Creating an Event Brief

When creating an eSourcing event it is important to include as much information as possible in your brief. Your event brief will be sent to suppliers as part of the invitation email to your eSourcing event, so this is your chance to make a good first impression and include all the information that they will need to make their decision on participation.

By including all necessary information you are likely to encourage supplier engagement, as well as help suppliers, get to grips with the eSourcing process quickly.

The best briefs will sell the opportunity, whilst giving suppliers clear instructions on how they can participate.

Whilst every brief is different and unique to your company and event, our experience shows that if you’re not quite sure what to include, the format below is a good place to start!

Introduction

• Provide a description of your company – this can include any or all of the following:
  • What you do
  • Your global footprint
  • Your revenue expectations
  • General selling points about why suppliers should work with you. 

Requirement

• Include an outline of what you are looking for and why.
  • This should be a high-level description of what you are sourcing.
  • Include enough detail to encourage participants to accept your invitation and participate, but the very specific details can come later.

Key Milestones / Process

• Ensure that you let your suppliers know about any key dates and activities  – this might include:
  • Submission deadlines for questionnaires
  • Dates by which any questions must be submitted and will be answered
  • RFQ deadlines
  • The date and time of your auction

• Particularly if you are running your first event, or are working with new suppliers who are unfamiliar with the tool, you may also want to go into additional detail about the process itself and break down what the supplier will need to do at each stage.

Important Information

• Finally, you should make your suppliers aware of any other important information. You may want to let them know any or all of the following:
  • What you expect from a supplier
  • What they need to fulfil your needs and the tender itself
  • How the selection process may work
  • Any factors that may eliminate them now
  • An outline of how questions and answers will be handled
  • An explanation of what suppliers can find in the Documents library

• Depending on your suppliers and your relationship with them, you may also wish to include links to one or more of our participants’ guides to help them through the process.

Contact

• In order to ensure that all information relating to your event is kept in one place, we recommend that you handle all communication through Market Dojo. The event brief is a good place to state this and make suppliers aware that they should contact you via the Messages tab.

Remember, the objective of the event brief is to get your suppliers engaged and to give them all the tools they need to participate in your eSourcing event.

The best event briefs contain all the information a supplier might want to know about why your event is taking place and how it will work, as well as the benefits to them for taking part.