DBS: Approval Administration
DB Sourcing empowers Administrators to manage organizational spend more effectively and gain deeper insight into user purchasing behavior through the use of flexible and powerful approval rules.
Administrators can create as many rules as needed to align with business requirements, using a wide range of criteria to tailor rules from simple to highly complex. The approval rules engine also supports exemptions, allowing certain jobs to bypass the standard approval process in cases of special agreements or exceptional circumstances.
To create an approval rule, navigate to the Admin panel, click the Approvals tab, and then select Approval Rules.
From here, click “Add New Rule”, and give the rule a name (e.g. Minimum of 3 Suppliers). By default, rules will be disabled, and thus won’t be evaluated until they are enabled. A rule can be enabled using the light bulb icon in the rule grid, or by clicking the gear icon next to the rule name and setting “Enabled?” to “Yes.”
You can control the rule “type” by clicking the gear icon next to the rule name and toggling between “Required” and “Exempt”. Items that meet the criteria defined in rules where approval is required will trigger the approval process at the time at which a user attempts to award the item to a supplier.
Items that meet the conditions of an exemption will bypass approval, and the user will be able to proceed past the point of awarding the item to preparing a purchase order.
Once a rule has been created, you can begin to associate conditions to the rule to be evaluated. To add a condition to a rule, select a condition type from the “Add Condition” dropdown, and click the green “plus” icon to add it.
Once you’ve selected a condition type, you can begin assigning specific criteria to it.
One available condition type is Contract Pricing. For this type, the available selections are "True" and "False":
- Selecting "True" can be used to trigger approval for any jobs where the standard Sourced or Request for Quote workflow is not used at the time the job is created.
- Selecting "False" means the job will proceed without requiring contract pricing as a condition.
This allows you to ensure that jobs outside of established sourcing workflows are reviewed appropriately before moving forward.
Typical Use Cases and Additional Condition Types
One common scenario for using the Contract Pricing condition is when jobs involve established contract or program pricing, or when a client has specifically requested the use of a certain supplier. This condition is especially useful for creating approval rules in cases where client agreements require a Customer Service Representative to solicit bids for a particular job.
Another available condition type is Supplier Preferred. The possible values for this condition are "True" and "False":
- Selecting "True" means the approval rule will consider whether the supplier has been designated as a preferred vendor.
- Selecting "False" applies the rule regardless of the supplier's preferred status.
Administrators can designate a supplier as preferred by navigating to Administration > Suppliers and toggling the light bulb icon in the Preferred column.
If this condition is set to “True” and the rule type is set to “Requires Approval”, any time a user attempts to award a job to a supplier who has not been designated as a preferred vendor, an administrator must provide approval.
Cost Threshold
The Cost Threshold condition allows Administrators to require approval for jobs where the total awarded cost of a line item meets or exceeds a specified dollar amount.
This is useful for ensuring higher-value jobs receive appropriate oversight.
Supplier Count
The Supplier Count condition evaluates the number of suppliers from whom bids were solicited for a job. This is particularly useful in scenarios where a client agreement mandates that a Customer Service Representative (CSR) obtain bids from a minimum number of suppliers.
If the required number of bids is not met, this condition can trigger the approval process to ensure compliance.
Alternatively, exemptions can be configured for cases where bids were solicited from a large number of suppliers—allowing those jobs to bypass approval and proceed more efficiently.
Supplier Rating
Similar to how Administrators can manage a supplier’s Preferred status, they can also control a supplier’s Rating through Administration > Suppliers. This allows for further customization of approval rules based on supplier performance or internal evaluations.
A supplier’s rating may range between 1 and 5 stars. The criteria that drive a supplier’s rating are entirely subject to the discretion of Administrators. Ratings may take into consideration factors such as a supplier’s turnaround times, certifications, equipment or production capabilities, or general quality standards. Based on the rating system decided upon by your organization, you may establish rules to require approval for cases in which a user is attempting to award an item to a supplier whose rating is below a certain number of stars.
