Evaluate a Supplier

Once a supplier has submitted their responses to a Questionnaire, Evaluating a Supplier allows you to review and score their answers. 

Supplier responses need to be evaluated by a single evaluator or a team of evaluators, which are set when publishing a Questionnaire. You can find information on setting evaluators here.

Viewing responses for evaluation

To access the Evaluation screen, head to Supplier Management > Evaluate & Review. Alternatively, this can be accessed at the bottom of your homepage under Management tasks requiring your attention or via Notifications.

You will first be presented with 3 tabs above your responses to evaluate:

• Research - Early engagement questionnaires. For more information, please click here.
• RFX Quote - Rapid supplier sourcing for contracts with less stringent tender processing. For more information, please click here.
• Tender - Standard scoring processing for moderation.

Responses can be filtered using the buttons at the top of the screen:

• Questionnaires - Filter by questionnaire, only responses relating to that specific questionnaire will appear below.
• Suppliers - Filter by supplier, all responses relating to that supplier will appear below.
• Status (the right hand filters):
  • All - All responses relating to the left hand filters (listed above).
  • Pending - Responses pending evaluation.
  • Evaluated - Responses already evaluated by logged in evaluator.
  • Closed - Responses to closed questionnaires.

NB: To apply the above filters the 'Search' button below the filter options must be pressed. To remove a filter select 'Reset'.

Depending on the filters applied, a number of responses will be displayed below. These are organised in a table format allowing you to see:

• Supplier - Suppliers name
• Version name - Questionnaire version
• Attempt - Number of attempts that supplier has taken
• User evaluated sections - Number of sections evaluated
• Team evaluated sections - Number of sections your team has evaluated
• Last submitted - Supplier submission time
• Evaluation deadline - Deadline to evaluate
• Days to evaluate - Number of days left to evaluate (if you have committed to evaluating within a specified number of days).

Select for Evaluation

• Click Select for Evaluation to lock the response. This will unlock the 'Evaluate' button(s) within the dropdown of sections to evaluate.

N.B. Once a response is locked, a supplier will no longer be able to withdraw or resubmit their response.

• On a response, click the '+' button to view all the sections that require evaluation.
  • Under the Evaluators column, the number will tell you how many users have already evaluated this response. 
    • By clicking on this, a pop up will open on which you can see the name of the evaluator, the date they evaluated, score they gave and any comments they have given.
  • You can also see the Section Title and the date/ time that section was Submitted.
• Click the Evaluate button next to a section to bring up the suppliers answers within that section and start evaluating.

N.B. Evaluators that are set for certain sections of a Questionnaire will only have the option to evaluate the sections they have been assigned. You can find more information on selecting specific sections for an Evaluator here. 

Evaluating responses

The way you will need to evaluate a question depends on what type of scoring was set on the Questionnaire:

• Questions can:
  • already have a set score.
  • have scores automatically applied based on the answer provided by the supplier, and you will be asked to confirm this.
  • require you to manually give a score.
  • be a knock-out question.
    • These will display the following messages - Fail: this response does not meet the requirement for this question.
• You can find more information on the types of scoring and knock-out questions here.

Once you are done evaluating a section, click Confirm Score.

• For questionnaires with scoring set up, you'll be asked to confirm if you agree with the weighted score.
  • If you select no, input your reason and the final score you suggest. 
  • You can find more information on weighted scores here.
• For questionnaires with no scoring set up, you'll be asked to pick Pass or Fail.
  • For sections with a knock-out question, you will be asked to confirm if the supplier has failed due to this. You can find further information on knock-out questions here.
• You can add a comment for your records and for fellow evaluators/key users to see when reviewing responses.
  • For some questionnaires it might be mandatory to provide a comment.
• You can freely move the Confirm Score pop-up around so you can view your evaluation marks behind the pop-up 

Once all sections have been evaluated, the Supplier can be qualified.

• The response will remain on the evaluation screen until the supplier is either qualified or disqualified.

For those with relevant access, the next step is to moderate the scores & qualify the supplier

Exporting responses

You may export your responses by clicking on the Excel or PDF buttons on the right-hand side.

You can expand the range of results to export by scrolling down to the bottom-left hand side of the page, where you can then click and select the number of responses to display. The number of displayed responses will be reflected on your Excel or PDF report.