Note: Use consistent scoring methods throughout your vendor evaluation and selection process.
Align on and finalize your scoring process before publishing your RFP/Brief. In most cases, your scoring process will be described in your RFP/Brief for transparency purposes, which is often required by your procurement policies.
List and describe each scoring stage you will use. This template represents a standard scoring process required for compliance-based evaluation and selection initiatives, such as those used for most public sector organizations.
Technically, this is not a scoring stage but is conducted to pre-qualify vendors. This is a yes-or-no assessment stage. Either the vendor meets your published minimum requirements, or they don't. Vendors must meet minimum requirements to be scored or evaluated further, and your procurement team will notify them of their status.
Diligence and minimum requirements are essential to reducing the number of vendors to the most viable ones. Scoring vendor proposals, attending vendor interviews and software demonstrations, and conducting field visits are time-consuming. Having to do this for an excessive number of vendors also induces decision fatigue, which impairs the quality of your process and final decision.
Assessing minimum requirements may result in winnowing vendors.
This represents scoring the submitted vendor proposals. Scorers record their scores using individual scoring sheets.
Winnow vendors that do not meet a desired scoring threshold.
The remaining vendors are invited to interviews (presentations, discussions, and Q&A) with your evaluation team and other interested stakeholders to demonstrate their software.
Winnow vendors that do not meet a desired scoring threshold.