It is important to note that the Supplier Assessments feature is directly tied to the main Companies register within your Customers & Suppliers module. This means that you will only be able to create Assessments for Suppliers that have already been recorded within your system. If you need to assess a Supplier that is not already in your system, you will first need to add them to your main Companies register (see Add a Company for guidance).
Once a Supplier has been added to your Companies register, you will be able to assess them at any time using a simple standardised workflow. This workflow consists of up to three steps:
- Step 1: Set Up the Supplier Assessment – create a new Assessment for the Supplier. Once created, these can be fulfilled immediately or at any point in the future.
- Step 2: Fill In (‘Fulfil’) the Supplier Assessment – complete the Supplier Assessment, answering all relevant questions within its questionnaire. All Assessments can either be completed internally, or sent to the Supplier for them to complete. If the latter option is used, the Supplier will complete the Assessment using an online form which will automatically save their responses to your system. See Send a Supplier Assessment or Complete (Fulfil) a Supplier Assessment for guidance.
- Step 3: Review the Supplier Assessment – review the responses that have been entered into the Assessment to determine whether they meet your organisation’s criteria. Once you have reviewed all responses, either re-open the Assessment and request additional information from the Supplier (or internal Fulfiller), or specify whether the Supplier is authorised for use.
Note that you will need to complete all three steps for ‘standard’ Assessments (i.e. any Assessment of a Supplier that provides critical products/services), but will only need to complete Step One for ‘auto-approved’ Assessments. This allows you to approve Suppliers of non-critical products/services quickly and easily.
