Architecture & capabilities

Overview

The Sourcing Manager is built on five agentic skills that together take a purchase requisition from intake through to a purchase order: Sourcing Request Intake & Planning, RFQ Creation & Supplier Matching, RFQ Communication & Coordination, Quote Analysis and Supplier Recommendation, and Supplier Award & Purchase Order Creation. This article covers those skills, the sourcing workflow they share, integration points, and how the system keeps a buyer in the loop on the decisions that need one.

Agentic Skills

Sourcing Request Intake & Planning

Converts sourcing requests into actionable sourcing events by identifying requirements, timelines, stakeholders, and sourcing strategies. This skill parses sourcing requests from email or purchase requisitions, extracts item, quantity, specifications, and delivery requirements, identifies the sourcing category and urgency, and validates the completeness of requirements before initiating the RFQ workflow.

RFQ Creation & Supplier Matching

Identifies qualified suppliers, creates RFQs, and matches sourcing opportunities to approved suppliers based on category, geography, performance, and sourcing policies. This skill generates the RFQ package, attaches specifications and supporting documents, validates RFQ completeness, and determines the supplier distribution list before initiating the sourcing event.

RFQ Communication & Coordination

Distributes RFQs, manages supplier communications, answers inquiries, tracks responses, and coordinates sourcing activities across stakeholders. This skill monitors supplier responses, detects missing or delayed replies, identifies clarification requests, sends reminders and chaser emails, and escalates critical delays to keep the sourcing event moving.

Quote Analysis and Supplier Recommendation

Parses supplier quotations, compares pricing, lead times, quality metrics, commercial terms, and supplier performance to generate sourcing recommendations. This skill extracts pricing, lead times, minimum order quantities, and terms and conditions from incoming quotes, normalizes supplier quote formats, identifies incomplete submissions, and scores suppliers against sourcing criteria to rank responses and highlight risks and trade-offs.

Supplier Award & Purchase Order Creation

Facilitates supplier selection, generates award recommendations, initiates approvals, and creates purchase orders for selected suppliers. This skill validates the selected supplier, verifies sourcing approvals, prepares the award package, generates award notifications, and maintains the sourcing audit trail through to PO creation.

Sourcing Workflow

The following table outlines the process from sourcing request intake through to award and purchase order creation.

Stage	What the System Does	Action / Output	Channel
Sourcing Request Intake & Requirement Extraction	Parses sourcing requests, extracts item, quantity, specifications, and delivery requirements	Sourcing requirements structured, RFQ workflow initiated	Email / ERP / Teams
Supplier Identification & Matching	Identifies approved suppliers and evaluates capabilities and qualifications	Supplier shortlist generated, invitation list prepared	ERP / Supplier Master
RFQ Creation & Distribution	Generates the RFQ package, attaches specifications and supporting documents	RFQs created and distributed to suppliers	Email / Portal / ERP
Supplier Communication & Follow-ups	Monitors responses, detects missing or delayed replies, identifies clarification requests	Reminders sent, delays escalated, engagement maintained	Email / Teams
Quote Collection & Parsing	Extracts pricing, lead times, MOQ, and terms; normalizes supplier quote formats	Quote data structured, missing information highlighted	Email / OCR / ERP
Quote Evaluation & Supplier Recommendation	Compares supplier pricing and lead times, scores suppliers against sourcing criteria	Suppliers ranked, sourcing recommendation generated	ERP / Teams
Award Management & PO Preparation	Validates the selected supplier, verifies sourcing approvals	Award recommended, PO creation data prepared	ERP / Email

Integration Points

IFS Cloud: The primary system of record. The Sourcing Manager extracts purchase requisitions, checks PR line status, and creates the purchase order once a supplier is awarded, closing the sourcing event with a full audit trail.

Supplier Master: Used to identify approved suppliers and evaluate their capabilities and qualifications against sourcing requirements.

Email: The primary channel for RFQ distribution to non-portal suppliers and for receiving supplier quote responses as attachments.

Supplier Portal: Used to publish RFQs directly to B2B suppliers who use the portal, rather than email.

Microsoft Teams: Used for internal notifications, follow-up escalations, and surfacing sourcing recommendations for buyer review.

Human-in-the-Loop Design

The Sourcing Manager is designed so that routine sourcing activity runs automatically, while decisions that carry real commercial weight, or fall outside policy, reach a buyer with the reasoning already laid out.

The system proceeds automatically when:

• A requisition’s requirements are complete and a supplier shortlist can be generated against approved sourcing policies

• Supplier quotes are received in a form that can be parsed and normalized for comparison

• A recommendation can be generated cleanly from the comparison criteria: price, lead time, quality, risk, and performance

A buyer is brought in when:

• A sourcing exception is flagged because policy or confidence thresholds are not met

• An award recommendation requires approval before the selected supplier is notified

• A supplier response is missing, delayed, or incomplete past the point the system can resolve automatically

Recommendations are structured and easy to review and audit: every supplier selection carries the reasoning behind it, including why the alternative options weren’t chosen, so the buyer’s approval is a single, informed decision.

Feedback and Continuous Improvement

Policy and compliance enforcement ensures sourcing follows approved suppliers, policies, and approval thresholds consistently, regardless of which buyer or region initiated the event. Real-time visibility and reporting, through dashboards on RFQ status, supplier responses, and savings, gives procurement teams insight into sourcing bottlenecks, award decisions, and savings opportunities as they happen, rather than reconstructing that picture after a sourcing event has closed.