This article shows you how to analyze supplier pricing on a sourcing event in the Strategic Sourcing module: what each of the four analysis tabs answers, how to filter the data, how to compare prices per line item, and how to spot pricing patterns worth negotiating.

The pricing analysis lives on the event's Pricing page at /buyer/sourcing-project/<event-id>/pricing and has four tabs: Summary, Comparison, Heatmap, and Patterns. A sticky filter bar applies to every tab: Lot (default "All Lots"; the Heatmap requires selecting one specific lot), Pricing Column (a pricing column is one price field suppliers fill per line item, such as unit price or tooling cost), Commodity Group, and Round on multi-round events. "Filter Suppliers" limits the charts to selected suppliers, and "Show Text Fields" reveals non-numeric columns. Note that line items are labeled "Materials" throughout these views. If no supplier has submitted pricing yet, the page shows "No supplier pricing responses have been submitted yet."

The Summary tab answers "how do supplier totals compare, and how spread out are prices?". It shows aggregate statistics per supplier and per lot (Min, Max, Mean, Median, and Std Dev) together with charts: Supplier Comparison (totals side by side), Price Distribution (a box plot of price spread), Price Analysis (a scatter plot with configurable X-axis, Y-axis, and color), Lot Comparison ("Supplier totals compared across lots"), and Supplier Ranking ("How suppliers rank across lots"). Use this tab first to find which lots have wide variance; a large gap between Min and Max signals negotiation potential.

The Comparison tab answers "who charges what for each line item?". It is a matrix with one row per line item (showing Item #, Item Name, and Commodity Group) and one column per supplier, for the selected lot and pricing column. Totals per supplier appear at the bottom, so you can see both the item-level detail and each supplier's overall position at once. On large events the grid indicates truncation, for example "Showing first 100 of 250 materials". Use this tab to answer supplier-specific questions such as "is supplier A cheap overall but expensive on the three items that matter?"

The Heatmap tab answers "where are the outliers?". Select one lot, and every price cell is colored by a mode you choose: "Distance from Average" (legend: Below Average, Near Average, Above Average), "Standard Deviation", "Negotiation Flags", or "Round-over-Round Change" (legend: Price Down, Unchanged, Price Up). Hovering a cell shows the price history and whether the price is in an active negotiation. Right-click a cell (or a selection of cells) to Flag For Negotiation. Flagged prices feed directly into the negotiation creation flow, where you can filter by flag. The filter panel also lets you filter by flag type, by rule, and show an indicator on prices with active negotiations.

The Patterns tab answers "which line-item characteristics drive price differences?". Pattern Analysis groups prices by characteristic values (for example material grade, region, or size) and ranks the findings by a variance score, shown as "<n>% variance"; a badge reports how many patterns were found, for example "6 patterns found". High-variance patterns tell you where a characteristic, not the supplier, explains price spread, which is useful for restructuring lots or targeting negotiations at a subset of items. If pricing is too uniform, the tab reports "No significant pricing patterns detected".

Bulk discounts are volume-based discounts a supplier attaches to their bid, either tiered (each quantity range has its own rate) or threshold (the discount applies to all units once quantity passes the threshold), reducing price by a percentage or a fixed amount. You review a supplier's discounts on that supplier's Pricing tab in the per-supplier workspace. The analysis tabs show submitted base prices; discount effects are modeled in award simulations, whose costs "include applied volume discounts" and which let you enable or disable individual discounts per scenario; see "Run award simulations and cost scenarios".

The table below summarizes which tab answers which buying question.