Day 10: Create a Vendor Scorecard
On iwmsnews there are quite a few posts about how to evaluate your IWMS implementation. The most popular one is: 14 Ways to Evaluate your IWMS implementation (http://www.iwmsnews.com/2009/06/14-ways-to-evaluate-your-iwms-implementation/).
In that particular post I write about the importance of a thorough evaluation of your Integrated Workplace Management System and organizational components of the implementation including:
- Organization
- Organizational unit
- Mission
- Goals
- Planning
- Vendor
- Budget
- Functional Solution
- Key Processes
- Technical Solution
- Systems Integrations
As the above list indicates there is more to evaluate then only the software solution. Today is Day 10 of the 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation and you are going to evaluate the project with the vendor.
Today’s teaching
You have already written a lessons learned report and today we are going to evaluate another aspect of the IWMS implementation; the vendor.
In every sales pitch vendors depict the implementation staff as qualified, highly skilled domain experts. Reality however, might be something different. Since your organization has worked closely with the vendor you should be able to evaluate the vendor. Especially since Enterprise Systems such as IWMS systems have such an impact on daily life in your organization, you need to monitor and evaluate the performance of the vendor on a periodical basis.
Vendor Scorecards
One way to monitor the performance of the individual vendor is to have a vendor scoring methodology in place. Vendor scorecards are an excellent example how to measure their performance.
Vendor scorecards are performance management instruments which measure vendor performance based on predefined metrics, processes and stakeholders.
Since you can measure vendor performance on basically everything but in most cases is not very sensible, I would recommend you to follow these guidelines:
Metrics
Not all metrics are either relevant for the business performance or actionable. If you measure on metrics that will not have any impact on the improvement of your Integrated Workplace Management System, or not actionable by management, you shouldn’t be measuring on these items in the first place.
You will achieve most success with metrics that have a direct relation with the IWMS, and/or your business processes. In addition to that, only metrics that can converted into action are usable.
If you just gather data for the sake of data gathering; STOP.
Vendor scorecards are a great instrument to measure vendor performance but only when the data that is collected is useful for the organization.
Responsibility
Poorly designed vendor scorecards are very consuming in terms of time, money and other resources. What’s more, you need responsibility / accountability for effective usage of vendor scorecards.
Someone needs to be accountable for the management of the scorecards to maximize commitment. If there is not commitment or responsibility for vendor scorecards centralized, the entire methodology is likely to fail.
Usability
In addition to the quality of the scorecards the usability and format of the vendor scorecards play an important role. The best advice here is to create vendor scorecards which are:
- Easy to complete
- Easy to distribute
- Easy to collect
- Easy to analyze
- Scalable
In most corporate environments people use office software such as Excel, Word or similar. From a usability perspective I would recommend Word as this is the easiest format to complete however, vendor scorecards in Excel would greatly enhance the analyzing part of the Vendor Scorecards.
Users
Relevant users need to evaluate relevant vendors. Don’t let everybody evaluate all vendors. Identify both key users and key vendors. Your vendor scorecards are not created to monitor individual performance but to improve your company as a whole through improvement cycles.
Improvement Cycles
Although the design is extremely important an organizational aspect is equally important. The usage of the information in improvement cycles. If you have collected very useful information from relevant users and vendors, now is the time to take action accordingly by either to action on it or to delegate these actions either to the management (or other responsible users).
If you don’t invest in continuous improvement cycles, vendor scorecards as well as other monitoring techniques won’t help you to improve your business. Therefore, it is imperative that all cycles of improvement are supported by the management and staff is accountable for the actions forthcoming from the evaluations.
Today’s task
When implemented correctly, vendor scorecard methodologies can really help to advance your organization, in particular your IWMS implementation but as you can see there are a few guidelines which should be taken into account.
In today’s task you are going to create your own vendor scorecard system for the IWMS implementation.
Guidelines for your scorecard
- Maximum of 10 questions
- Usable for all respondents
- Relevant actionable metrics
- Relevant users and vendors
After you have completed your vendor scorecard you are going to:
- Delegate responsibility (preferably to a key user)
- Activate improvement cycles
- Control these improvement cycles
I would love to hear your experience with vendor scorecard methodologies.
Good luck!
