Vendor scorecard

A vendor scorecard is worth having for one reason: it makes two suppliers comparable. Without it, a renewal decision is made from whoever had the most recent bad experience, and a supplier that has been quietly excellent for three years loses to one that made a memorable mistake last month. Set your weights across delivery, quality, price, responsiveness and compliance, score the supplier out of ten on each, and the sheet returns each criterion's contribution, the weighted total out of 100, and how far that sits above or below your review threshold. On the worked example weights of 30, 30, 20, 10 and 10 against scores of 8, 7, 6, 9 and 8 give 74, four points clear of a 70 threshold.

The weights are the argument, not the scores

Two people will usually agree within a point on whether a supplier delivers on time. What they disagree about is whether delivery matters more than price, and that argument is worth having once, in the weights, rather than every year in the scores. Setting them to total 100 keeps the result readable as a percentage.

Each criterion's contribution is shown separately

Delivery at 8 against a weight of 30 contributes 24; price at 6 against a weight of 20 contributes 12. Seeing the contributions rather than only the total is what makes the score actionable, because it names which criterion to raise with the supplier.

The threshold turns a number into a decision

A score with nothing to compare it to is trivia. Set the level below which a supplier goes on the review list, and 74 against 70 becomes a keep while 66 becomes a conversation before the notice window closes.