5 procurement Q&A pitfalls to avoid

Complex procurement processes require a huge amount of collaboration and back-and-forth. There could be thousands of email trails across teams and stakeholders during the life of an infrastructure project, and hundreds of hours spent on manually organizing and keeping track of this correspondence. 

Managing procurement Q&A via email and/or spreadsheets puts your project at risk. With up to 70% of the total procurement process spent running external Q&A, companies and advisors have long endured unnecessary risks and inefficiencies associated with this outdated process.

Below are 5 risks associated with running procurement Q&A across disparate systems.

1. Inefficiencies: Using emails to facilitate complex Q&A has always been fraught with admin burden. 38% of all actions in the Q&A process involve getting answers reviewed and approved before disclosure, and 90% of all questions take up to six interactions to answer – that’s a lot of individual emails across multiple guests.

2. Lack of visibility: Without a single source of truth, the full picture of how the Q&A process is progressing will always be unclear. Departments operate and communicate in silos, which creates multiple conversation threads and leads to critical details getting missed. Taking the time to check and review responses from different departments to ensure answers are aligned can eat up significant resources.

3. Duplicated work: These same silos and multiple conversation threads can result in the same or similar questions being asked repeatedly, leading to immense frustration for the person doing the answering - especially when it’s the 10th time. This is a huge waste of resources and energy at a time when they’re already scarce.
 
4. Human error: It’s not humanly possible for anyone to stay on top of version control across thousands of email chains and spreadsheets in various drives. The information needs to be integrated and synced from all the systems it's being conducted in or it simply won’t be accurate.
 
5. Issues of security & confidentiality: The biggest risk of running external Q&A outside a structured system is security. The risk of accidental disclosure can put your project, your reputation and your organization’s reputation at stake. Without clear tracking of who has asked/answered, using systems that allow anyone and everyone to send and receive answers, there are bound to be unwanted discoveries.
 

Avoid the risks of email-based Q&A

Take legacy Q&A risks out of your procurement process. 

Ansarada’s purpose-built two-way Q&A system is efficient, controlled and fully trackable. Enable all relevant project stakeholders and team members to store and collaborate on all project data in one secure hub. Keep questions and answers accessible and auditable within a single location.
 
With Ansarada’s platform, you can approve and answer questions directly through the integrated two-way Q&A system. The assigned participants receive an email notification when a new question, or answer, has been allocated; they can then forward the question to the appropriate team member, answer and disclose or approve an answer submitted by an advisor. It’s a game-changer for senior procurement professionals.
 

• With all Q&A occurring inside the platform, questions and answers are clearly viewable and accessible in one place - synced in real-time - to those who have the relevant permissions.
• Q&A workflows run seamlessly so there’s no risk of double ups, with everything tracked at the back end for a clear audit trail that can be exported to Excel in an instant to bring to the Board meeting.
• Automate the process to eliminate the potential for human error that arises out of multiple conversation threads, duplicated work, or breaches of security or confidentiality, increasing confidence and reducing your workload.
• After you’ve set up Q&A roles within the data room, subject security rules ensure that questions can only be forwarded to those with the permission to answer them. Once set up, the entire Q&A process runs automatically, eliminating the risk of accidentally forwarding a question or disclosing answers to the wrong people.
• Control who can see the answers to protect your reputation, your company and the project at hand, and reduce stress for all those involved.