Designing a multi-vendor auction experience for complex enterprise procurement workflows

Impact

TL;DR

Context

Taabi Procure had to support two very different actors in the same auction ecosystem. Enterprise users needed control, configuration, monitoring and governance, while vendors needed a fast, transparent bidding experience. The challenge was designing these experiences as one connected system without overwhelming either user.

As the sole designer for the product, I owned end-to-end design decisions, flows and experiences for both actors: Enterprise and Vendors. I worked with the product manager and engineering team throughout the product cycle to bring the product to live and executed auctions for the clients successfully.

Problem

Before Taabi Procure:

Enterprise teams were managing auctions through a combination of spreadsheets, calls and manual coordination. This created three problems:

• No real-time visibility
• High coordination overhead
• Limited auditability

I wanted to bring this entire process into one platform. But I didn’t know exactly what the product needed yet.

Approach for V1

I started with an existing auction module built for Taabi TMS. Instead of designing the entire procurement ecosystem from scratch, I identified parts which could be reused and which needed to change for material auctions.

V1: what we shown to the procurement team

The initial demo helped expose where the existing model broke down. Feedback from the team and early users changed the direction of the product and highlighted the need for:

• Vendors couldn’t tell where they stood. Ranking visibility was too weak to drive competitive bidding.
• The manage auction screen was cluttered with information the enterprise didn’t need.
• There was no final report to close out and no audit logs to view later.

Research

To understand how material auctions worked in practice, we studied existing auction models and observed a live auction on a competitor platform with a procurement team.

The research led to five core principles:

• Enterprise should have control on the auctions they create
• The auction creation should be configurable on all fronts the enterprise wants it to be
• Each vendor may start with different starting bid based on their pre-submitted quotation
• Communication should be done in-platform
• Anti-collusion and Audit trail are a good to have

Enterprise Experience

Creating an Auction

I worked with the product manager to structure the auction creation flow around the decisions enterprise users needed to make. The flow enabled teams to configure:

Interface Decisions

01

Multiple auctions

I chose to support multiple auctions because enterprise teams often manage several auctions simultaneously. The experience needed to give them a quick way to scan, track, and move between ongoing auctions instead of forcing them to handle one auction at a time.

02

Tabs Experience

I chose a tabbed structure because an auction has a lot happening at the same time. Rather than putting bid activity, vendor rankings, and additional details into one overwhelming screen, I grouped them into clear sections that are easy to switch between.

03

Bid History

I chose to show bid history in a side sheet so users could access the full bidding trail whenever needed without losing their place or cluttering the main auction experience. It keeps the primary view focused while making detailed information one click away.

Key trade-offs we did

Sequential vs Simultaneous

We initially designed two execution modes: Sequential and Simultaneous auctions. During product discussions, we realized sequential auctions created scheduling conflicts whenever an auction ended early or was extended.

Proxy Bid

We explored Proxy Bid, where the enterprise could place an anonymous market bid during an auction. Vendors would see only the updated ranking, encouraging continued competition without knowing the source of the bid.

Vendor Experience

The Vendor’s goal is simple. Accept or Reject, Bid, and Message Enterprise incase of queries.

01

Accept / Reject Request

I chose to let vendors commit to specific materials and quantities before entering the auction. This ensured they only participated in requests they could fulfil, while giving enterprises a clearer basis for allocation decisions.

02

Bid cards

I designed the bid cards in a way that it shows all the details easily like Vendor’s current rank or band, last bid, status of child auctions & time remaining.

Key features

Messaging

The enterprise and vendor can communicate directly within the platform during an auction. This replaced the informal WhatsApp and email threads that used to sit outside the system, bringing that context into the audit trail where it belongs.

IP Conflict Detection

The product flagged cases where two vendors participated or placed bids from the same IP address or location. This helped enterprise teams identify potential collusion or unusual bidding behaviour. In production, the feature contributed to the detection and blacklisting of two vendors using the same IP address.

Future Exploration

RFQ-to-auction workflow

Status: Under dev

The proposed RFQ-to-auction workflow will allow enterprise users to generate an auction directly from an approved RFQ. The workflow will carry forward info such as Materials, Vendors, Pricing, Procurement rules, Relevant auction configuration. This should reduce duplicate data entry and shorten the time required to create an auction.

Key Learnings