Now that you’ve shortlisted suppliers who look good on paper, it’s time to see if they live up to their promises. This evaluation gate lets you peek under the hood to further investigate three key areas:
How closely the supplier matches the characteristics of your ‘ideal’ supplier.
The quality of their products and solutions and how well they meet your school’s needs.
The supplier’s onboarding process to ensure a smooth start to the service, should they be appointed.
Here are some useful tips for evaluating
suppliers during Evaluation Gate 3:
To maximise the benefits of this evaluation gate, prepare a list of questions up front. For inspiration, revisit your definition of the ideal supplier (covered in the Define Phase), with your adjudication panel to include their diverse perspectives. Once you’ve compiled your questions, write them down. This ensures you ask each shortlisted supplier the same questions, allowing for fair comparison.
We recommend not diving to commercial matters with suppliers at this stage. Instead, concentrate on assessing the suppliers’ capabilities and their products and solutions. This approach will help you clearly identify which suppliers are ready to move to the final evaluation gate, where pricing and other commercial matters will be addressed.
We advise that each adjudication committee member individually completes their scorecards, and avoid group evaluations. This method is vital for preventing dominant voices from drowning out quieter ones, thus capturing diverse perspectives. Once scorecards are submitted, we’ll issue an updated Supplier Report Card showing individual scores for each supplier across various evaluation categories, accurately reflecting the committee’s collective assessment.
LaunchLab, Hammanshand Road, Stellenbosch, South Africa
LaunchLab, Hammanshand Road, Stellenbosch, South Africa
