OverviewThe background The topics of supplier evaluations, performance assessment, and scorecards are well known to buying professionals. Many articles are written on these subjects, and there is a continuing debate among purchasing professionals about which tools and techniques work best. But, when it comes to sourcing, and more specifically to finding qualified supplier candidates, it is very challenging out there for buyers. This is especially true for smaller businesses that want to take part in today’s global supply game, but often do not have the same means as their larger counterparts to look for and make deals with potential suppliers, purchase supplier evaluation software applications, or join expensive marketplaces. And now, more than ever, the pains of sourcing are especially acute. Story of Brian A.  Here’s a real example. Brian A. is a senior commodity buyer in a midsize manufacturing company in Moline, IL, as well as an experienced purchasing professional. He has been doing this job for many years and has always brought his company, an auto parts manufacturer, significant savings. He has a good reputation among his colleagues and is well respected by the management. However, over the last 2 years, with margins shrinking rapidly and payments from customers taking longer, the pressure from the management to bring more savings through supply management has increased, making Brian’s job much more challenging. Looking for new suppliers is nothing new. But now the ability to find lower-cost alternatives without compromising the quality of suppliers has become more important in its impact on the company’s bottom line. Brian has fairly limited tools at his disposal to perform this task. The travel budget has been cut, so participating in trade fairs and pursuing other face to face options are not available.Sourcing from nearby US or Canadian suppliers has always been Brian’s preference. However, it became a major issue in this survival game given several facts: competition went abroad for their suppliers, there is consolidation in the industry, and margins are shrinking. Using the Internet, Brian started looking first at Mexican suppliers and selected several to work with. While these suppliers appeared to be good, their performance was poor, adversely affecting Brian’s professional reputation. Brian needed more alternative sources. Many buyers like Brian are actively looking for new supply sources overseas. But Brian and his peers are facing major questions of reliability, product quality, culture differences, language barriers, delivery expectations, and many others. Supplier Evaluations Overview
Here’s an example of how the site works. A single buyer in a manufacturing company is looking to replace or add between 20 to 50 new suppliers annually. Selecting that many suppliers requires a pool that is at least 3-5 times larger than the number required. This means that a single buyer may need to find and review from 60 to up to 500 supplier candidates. Now let’s take 1000 buyers like Brian. If each one of them adds and evaluates 20 of their own suppliers in a central database, the overall pool grows to 20000. The ability of each individual buyer to find new supplies in this increased pool grows dramatically. But more importantly, with SupplierEvaluations, each of these suppliers is evaluated using a structured approach that includes the following critical criteria:
Other data points cover:
Each of these criteria is given a score between 0 and 100. In addition, buyers can express their opinions about the supplier and provide recommendations. All of the data are gathered in Supplier Performance Evaluation reports. These reports are available on demand right off the website. To learn more, please go to http://www.supplierevaluations.com/resources/frequently-asked-questions.html. The site comes with extensive search options, private communication tools, a blog, a forum, and news sections. Search allows for a wild card option, advanced parameters, and saved searches. It is intuitive and easy to use. Locating a supplier can be done by using a variety of search parameters, from industry and product category to specific business name and office locations. Users can also subscribe to the search results or be notified of new suppliers and evaluations. Users can request new evaluations, ask the community about the types of suppliers for which they are looking, and use social networking tools to socialize and communicate with peers. It is also very easy to involve other people using the Invite Supplier, Invite Buyer, and Tell a Friend tools. Buyers can upload their existing suppliers using an easy to use import tool that retrieves the data from Excel. Inviting suppliers to register eases the initial data entry and speeds up the time to value. Summary SupplierEvaluations community addresses an important gap in the performance data availability about overseas suppliers using a peer-to-peer information exchange approach. To learn more and join us please visit http://www.supplierevaluations.com.
About SupplierEvaluations.com SupplierEvaluations.com is a web-based, business-to-business community of purchasing and supply chain management professionals dedicated to collecting and disseminating supplier performance evaluations based on the peer input from our community members with actual experience. By doing so, we believe that SupplierEvaluations.com promotes excellence in suppliers and enables better visibility for our members in their supplier selection, sourcing, and buying processes, as well as in partnering with potential suppliers. SupplierEvaluations focuses mainly on suppliers in Asian, Eastern European, and Latin American countries and their small and medium size business customers in the countries such as the US, Canada, and countries of the European Union. Valery Zelixon is the founder and managing partner of the Supplier Evaluations community.
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