Enhancing Your Process with Advanced Evaluations

In 2024 organisations need to ensure their procurement is efficient, fair and compliant. A pivotal part of this process is how quotes and tender responses are evaluated. It can often be the most time-consuming part of the procurement lifecycle, especially with complex or high value activity.

Organisations can fall victim to the challenges that go hand-in-hand with manual evaluation processes, but with so many parts of the procurement process being improved through technology, evaluations can be revolutionised through the right tools.

Security of Sensitive Information

Procurement, especially in the public sector, needs to be fair and competitive, but without impartial assessment and evaluation the process can quickly become open to risk of non-compliant behaviour.

When evaluations are carried out in spreadsheets and word documents the potential for the information to fall into the wrong hands is greatly increased. Housing scoring information in centralised online folders (like SharePoint) can result in accidental or deliberate breaches of probity rules.

Conflicts of Interests

When multi-party evaluations are required, it usually means the procurement event is complex, high value or sensitive. So, it’s crucial to understand if your evaluators have any conflicts that would (or should) stop them from being involved in the process.

With manual evaluations, the process for gathering and maintaining these records can be fluid and can cause serious ramifications if a conflict goes unidentified.

Recording of scoring

When a facilitator is responsible for documenting the evaluators scores, deliberations and outcomes, the process is open to a level of risk. Commonly spreadsheets are used for scoring, but recurring issues with this process include incorrect or broken formulas, and inaccurate checking or recording of data, potentially throwing the outcome of the tender.

And the same can be said for any manual evaluation processes as there is always a chance for human error or misinterpreted information, leading to compliance and probity issues.

Lack of visibility and reporting

With complex evaluations, efficient and simple processes garner the best results. When evaluations are being carried out in spreadsheets and word documents, the evaluator is on the back-foot from the outset as these tools reflect moment-in-time information and provide limited history tracking and reportability features, which can cause issues come audit season.

Enter VendorPanel's Advanced Evaluations module —a game-changer for complex or multi-party evaluations. This tool is powerful and flexible as it is designed for managing complex evaluations in a configurable, efficient and controlled manner.

It integrates closely with VendorPanel’s Procurement Planning and Go to Market modules to maximise the visibility, speed and compliance of the entire procurement process.

Transparency

The Advanced Evaluation tool allows key stakeholders to see what has happened in an ongoing evaluation process, and to view full details of previous evaluations, enabling improved reporting and auditability.

Better outcomes

With Advanced Evaluations, admins can allocate certain criteria to evaluators, such as financial evaluation to Finance, operational assessment to Operations, etc. Each provides a score only in their area of expertise and isn’t asked to weigh in on other aspects. This means that the final consensus is representative of qualified opinions only. There is also the ability to group evaluators into teams, such as Legal, IT and Finance, to collaboratively review and rate responses.

Compliance

Unlike in emails and spreadsheets, in Advanced Evaluations all details of the process and outcomes are captured within the system in an extensive log, making it possible to trace any changes that have occurred during the evaluation, ensuring probity and accountability.

Additionally, conflicts of interest can be identified at the start of the process and stored within the system against a specific evaluation request, further improving visibility and compliance.

Efficiency and Security

The tool ensures that information is kept in one secure place, with evaluators only given access to data or responses that are relevant to them. This eliminates the chance of evaluators being influenced by other’s scoring during the evaluation process.

Evaluations are completed, tracked and stored online, meaning consensus meetings are fair, transparent and efficient as all data has been captured in the system beforehand. This eliminates the opportunity for evaluators to change their score during discussions to potentially sway outcomes.

Outcomes, along with how they are reached, are clearly displayed reducing the need for back-and-forth communication or siloed conversations with evaluators to reach a consensus.

The adoption of Advanced Evaluation represents how organisations are taking huge steps towards modernising procurement practices and enabling the function to be a force for good.

Businesses are prioritising staff’s time by arming them with tools like maximises efficiency and value while ensuring compliance and probity throughout the entire procurement lifecycle.

If you are interested in learning more about our Advanced Evaluation module, please get in touch with us today.