In a reverse auction, the buyer publishes a tender and invited suppliers submit progressively lower bids — or improved offers on non-price criteria — within a fixed window. Unlike a traditional RFQ, suppliers see their ranking in real time, which compresses days of back-and-forth into a single event.
Modern multi-criteria auctions weight price alongside quality, lead time, sustainability, and other negotiable terms, so the lowest bidder isn’t automatically the winner.