The Supplier Assessments area of Activ’s Customers & Suppliers module allows you to manage and control the process of approving the Suppliers for any product and service that you use to support your business activities. It relies on the templates you have built within the Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments area, and on the companies and contacts you have already entered into your system.
Activ allows you to design a custom library of Supplier Assessment templates to meet a diverse range of needs, and provides you with the option to create these templates as either ‘auto-approved’ Assessments, for use on Suppliers that do not need to undergo a formal review, or as ‘standard’ Assessments, for use on those that do need a formal review. These templates can be either very simple in design, consisting of short text responses, or more complex, integrating features such as file uploads, custom list responses, and conditional questions. In all cases, the use of the Supplier Assessments area enables you to standardise the Assessments you send out, implement version control on the templates those Assessments utilise, and implement a more consistent formalised process of Assessment that can give you greater confidence in the suitability of your Suppliers, and help to reduce the administrative burdens of the process.
For convenience, all Supplier Assessments can be managed from two areas of Activ:
- From the Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments This area allows you to manage all Supplier Assessments associated with all Suppliers.
- From the Customers & Suppliers: Companies This provides a record of the Supplier Assessments that are associated with the selected company.
In addition, Activ allows you to configure your regular Notifications to inform you each time a Supplier Assessment has been created, fulfilled, or reviewed, allowing you to manage the process more efficiently. See Supplier Assessment Alerts, Notices, and Reminders for more information.
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The Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments area includes nine tabs which are used to manage your Supplier Assessments:
Dashboard – provides you with an automated summary of open (i.e. unfulfilled/unreviewed) Assessments, to help you maintain oversight of open actions within the Supplier Assessments area.
Assessed Suppliers – provides a register of all Suppliers that have previously been assessed. Note that the default view of the register only displays approved Suppliers. If you wish to view all Suppliers, or only those that were not approved, you will need to change the Approved? filter to ‘all’ or ‘no’.
Pending Fulfilment – provides a register of Supplier Assessments that have been created/issued but not yet fulfilled or reviewed. This page can also be used to reassign batches of Assessments to a new Fulfiller if required.
Pending Review – provides a register of Supplier Assessments that have been fulfilled and are awaiting review. This page can also be used to reassign one or more Assessments to a new Reviewer if required.
Completed – provides a record of all Supplier Assessments that have previously been fulfilled and reviewed (i.e. completed).
Improvement Logs – lists all Improvement Logs that have been linked to your system’s Supplier Assessments, providing you with a quick point of reference for these records.
Tasks – lists all Tasks that have been linked to your system’s Supplier Assessments, providing you with a quick point of reference for these records.
Templates – enables you to design and manage a library of Supplier Assessment templates. Note that only users with Admin permissions for the Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments area can access this tab.
Reporting – provides you with inbuilt reports that can be used to analyse Supplier responses to specific Assessment questions. See Report on the Responses to a Supplier Assessment’s Questions for more information.
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Each Supplier Assessment’s record consists of four tabs. These are as follows:
Details – houses the Assessment and its basic details, including a record of which Supplier it is intended for, who is assigned to Review/Fulfil it, and any responses that have been provided.
Improvement Logs – provides a register of any Improvement Logs that have been linked to the Assessment, typically as part of the Review process.
Tasks – provides a register of any Tasks that have been linked to the Assessment, typically as part of the Review process.
Audit Trail – provides an automated log of key actions relating to the Assessment (e.g. when and to whom the Assessment was sent, when and by whom it was fulfilled, when its Properties were updated, etc).
