CIPS Level 4 Diploma in Procurement and Supply L4M6 Release Date

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

Partnerships between buyers and suppliers are often driven by:

High Spend:Significant expenditure justifies the investment in developing a closer relationship to achieve cost savings and efficiencies.

Critical Products:Items that are essential to the buyer's operations necessitate a reliable and collaborative supplier relationship.

Technical Complexity:Complex products benefit from joint development efforts, shared expertise, and coordinated problem-solving.

Conversely, commodities and markets with many suppliers typically lend themselves to transactional relationships rather than partnerships.

High expenditure levels and the complexity of requirements justify partnership sourcing, as it allows for collaborative problem-solving, innovation, and cost-efficiency. CIPS emphasizes that partnerships are ideal when requirements are complex and require expertise from the supplier.

Explanation

The correct answer is ‘run a restricted competition – send out a PQQ’. This QUESTION NO: tests both your understanding of when to run open and restricted competitions (which is explained on p.75) and your understanding of tender documents. Mandy should run a restricted competition- there are a lot of options in the marketplace and this will allow her to pre-qualify those who best suit her requirements. Running an open competition when there are lots of suppliers would be too time-consuming- you need a way of making a short-list. When you run a restricted competition, the first stage is sending out a PQQ- pre-qualification questionnaire; this document is sent to suppliers asking for necessary information to support their qualification as an approved supplier.

Explanation

George should use a weighted award criteria – this will allow him to judge suppliers not only on cost, but also on the quality of their products and whether or not they can provide maintenance. For example George could weight the bids in this way; 40% cost, 30% durability of the panels and 30% maintenance costs. For more information on how weighted award criteria works see p.78