That SAP Business ByDesign Business scenario Strategic sourcing enables you to identify and select new suitable suppliers. You can also manage relationships with existing suppliers in order to cover your company’s purchasing requirements on a regular basis.

The scenario includes the definition of product requirements, the determination and selection of the most suitable suppliers and ultimately the negotiation and creation of a purchasing contract with the selected supplier.

The Renegotiate Purchasing Contracts business process enables your purchasing department to renegotiate expiring contracts. The negotiation process is triggered by a strategic buyer and is conducted either directly with the current supplier or with other suppliers. The system automatically creates an RFQ. The buyer can then create an RFQ based on one or more RFQ requests.

The business process process tenders enables your purchasing department to group the purchasing requirements of your company and to determine suitable sources of supply for the required materials and services. The process includes, for example, the determination of sources of supply for purchase requisitions or for negotiating new or expiring purchasing contracts.
You can invite new or existing suppliers to participate in tenders. Incoming offers can then be easily compared in the system in order to determine the most suitable supplier for your needs.
After you have determined the bid that will win, the bidders will be informed of the outcome of the bidding process. Follow-up documents (e.g. purchase orders or contracts) can now be created.

The business process Create Purchasing Contracts enables your purchasing department to manage the entire lifecycle of a purchasing contract. Contracts are defined in order to agree the lowest possible price or a discount for required products. With the help of contracts, the operating costs in companies can be reduced. In addition, renegotiating contracts allows for better control over spending and supplier performance.
Strategic buyers can create, change and approve a contract and initiate negotiation of a contract with suppliers. During the negotiation process, buyers can create a contract, either on the basis of a supplier offer or manually without using a previous document. Once a purchasing contract has been released, it can be used as a source of supply when procuring products via a purchase order or supplier invoice. The calls triggered by such documents are recorded in the call history of the contract.

The business process Determine Sources of Supply enables strategic buyers to define quotations and fixed sources of supply in order to prioritize the sources of supply available for a product. If there are several contracts for a product, buyers can use quotes to determine how the orders are to be distributed among several suppliers. In order to prioritize a contract or list price, buyers can define a fixed source of supply instead of a quotation. If both a fixed source of supply and a quota arrangement exist for a product, the fixed source of supply has priority.

Source: help.sap.com, as of March 2017