A buy order is a collection of business rules that define the data being purchased, the commercial terms of the purchase, the sources of the data, and where the data will be delivered.
Overview
Buy orders are the mechanism that allows data buyers to set up their buying rules. Buy orders typically act as a container to represent a single data acquisition strategy. An organization may have multiple independent strategies that would be set up using multiple buy orders.
Creating a Buy Order
Buy orders can be created by navigating to the "Buy orders" page using the Buy menu in the header of Narrative Acquire (if you don't see the Buy menu please contact support). Once on the "Buy orders" page, click on the "New order" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
When creating a new order, users will be dropped into a guided process allowing them to fill out the required buy order components.
Components of a Buy Order
A buy order has a number of components that need to be defined by the user. Each component defines a subset of the buy orders behavior.
Status
Each buy order has a status that tells Narrative Acquire how to execute the order. Order statuses include:
- Active: The order is set live and will be executed by Acquire.
- Inactive: The order is not live and will not be executed.
- Awaiting Approval: The order is awaiting approval and pending that approval, the status will be set to Active.
Metadata
Buy orders have metadata associated with them that help organize them and make them distinguishable to the users of Acquire. The metadata includes:
- Buy order name: A human-readable name that will be displayed in Acquire.
- Tags: Tags are freeform elements that can be applied to buy orders to categorize a buy order. Buy orders can have multiple tags that represent multiple categories. Tags can be used to filter data or can be used to tied buy orders to external systems.
Set your Sellers
Choose which suppliers in Narrative's Marketplace you want to transact against for the given Buy Order. Select between all companies or a subset using whitelist & blacklist capabilities.
Budget
Buy orders have a corresponding budget. The budget is comprised of an amount (USD) and a time window (Daily, Weekly, Monthly). The buy order will continue to purchase eligible data within the time window as long as the budget has not been exceeded.
Line Items
A buy order can have multiple line items. Line items allow the user to define the suppliers, specific data records, and commercials. Line items differ from orders in that a line item can only represent a single data type whereas orders can contain multiple line items and thus multiple data types.