How Qualifications and Assessments Are Evaluated

When conducting an initiative, your goal is to obtain information from your suppliers , for example their available goods and services, current certifications, or past transaction history.

Once you have this information, you can evaluate the supplier and document their suitability by completing qualifications or an assessment.

When you launch an initiative, the application creates draft qualification objects (assessments and qualifications) based on the qualification areas and model that are included in your initiative. As responses to your initiative are submitted by the responders, you can access the responses from the Monitor Initiative page.

Accepting a Response

Your first action is to view the supplier's response. You can do this by selecting Pending Acceptance option in the expanded view of the Questionnaire Responses infolet. Clicking the link on the infolet takes you to the Review Response page.

As you review the supplier's response on the page, you can do the following:

Add any notes about your acceptance decision. You can enter notes at the response level or for a particular question.
View the definition of the question by clicking the question name link.

Once you have reviewed the response, you can do the following:

Accept the response by clicking Accept.
Return the response to the responder for more information by clicking the Return to Responder option of the Actions menu. Typically you might return a response if it wasn't complete or needed further clarification from supplier. You must enter a reason to explain to the responder why the response was returned.

Once you have accepted the response, it can't be updated and is ready for evaluation.

Evaluating a Qualification

After all responses from a supplier or supplier site have been accepted, the next step is to evaluate them. Evaluators see entries in their watchlists and the Ready for Evaluation infolet. Clicking the number will take you to the Manage Qualifications or Manage Assessments page. The Manage Qualifications page, lists the qualifications that can be evaluated. The Manage Assessments page lists the assessments that can be evaluated. If there is an assessment ready for evaluation, then for this assessment initiative (which includes both qualifications and an assessment), you must evaluate all the qualifications first before evaluating the assessment. To begin evaluating a qualification, select the qualification and then click Evaluate Qualification.

On the Evaluate page, you can

Update the supplier contact.
Update the qualification owner.
Specify the qualification start date.
Specify the qualification end date.
Override the default expiration reminder setting.
Assign the qualification outcome.

Note that you can't specify start or end dates that overlap with any existing qualifications for this supplier based on the same qualification area and for the same procurement Business Unit.

When you have finished evaluating the supplier's and internal responder's response to the qualification questions, click Finalize. If this is a qualification initiative, once you evaluate and finalize all the qualifications, you have completed the evaluation process.

Evaluating an Assessment

If your initiative is an assessment initiative, you must also evaluate the assessment. Once you have evaluated and finalized all the qualifications, you can evaluate the assessment. You can begin evaluating an assessment, by clicking the Assessments option in the Ready for Evaluation infolet. On the Manage Assessments page, you can view and evaluate the assessments. On the Evaluate Assessment page, you have the same options as on the Evaluate Qualification page. Note when you're entering the start and end dates for the assessment, they must cover the total time spans for all its qualifications. Also, it can't overlap any other assessment for the supplier or site in the same Procurement Business Unit.