IT Peer Counsel: Vendor Management

Q: Do you dedicate a person or a function to evaluate your vendors?

A: Our IT sector’s strategic sourcing and contract management organization performs formal vendor evaluations quarterly. Our team conducts a Web-based survey to gather key-supplier assessments from our seven sectors and the corporate office.

This tool includes four evaluation categories: delivery, quality, cooperation/responsiveness and integrity. The rating scale, in descending order, is blue (exceeds expectations), green (meets expectations), yellow (marginal) and red (noticeably less than expected). Evaluators are asked to justify any rating that falls below “meets expectations.” Then we communicate the average rating for each category, overall average score and applicable comments to the vendor.

As the next step, we instruct vendors to write a corrective action plan that addresses the unsatisfactory rating’s root cause. The plan is then forwarded to the IT procurement organization to verify its validity and completeness. The IT sector’s senior management is also apprised of the analysis and the corrective action plan.