As someone wise once said, success is like a cake – while the end result is sweet and rewarding, the process takes patience, precision, and hard work. In the context of strategic sourcing and cost reduction initiatives, the secret recipe to sweet success requires involves an important component: scorecarding.

But exactly what is scorecarding? Essentially, it’s a fancy word for bid evaluation – an organization assigns a “score” to a potential supplier’s proposal as a means to evaluate RFx responses. Furthermore, scores are not subjective – they are composed of qualitative and quantitative ingredients.

On the qualitative side, the ingredient list typically includes:

  • Supplier Account Management 
  • Supplier Quality of Service 
  • Supplier Value-added items

On the quantitative side, the ingredient list usually includes:

  • Baseline price
  • Supplier price
  • Supplier calculated savings

Some typical trusted tools used to measure these ingredients include a scoring matrix helping define an organization’s needs, a scale used to weigh and assign a score to said needs, and a spreadsheet service such as Excel for comparing scores and examining supplier competitiveness. Although some organizations may more heavily weigh quantitative to qualitative aspects in assigning RFx scores, both are equally pivotal in the scorecarding process and will play a role in helping an organization determine the supplier most compatible with their needs and ensuring their success.

Furthermore, just as teamwork can strengthen the process of baking a cake, so can teamwork strengthen the process of scorecarding. By listening to various opinions while scorecarding, this ensures a variety of viewpoints are considered and helps an organization make the best informed decision possible for everyone. Ultimately, scorecarding is an adaptable term with different approaches - but if important criterion are selected for qualitative analysis, pricing and service levels are weighed accordingly, and the recipe to scorecarding is followed carefully, this will easily lay the foundation for sweet strategic sourcing success.



Share To:

Strategic Sourceror

Post A Comment:

0 comments so far,add yours