automatically saved as you progress and our data is backed up regularly on secure servers. However, if your internet connection goes down, the service will be affected and you will need to find an alternative connection method. If you are a Host and this happens, the Event will still be running on our servers but you will not be able to see the status until you log on again. If you are a participant and you cannot get back online and an Event is in progress, then you would best to call the Host directly and to offer them your best bid.
If our server goes down (the chance of this happening is extremely small) then it will more than likely to be up and running within a few minutes. If the server (and its backup) fails during an Event and it is not up and running by the end of the Event then the most likely scenario would be to run the Event again from the last position attained. This has never happened yet in our experience.