Customers: This condition type allows you to create rules and exemptions specific to one or many customers. Any customer that exists in your back-office system may be included in or excluded from a rule. This condition is often combined with others to make more complex rules and exemptions. For instance, there may be cases in which a rule is created because company policy requires customer service representatives to obtain bids from at least three different suppliers for all jobs, but contract pricing exists for a specific client program, negating the need for a three bid requirement. In that scenario, an exemption might be created using both the Contract Pricing condition and the Customer Condition, e.g. “If Contract Pricing = True, and Customer = American Advertising, do not require approval.”
Products: This condition allows Administrators to create rules based on the type of product. The product types available for selection are the standard DB Sourcing product types. Just like with the Customers condition, one or many product types may be included or excluded from a rule. For example, a specific customer program may exist for a given product category in which a limited number of suppliers are capable of producing the job, and therefore, an exemption from a minimum bid requirement might be considered.
Suppliers: As with the customer and product conditions, any supplier that has been established within your instance of DB Sourcing can be added to a rule. Unlike supplier rating or preferred status, this condition type simply evaluates the organization as a whole.
A single rule may consist of many combinations and permutations of criteria across each of the condition types. For example, a rule might exist to require approval any time a user attempts to award a job to a specific supplier, but a separate exemption might exist to bypass approval when that supplier is being used for a certain customer and/or product.
It is important to note that rules are evaluated hierarchically, or in the order in which they appear in the list of rules. The system is designed such that rules will continue to be evaluated until a rule exists in which the conditions specified are true for a given item. To that end, any exemptions should be placed at the top of the list so scenarios Administrators have decided do not require approval are taken into consideration before other rules are evaluated. Administrators can simply drag and drop rules throughout the list to control the order in which they are evaluated.
Approval Rule Evaluation
Approval rules are evaluated at the line-item level within a job, specifically at the moment a user attempts to award the item to a supplier.
If an approval rule is triggered, the user will receive a notification indicating that the item requires administrative review. The purchase order process cannot proceed until the item has been reviewed and approved by an Administrator.
By design, if a user is logged in as an Administrator when awarding an item, they will be exempt from all rules and will bypass the approval process.
At the time a rule is triggered, an email notification will be sent to designated approver users, alerting them that action is required, and directing them to review the item in the approval queue.
If multiple items in a job warrant approval, a separate notification will be sent to approvers at the time the user attempts to award each item. In the event that an item triggers more than one approval rule, only one email will be sent, but Administrators will be able to see all rules that were triggered upon reviewing the item in the approval queue.
Designated approvers are defined in DemandBridge’s database. (As such, the email addresses of any users who will be acting as approvers must be provided to the DemandBridge Support team in advance of establishing any rules.) While only select email addresses may be configured to receive approval notifications, the Approval Queue is accessible to all users designated as Administrators under Admin > Approvals.
Within the approval queue, Administrators can review all items pending approval (and items in which action has been taken) in a paginated grid. In this view, Administrators can see the item number, the names of all rules that were triggered, the name of the user who created the job, the product type, the customer for whom the job is being produced, the supplier to whom the user is attempting to award the job (along with their star rating and preferred vendor status), the cost of the job, and the number of suppliers solicited.
Upon clicking an item in the approval queue, Administrators can see additional details about the item, including specification information and more insight into which rules were triggered at the bottom of the page.
After reviewing an item, Administrators can take action by clicking “Approve” or “Reject” in the grid, and entering any comments explaining their decision.
Once an item has been approved or rejected, an email notification will be sent to the user who created the job informing them of the action taken, including any feedback from the Administrator.
Once an item has been approved, it is considered successfully awarded, and the user may proceed with purchase order preparation.
If an item is rejected, users have a few options:
- They may choose to award a different bid.
- Alternatively, they can modify the job based on the Administrator’s comments and attempt to award the same bid again once the requirements are met.
For example, if a rejection occurred because the number of solicited suppliers did not meet the minimum required by an approval rule, the user can add additional suppliers to the RFQ. After receiving the necessary number of bids, they may attempt to re-award the item.
NOTE: If an RFQ contains multiple items, all items must be either awarded or cancelled before the job can proceed to the purchase order preparation stage.