Supplier Evaluation

 

You can evaluate your company's suppliers to obtain a basis for promoting your business relationship with them and for optimizing your supply base. Based on the feedback you gather through questionnaires, you obtain a scorecard for each supplier evaluated. The scorecard helps you to assess a supplier's strengths and shortcomings and to initiate measures for improvement. Scorecards also enable you to easily compare suppliers within a peer group.

Questionnaires are filled out by stakeholders in the procurement process. By taking part in an evaluation, these stakeholders act as appraisers. Appraisers can be selected from the following groups, for example:

  • Cost center owners

  • Quality engineers

  • Supply chain managers

  • Accounts payable clerks

  • Category managers in procurement

  • Goods recipients

You can start evaluations manually, possibly on periodic bases, for a predefined peer group of suppliers. For more information, see Evaluating Suppliers Using the Group-Based Process.

Using Purchasing Categories to Structure the Evaluation Process

Most purchasing organizations structure their procurement operations using purchasing categories managed by Category Managers.

The process of evaluating suppliers is designed in a way that you can perform evaluations per purchasing category.

Note Note

To structure the supplier evaluation process along purchasing categories, you use the evaluation template and questionnaire objects. The application enables you to create category-specific questionnaires (see Managing Questionnaires). By assigning category-specific questionnaires to an evaluation template, you can use the template for a specific purchasing category.

End of the note.

Integration

You can access supplier evaluation results in the supplier data under Evaluations.

More Information

Customizing

The activities in Customizing for Materials Management under Start of the navigation path Purchasing Next navigation step Supplier and Category Management Next navigation step Supplier Evaluation Next navigation step Basic Settings for Supplier Evaluation End of the navigation path are relevant as follows:

  • You have to create a question library under Start of the navigation path Create Question Library for Supplier Evaluation End of the navigation path.

  • You can adapt the standard texts addressed to appraisers under Start of the navigation path Maintain Settings for Mails and Other Texts for Supplier Evaluation End of the navigation path.

  • You can change the supported MIME types for attachments under Start of the navigation path Define MIME Types for Attachments End of the navigation path.

  • Under Start of the navigation path Define Maximum Size for Attachments End of the navigation path, you can define a maximum size for attachments.

  • You can customize the sending of reminders for pending evaluation responses under Start of the navigation path Basic Settings for Supplier Evaluation Next navigation step Reminder Settings End of the navigation path.

In addition, you have to maintain the number ranges for the objects used in supplier evaluation. You do this in Customizing for Materials Management under Start of the navigation path Purchasing Next navigation step Supplier and Category Management Next navigation step Supplier Evaluation Next navigation step Number Ranges for Supplier Evaluation End of the navigation path.