Supplier Assessment templates are a core part of the Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments area, and enable you to create and send Supplier Assessments quickly and easily, whilst ensuring that those Assessments remain consistent and up-to-date from one use to the next. All Supplier Assessments that you and other users send will be based on the templates that currently exist within your system, and it is only possible to send a Supplier Assessment using one of these templates. However, Activ allows you to create an unlimited number of Supplier Assessment templates, enabling you to maintain a library of templates that suit all of your Assessment needs.
To provide greater flexibility, Activ allows you to create two broad types of Supplier Assessment:
- ‘Standard’ Assessments, which require the Supplier to provide information by answering a series of questions, and then an appropriate user to review that information; and
- ‘Auto-Approved’ Assessments, which can be used to automatically approve Suppliers of non-critical products and services and do not require any data from the Supplier, or review from your organisation.
If you are creating a ‘standard’ Supplier Assessment, Activ will allow you to enter as many questions per template as needed, and allow you to specify the appropriate response type for each question. These can be selected from a pool of default response types, which includes Yes/No, Numeric, File Upload, and custom lists (amongst others). In addition, Activ allows you to create simple question trees when using the ‘Yes/No’ response type, enabling you to create a set of sub-questions that will only appear if ‘yes’ is selected against a parent question, and a second sub-set that will only appear if ‘no’ is selected. This may be particularly useful for questions such as ‘are you certified to x standard’, where you may wish to request a copy of the certification for a ‘yes’ answer, and ask if the Supplier plans to become certified for a ‘no’ answer.
Finally, to help you get started, the Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments area comes with a pre-configured template that will enable you to begin sending Supplier Assessments from the time that the module is added to your system. This template pre-set is:
- Generic Product/Service Form
Note that only users with ‘Admin’ permissions to Customers & Suppliers: Supplier Assessments can manage or create your system’s Supplier Assessment templates. However, all users with appropriate permissions to the area will be able to create and send Assessments using any of the active templates that are within your system.
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Each Supplier Assessment template consists of up to four parts, which are presented as individual tabs within each template’s record. These are:
Details – contains the basic details of the template, such as its name, who can complete Assessments using the template, and whether the Assessment is auto-approving or will need fulfilling and reviewing.
Authorisations – only available if you have set the Assessment Security field to ‘Assessments can only be fulfilled/reviewed by specific nominated people’. This tab allows you to manage who is authorised to fulfil and review Supplier Assessments that have been created using these templates.
Questionnaire – used to create and manage the Assessment’s questions if it is a standard (i.e. not automatically approved) template.
Email Templates – allows you to create the default email message that will accompany the Supplier Assessment’s link when it is emailed to your chosen contact(s). Each template has its own email message, allowing you to customise each message to the relevant template.
