Manage your Vendors

Vendor performance, supplier evaluations, site audits, spend analysis are just a few of the areas which make up our topic today. Manage your vendors or suppliers involves performing what we call due diligence. If this supplier is important to your company you need to spend some time on them annually. What does this look like? You might need to complete a site audit or maybe your environmental and production manager will complete this inspection. It involves physically visiting their site to ensure there are no glaring concerns. Is there huge oil staining prevalent in all areas of their property? Is there waste and other unsafe conditions present inside the building? Is there zero inventory in their storage tanks? Are the employees unhappy? What about safety, documentation and there are many other areas which should be considered when you complete your tour. For a comprehensive site audit form we recommend you visit www.RFPTemplates.org and they also go into further explanations on the why and how. When it comes to a supplier performance review this is something that is usually completed by the purchasing staff. They gather the necessary information from all the other departments and put together a report which is weighted and which is then reviewed face to face with the supplier. Performance reviews with your suppliers can be good and can also have a more confrontation approach. Remember the idea is to provide corrective measures so the vendor pulls up their socks. For supplier evaluation forms we like www.RFQPro.com. The vendor performance form they offer is the best in the marketplace. It gives you a solid approach and indication of areas to review with your suppliers. As painful as managing your vendor can be sometimes the above gives you a way to do this without reinventing the wheel. Remember managing your vendors properly can save you money and headaches over the long term.

RFP Timelines and Suggestions

There is no simple method to issuing procurement related documents. Documents like request for quote or proposals and there are many more. They are legally binding documents and many companies have had their forms challenged. Vendor A may misinterpret your intention and if the stakes are high enough and they are on the losing end of your bid they sometimes resort to legal avenues to have bids re-tendered or awarded to them as a result of an anomaly in your tender documents. When it comes to the timelines there are many. You have your RFP issue date, the vendor response date, the award date and the project completion date. Sometimes there is a payment schedule which will involve payment being made when certain aspects of the contract are completed. Often called progress payments. Some other tips to help improve your chances at success when issuing a RFQ or RFP:

1. Provide a clear scope. Nothing will be more challenging for the vendor if they cannot have complete confidence in their response to to your request. A vendor response will have built in costs if the scope of work is not clear. These costs are extra as they cannot ascertain exact labor and materials costs so they include a buffer.

2. Provide clear communication before, during and after award. As the purchasing point person or maybe there is a project manager appointed to the job it is your responsibility to ensure all communication is delivered to the bidder.

3. After the award complete an evaluation for your files. It might be a simple one page evaluation on a contractor or it might involve a more detailed vendor performance report. Usually the dollar amount will determine how much effort you place on this task. Purchasing is a very busy and challenging occupation. You need to be constantly changing gears and thoughts during each business day. If you enjoy multi-tasking then a career in purchasing might be well suited. From time to time we all need support and assistance to complete a project and having colleagues or access to resource material to accomplish this task will help you expedite the process.

www.RFQPro.com for edit friendly professional RFQ templates and software and for Negotiation tips and strategies and RFP forms we like www.RFPTemplates.org

Request for Quote

Preparing a Request for Quotation if you are a purchasing person is how you justify your existence. Your job is to ensure you procure the best goods with the quality, delivery and price under the specifications or requirements of the end user in your company. A RFQ can be for everyday essentials and it can be for a very unique or one of item. Something you might buy once every few years. So RFQ's do vary so where should you focus? It is important to remember the 80/20 rule if you are responsible for purchasing for an organization. 20% of the items will account for 80% of your companies spend and as a Buyer do you spend all of your time on the low cost, low impact items or do you spend your efforts on the areas which will have the biggest impact. The latter I hope. To do this you need to complete an analysis on your spend and soliciting the assistance of your accounting department is always a good idea. Ask them to pass over details of your top vendors or the suppliers which you spend the most with every month. This is a good indicator. If you have a system which will allow you to mine data then you can identify items or commodities which have the largest impact on your operation and by identifying these items it will allow you to generate a RFQ to ensure you are getting the best goods for a competitive price. Generating a contract from a RFQ might be your next step as locking in costs for a year or tying it to a related index is a good way to ensure you stay on top of this critical spend. Publishing a request for quote does not have to be overwhelming or time consuming. Finding a sample RFQ on-line will help you expedite the process and even give you ideas on what to include. Let RFQPro.com help as we have free RFQ templates which you can download and we have free Request for Quote Software you can trial.