Which came first? The chicken or the egg?
I mean every company buys and sells… As a member of a purchasing organization, I don’t have any objections to see my suppliers using e-RFx tools to get better conditions for the goods/parts/services they buy (raw material, components). Actually, I encourage them to do it because if they find better conditions, I’ll hopefully get some of the benefits!
Now the question is: what if a company sends RFQs for products it actually makes and sells?
I totally agree with AJ, as long as the company has the intent of buying, it sounds good to me.
If the company does not actually buy, then I’m pretty sure we’ll all know about it (thanks to the transparency brought by e-RFx systems or via community forums such as this one). So overall, I feel it’s much more risky to use an e-RFx tool to test the water than it is by doing the same thing with other means (phone for example…) because you could potentially damage your image on a much broader scale… E-RFx is the opposite of the “leave no trace” (
http://www.lnt.org/) philosophy that is popular among the hiking community. With e-RFx, you always leave a trace!
Now, what if the company has the intent of buying goods it actually sells?
First, there’s no obligation to answer an RFQ…
Second, this could represent an opportunity to get new distribution channels. Sometimes, it’s a painful and long process to become a supplier of a company. Why not benefit from an another company, even if it’s a competitor, that is already a validated supplier. I mean, at Schneider Electric, we call that “brand-labelling”: we buy products we sell wihtout adding any value on it. As long as you have a clear contract between both parties, I believe this is a potential win-win situation. Our suppliers benefit from our distribution channels and they sell more products. We enlarge our offer with products that are not our core business but that our customers need as part of a more global service/package.
I believe that the only limitation is when intellectual property is at stake.
