1

First I love the idea of RFQs in spiceworks, and I’m a fairly heavy user with over $10,000 in purchases placed with SHI (which I hadn’t used before RFQ). But I’ve been hitting some problems with RFQs lately.

First, even vendor partners, like Dell, PCConnection and CDW, can’t seem to submit their quotes through it. When I call a few days later to see where their quote is and remind them that we are using a quoting system, they have no idea what spiceworks is.

I’d love to draw a line in the sand and only order with vendors who will use spiceworks RFQ, but I can’t throw away hundreds of dollars in the difference between a spiceworks submitted quote and one sent to my email for the principle of the issue. I like RFQ, but can’t take that kind of hit in the budget over it.

One of my latest quotes didn’t seem to make it to the majority of the vendors.

I’ve sent the partner vendors links to spiceworks announcing the partnership, but is there general information on how the system works from the vendor standpoint? I’m sure it’s a simple system,but I’d like to get a better understanding of that side, as well as give the vendors some information to go off of. Apparently the partnership on the vendor side doesn’t mean that our reps are aware of how to use it.

7 Spice ups
2

It was my understanding that it RFQ basically just sends an email that has a link to the quote to the reps email address.

The vendor then simply clicks on the link and it takes them to a page that shows the quote details and then they can see what was requested and interact with it then.

It sounds to me like the email is either not getting to your sales rep email box, it is getting sent to there spam folder and they don’t know what to do with it, or they simply do not know what they are looking at. Maybe someone else who has more experience with the RFQ can chime in and correct me if I am wrong in my understanding.

Here is the video that really breaks it down though. http://community.spiceworks.com/tv/Spiceworks/Training/203-creating-multi-vendor-rfqs

3

Rob is exactly right! They get an email with a link. I have a CDW rep that I had to train to use spiceworks. But first I had to have him setup spiceworks to not go into his Junk folder. Then Once we got through the training process it was great and everyone is submitting it through spiceworks. (Same was true for my dell rep.)

4

I’m going to contact them with the video and to whitelist noreply@spiceworks.com.

Is there a video or other training material from the Vendor stand point, maybe some information that was given to the RFQ partner vendors that I can pass along to my reps? There’s naturally going to be some resistance to using a new system from the reps stand point, but if something along those lines would help.

5

Sorry to hear you’re having a hard time getting responses from sales reps. Here is a guide to walk through your reps on using the RFQ tool. We’re also working with each of the vendors and providing them with training, reporting, and tools to get them successful using the tool.

Keep the great feedback coming…there’s nothing like user testimonials to help us escalate feedback to the vendors.

1 Spice up
6

Thanks Misa. Exactly what I was looking for!

7

Here’s what I sent out to my vendors:

Attached is a guide for our quoting system, Spiceworks. I know the majority of the vendors I work with have a relationship with Spiceworks, but in case you haven’t been made aware of the system, here is some information. I trust you’ll find the system easy to use, and it streamlines the process of getting and approving quotes for us.

If you can also whitelist the address where our RFQs will come from: noreply@spiceworks.com, that should help with any delivery issues.

All of our quotes come through this system. Thanks for replying to our requests through Spiceworks and not through email.

3 Spice ups
8

Actually, the vendor interaction is one of the most frustrating aspects. I spoke to a CDW rep and they indicated that part of the problem is the number or reps they have and the way their territory is divided. They can’t train everyone as fast as they need to. Conversely, SHI has trained all of their people and they’re getting more business because of it. PC Connection… ? Who knows? I spoke to their rep at SpiceWorld and was interrupted by the xylophone. When I returned to finish the conversation, they had left and their table was empty.

Personally, I think that if you’re going to be a featured vendor and be a part of the RFQ system with that much visibility, you should be able to respond in a timely fashion and have trained everyone.

I like your email text, jschmid, and I’m going to copy it and start using it, with a little tweaking. Hopefully this gets people to respond!

1 Spice up
9

I gave this a try for the first time today and have found the same situation that other respondants in this thread have.

My CDW rep actually told me that using Spiceworks would slow him down because he now has to create two quotes. The first one in their system, and the second one on the Spiceworks webpage sent to them via email.

I know that CDW has a EDI (electronic Document Interface) that will allow CDW to submit invoices (and maybe quotes) via a standard format for their customers AP systems to pull in directly and not require any human interaction.

Does anyone know if something like this exists?

Does anyone know how SHI handles this? Are they currently creating two quotes, one in their system and one in SW?