Frequently asked questions

CPI manages the commodity procurement lifecycle from supplier and material master data through RFQs, normalized quotations, landed-cost analysis, recommendations, approval, purchase order, contracts, inventory, sales margin, and operational follow-up.

Create suppliers and commodities first. In Sourcing, choose New sourcing request, enter the requirement and invited suppliers, then create it. Review the request and select Send RFQ. CPI queues a confidential supplier-portal invitation for every supplier with a valid email.

Each invited supplier receives a confidential link scoped to that supplier and RFQ. They enter material price, freight, capacity, MOQ, timing, terms, currency, and other applicable costs. Every revision creates a new version and remains available for audit.

CPI keeps material, freight, insurance, duties, customs, handling, other costs, and FX explicit. Incoterm rules prevent included components from being counted twice. Calculations use decimal-safe arithmetic and preserve an input snapshot.

An Incoterm is an international delivery rule that defines who arranges and pays for freight, insurance and customs, and where transport risk changes hands. DAP means the seller delivers to the named destination while the buyer handles import; DDP makes the seller responsible for delivery and import duties; EXW places almost all transport responsibility on the buyer; FOB and CIF are mainly for sea freight. An Incoterm is not the complete sales contract.

CPI checks hard eligibility first, then scores eligible quotes across landed cost, availability, delivery, reliability, risk, freshness, commercial terms, and MOQ using the selected strategy. The complete score and explanation are saved.

An approved purchase request generates a purchase order from the preserved sourcing decision. The order then follows controlled states: approved, sent, supplier confirmed, partially fulfilled or fulfilled, and closed.

No. Landed cost, margin, eligibility, scoring, and allocations are deterministic. OpenAI can explain verified records and FAQ answers, but it cannot approve an award or replace the calculation engine.

Market Mapper defines an exact product, discovers and verifies suppliers, runs bounded and approved research scenarios through truthful organization-controlled identities, captures responses, requires human review, normalizes currency and units, and converts verified observations into ranges, confidence scores, signals, and advisory forecasts.

No. CPI can vary legitimate project, quantity, timing, destination, and commercial scenarios, but it does not invent people, companies, sender addresses, or commitments. Every sender identity maps to an accountable user and a controlled organization mailbox.

Prices are as fresh as the most recent verified observations and display their evidence date, currency, unit, supplier coverage, and confidence. A licensed live market feed is labeled not configured until a provider is connected and validated.

CPI preserves the original quote and then applies explicit exchange-rate and unit-conversion factors. The normalized material and landed values, data sources, timestamps, and calculation snapshot remain visible for audit.

Forecasts are advisory planning ranges derived from verified index history. They show a lower bound, central estimate, upper bound, horizon, model version, drivers, and confidence; they are not guaranteed future prices.

Yes. AI Supplier Discovery searches current public sources for the product and geography, then stages candidates with supporting links for human review. Importing a reviewed candidate creates a pending supplier, candidate research profile, unapproved material capability, and geocoded location on the supplier map. CPI never approves or contacts a discovered supplier automatically.

Yes, after a person verifies and imports the supplier, approves the research scenario, selects the recipients, and approves the campaign. The campaign composer supports manual, AI-assisted, and AI-generated editable templates plus bounded mass delivery and follow-ups. Replies enter the CPI thread through the connected mailbox. Reply handling can be manual, AI-drafted for approval, or limited automatic clarification. Opt-outs stop contact, and negotiation, commitments, payment, legal, complaints, sensitive information, or uncertainty always go to human review.

CPI applies tenant-scoped database queries, role permissions, CSRF protection, secure sessions, private document storage, hashed API tokens, rate limits, security headers, and auditable record changes.

CPI currently uses verified supplier quotes and manually maintained internal observations. Live market, freight, and FX providers must be explicitly connected and validated before their data is shown as live.

Open the Tutorial from the public navigation or the workspace sidebar. It explains the full twelve-step lifecycle and can be used alongside the realistic sample sourcing events.