As I mentioned last time, Ardent Partners’ Category Sourcing Scorecard is now available by clicking here (reg. required) and brought to you by BravoSolution.

For those of you who have not heard about the Scorecard which we based this Excel-format file on this series of articles on CPO Rising.

For those of you who have downloaded the file, we are including an overview of the instructions below. If questions or issues arise, please feel free to email me (or the Bravo contact noted in the file) and we answer any questions and work with you to ensure you’re comfortable using it.

As a reminder, the purpose of this tool is to provide a framework to help sourcing teams identify and then prioritize the different categories of spend into a sourcing pipeline. The Scorecard helps sourcing teams evaluate different categories across a standard set of sourcing considerations or factors; it also provides a framework so those factors may be quantified and compared. The end result is a sourcing “score” and a series of considerations and recommendations for each category that can then be used to rank order categories for sourcing and allocate resources.

User Instructions

1. The Category Sourcing Scorecard was designed to rank a wide range of direct, indirect, and service categories for enterprises across a wide-range of industries. As such, the responses given to any survey question and the overall category score that is generated must be viewed in the context of a specific sourcing team and group of categories. That is to say that an individual category score is much more useful when a comparison can be made to other categories; this helps determine the relative opportunity that exists in sourcing the category and relative prioritization that each category deserves.

2. The Category Sourcing Scorecard uses a survey mechanism to ask sourcing teams a set of 22 multiple choice questions. Please complete the entire survey.

3. All entries are made on the “Category Sourcing Scorecard” worksheet.

4. Once every question is answered, the “Executive Report” worksheet summarizes the category sourcing opportunity by providing an overall score, a spider chart of the unique factor scores, an analysis and discussion of the specific factors that must be considered and some high-level recommendations before setting a final sourcing strategy.

5. Note that the scorecard provides a directional indication as to the relative ease of and potential gain from sourcing a specific category. Results from the use of this scorecard are not guaranteed and should be validated by an experienced sourcing professional.

6. When different professionals on the same sourcing team are completing this scorecard for different categories, baseline parameters should be set in answering the survey questions. For example:  setting ranges for the “High” “Average” & “Low” answers to the question “What is the annual dollar savings potential from sourcing this category?” will help ensure consistency to the process and results.

7. The entire workbook has been formatted for printing. Hit Ctrl+P and select either the active sheet(s) or the entire workbook.

Click here to download the Ardent Partners’ Category Sourcing Scorecard.

Tagged in: Category Management, Category Sourcing Scorecard, Sourcing