Field notes
Building a fair supplier scorecard without drowning in metrics
Four measures that usually survive a first steering-committee debate, and why equal weights can mislead.
Scorecards fail when every stakeholder adds a favourite metric. Delivery on-time percentage, quality complaints, price variance, invoice accuracy, and responsiveness to change requests are all valid — yet a twelve-row scorecard rarely gets filled honestly.
We usually begin with four fields: on-time delivery against confirmed dates, quality incidents per shipment or batch, invoice match rate on first presentation, and a short qualitative note on commercial responsiveness. That last field needs a rubric, not a free-text rant, so raters score against the same examples.
Equal weights flatter mediocre performance. A packaging supplier that ships late but invoices cleanly should not outrank one that ships reliably with occasional paperwork friction. Agree weights in a workshop before anyone sees first-cycle numbers; otherwise the debate shifts to defending favourite vendors.
Publish the scoring window and data sources in advance. Suppliers deserve to know whether delivery dates come from your WMS or from their ASN portal. Transparency reduces the “gotcha” feeling when scores appear in a renewal meeting.