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Vendor selection and evaluation tool for Procurement

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As a sourcing or procurement professional you fully understand the importance of your supplier choice for the organisation you serve. You need to choose a vendor who not only will create value for your organisation and deliver what’s agreed in the contract, but will also build a long-lasting and successful partnership with your company.

Procurement and the vendor selection process

Selection of supplier is only part of a complex process from the initial requirement to the development of a relationship with a supplier; the process is usually as follows:

  1. determining the need,
  2. taking the decision to buy,
  3. identification of potential suppliers,
  4. selecting and choosing the right supplier,
  5. contracting,
  6. maintaining the partnership.

How to select a vendor in procurement?

Supplier selection is challenging, but it is even more difficult with service sourcing compared to goods sourcing. Why? Because there is more uncertainty. It is more difficult for both sides to define their understanding of the service provision, and it may be more difficult to determine the scope. Also, services will vary in more aspects than physical goods.

To manage all the uncertainties, you’ll need to look at the reputation and image of your shortlisted providers, their past projects, their client referrals and other important criteria.

 

 

Supplier selection and comparing offers from providers

After you have sent out and received your RFIs or RFPs to your shortlisted providers, it’s time for comparison. To make the job easier for you, we created the following RFI scoring matrix – an excel tool for comparing answers to RFIs.

Vendor scoring matrix for procurement

Why download our tool for comparing offers from service providers? Because it will make your life easier and allow you to be more objective.

A good assessment of suppliers should thoroughly explore a number of key areas – for example under the wider topic of experience, we look at the sub-area of evidence of similar projects or services delivered successfully, or the sub-area of being adaptable to my tools and methods. For a consistent and reliable assessment, it is important to also assign a numeric rating (e.g. on a scale of 1-10) for each individual category.

And that’s exactly what we do in the scoring matrix, and this means you’ll be able to compare each provider more objectively.

5 benefits of the vendor scoring tool for procurement

The tool will:

  • give you a concrete score for each vendor assessed,
  • make the comparison process fairer, quicker and more transparent,
  • allow you to present supplier comparison in an easily comparable way to your colleagues,
  • help you standardise your supplier selection process
  • be flexible for you – it’s editable so you can customise it as required and add your rating categories

Other useful resources

Whether you’re a sourcing, procurement or project management professional, browsing, shortlisting and comparing offers from technology providers is not an easy or quick task.

Which is why you may like these vendor evaluation tools:

Are you looking for a software development partner? Browse our offer or speak to us directly.