Day 10 – Create a vendor scorecard
On iwmsnews there are quite a few posts about how to evaluate your IWMS implementation. The most popular one is: 14 Ways to Evaluate your IWMS implementation (http://www.iwmsnews.com/2009/06/14-ways-to-evaluate-your-iwms-implementation/).
In that particular post I write about the importance of a thorough evaluation of your Integrated Workplace Management System and organizational components of the implementation including:
· Organization
· Organizational unit
· Mission
· Goals
· Planning
· Vendor
· Budget
· Functional Solution
· Key Processes
· Technical Solution
· Systems Integrations
As the above list indicates there is more to evaluate then only the software solution. Today is Day 10 of the 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation and you are going to evaluate the project with the vendor.
Today’s teaching
You have written a lessons learned report yesterday and today we are going to evaluate another aspect of the IWMS implementation; the vendor.
In every sales pitch vendors depict the implementation staff as highly skilled with expert know-how in the domain. Reality however, might be something different. As your organization is through the implementation closely linked with the vendors some mutual understanding about the quality of the project is a must. Especially since Enterprise Systems such as IWMS systems have such an impact on daily life in your organization, you need be monitor and evaluate the performance of the vendor on a periodical basis.
Vendor Scorecards
One way to monitor the performance of the individual vendor is to have a vendor scoring methodology in place. Vendor scorecards are an excellent example how to measure performance.
Vendor scorecards are performance management instruments which measure vendor performance based on predefined metrics, processes and stakeholders.
Since you can measure performance of vendors on all metrics you can think of, I would recommend you to follow these guidelines:
Metrics
Not all metrics are either relevant for the business performance or actionable. If you measure on metrics that will not have any impact on the improvement of your Integrated Workplace Management System, or although relevant not actionable by management, you shouldn’t be measuring on these items.
You will achieve most success with metrics that have a direct relation with the IWMS, and/or your business processes. In addition to that, only metrics that can converted into action are usable.
If you just gather data for the sake of data gathering; STOP.
Vendor scorecards potentially are a great instrument to measure vendor performance but only when the data that is collected is useful for the organization.
Responsibility
Poorly designed vendor scorecards are very consuming in terms of time, money and other resources. What’s more, you need responsibility / accountability for effective usage of vendor scorecards.
Someone needs to be accountable for the management of the scorecards to maximize commitment. If there is not commitment or responsibility for vendor scorecards centralized, the entire methodology is likely to fail.
Usability
In addition to the quality of the scorecards the usability and format of the vendor scorecards play an important role. The best advice here is to create vendor scorecards which are:
- Easy to complete
- Easy to distribute
- Easy to collect
- Easy to analyze
In most corporate environments people use office software such as Excel, Word or similar. From a usability perspective I would recommend Word as this is the easiest format to complete however, vendor scorecards in Excel would greatly enhance the analyzing part of the Vendor Scorecards.
Users
Relevant users need to evaluate relevant vendors. Don’t let everybody evaluate all vendors. Identify both key users and key vendors. Your vendor scorecards are not created to monitor individual performance but to improve your company as a whole through improvement cycles.
Improvement Cycles
Although the design is extremely important an organizational aspect is equally important. The usage of the information in improvement cycles. If you have collected very useful information from relevant users and vendors, now is the time to take action accordingly or to delegate these actions either to the management (or other responsible users)
If you don’t invest in continuous improvement cycles, vendor scorecards as well as other monitoring techniques won’t help you to improve your business. Therefore, it is imperative that all cycles of improvement are supported by the management and staff is accountable for the actions forthcoming from the evaluations.
Today’s task
When implemented correctly, vendor scorecard methodologies can really help to advance your organization, in particular your IWMS implementation but as you can see there are a few guidelines which should be taken into account.
In today’s task you are going to create your own vendor scorecard system for the IWMS implementation.
Guidelines for your scorecard
- Maximum of 10 questions
- Usable for all respondents
- Relevant actionable metrics
- Relevant users and vendors
After you have completed your vendor scorecard you are going to:
- Delegate responsibility (preferably to a key user)
- Activate improvement cycles
- Control these improvement cycles
I would love to hear your experience with vendor scorecard methodologies.
Good luck!
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