Overview of Supplier Questionnaires

Supplier Questionnaires in oboloo are designed to gather detailed and standardised information from suppliers as part of the sourcing process. These questionnaires help you evaluate supplier capabilities, qualifications, and suitability for the project by requesting specific information in a clear and organised format. Supplier questionnaires can cover a range of topics, such as compliance, experience, technical qualifications, or any other criteria important to your organisation’s sourcing event.

With oboloo’s Supplier Questionnaires module, you can design custom sets of questions, assign weighted scoring, and easily compare responses from different suppliers. By gathering structured data, you can ensure that your team can evaluate suppliers objectively and consistently.


For more information on how to create a Supplier Questionnaire can be found here.

Key Features of Supplier Questionnaires

  • Custom Questions: You can create a set of questions tailored to the needs of your specific sourcing activity. These questions can range from compliance requirements and technical skills to project-specific experience.
  • Weighted Scoring: Assign weights to different questions based on their importance. This allows you to prioritise certain criteria during the supplier evaluation process with automated scoring, ensuring that the most critical aspects of the supplier’s response carry more influence in the overall assessment.
  • Standardised Format: Supplier questionnaires provide a structured and consistent way to collect responses from all participating suppliers. This helps ensure that all suppliers are evaluated based on the same criteria, making the comparison of responses easier and more objective.
  • Streamlined Evaluation: The standardised format of supplier questionnaires makes it easier to evaluate responses. Responses can be reviewed and scored based on pre-set criteria, and results from multiple suppliers can be compared side by side, allowing for a more data-driven decision-making process.

Benefits of Using Supplier Questionnaires

Improved Evaluation Consistency: By using supplier questionnaires, you ensure that all suppliers are evaluated on the same set of questions. This consistency eliminates any potential bias that could occur if different suppliers are asked different questions or evaluated based on varying criteria. It also ensures that the evaluation process is fair and transparent.

Efficiency in Gathering Information: Supplier questionnaires allow you to gather important information in a structured and efficient manner. You can create questionnaires for compliance, experience, or technical requirements once, and then reuse or adapt them for future sourcing events. This saves time and ensures that key information is not missed during the evaluation process.

Objective Scoring: The ability to apply weighted scoring to questions within the supplier questionnaires ensures that the most important aspects of a supplier’s response are given the appropriate weight in the final decision. For example, if technical compliance is a top priority, you can assign a higher weight to related questions, ensuring it has a greater impact on the overall score.

Enhanced Supplier Comparison: Questionnaires provide a structured way to compare supplier responses side by side. By evaluating suppliers based on the same criteria, you can easily identify which suppliers meet your standards and which may fall short. This is particularly valuable in complex sourcing events where multiple factors need to be considered.

Typical Use Cases for Supplier Questionnaires

  • Compliance Checks: Request that suppliers provide details about their compliance with industry regulations, certifications, or company policies. This is particularly useful for ensuring that suppliers meet legal or safety standards.
  • Technical Expertise: Evaluate a supplier’s technical qualifications by asking about relevant skills, certifications, or past experience in delivering similar services or products.
  • Project Experience: Ask suppliers to outline their previous experience with projects similar to your current sourcing activity. This helps you assess whether the supplier has the relevant experience to handle your project effectively.
  • Quality and Performance: Use questionnaires to evaluate a supplier’s ability to deliver high-quality products or services on time. This could include questions about delivery timelines, service level agreements (SLAs), or their approach to quality control.

How to Use Supplier Questionnaires in oboloo

Supplier questionnaires are created and added during the setup process of a sourcing activity within the Sourcing Wizard. You can choose from pre-built questionnaires saved in the Sourcing Library or create a new one specifically for your current event. Once added, suppliers will respond to the questions directly as part of their submission.

For each question, you can choose to apply weighted scoring, ensuring that more important questions have a greater impact on the final evaluation. After suppliers submit their responses, the questionnaires can be reviewed, scored, and compared across suppliers, enabling a streamlined and consistent evaluation process.

Conclusion

Supplier Questionnaires in oboloo provide an essential framework for gathering detailed, structured information from suppliers. By offering custom questions, weighted scoring, and standardised formats, these questionnaires help you ensure that your sourcing process is efficient, objective, and transparent. Supplier questionnaires not only simplify the process of collecting and evaluating information from suppliers, but they also enable you to make more informed and data-driven sourcing decisions, ensuring you select the supplier best suited to meet your organisation’s needs.

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How to create, edit, clone and archive/unarchive a Supplier Questionnaire