The Ultimate Guide to Your First Reverse Auction

You might think a reverse auction is a simple, 30-minute task, but the real effort actually occurs during the preparation stage. That’s why proper preparation is paramount, and you need to make sure that you've thought things through carefully to ensure a successful event.

If you’ve worked in procurement for a while now you probably already know what a reverse auction is, but to make sure we’re on the same page we will explain it again.

In an ordinary auction (also known as a 'forward auction'), buyers compete to obtain goods or services by offering increasingly higher prices. A reverse auction is a type of auction in which the traditional roles of buyer and seller are reversed: there is only one buyer and many potential sellers, which means the sellers compete to obtain business from the buyer and prices typically decrease as sellers underbid each other.

If you’re planning to organize a reverse auction in the near future, here’s what you need to do before you launch it.