Introducing Grading and Scoring in Guided Sourcing Events

The optional grading and scoring feature enables project owners with the ability to create an objective comparison model to help choose between suppliers.

Scoring can be enabled in the event rules, by activating the Enable scoring on participant responses rule.

Weight points can be assigned to the parts of the event content according to their importance, then supplier responses are graded to produce an overall score for each supplier.

Grading and scoring can be used to:

• Analyze an event that contains a large amount of content or receives many supplier responses.

• Make objective decisions when awarding suppliers.

• Define and numerically rank the factors in making purchasing decision.

• Calculate the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) offer.

Grading and scoring also supports the following capabilities in guided sourcing events:

• Team grading enables multiple team members to grade supplier responses for an event.
  • The individual grades are used to calculate a consensus grade.
  • Team members can grade suppliers' alternative bids, and Project Owners can review and adjust the consensus grade.
  • Assign weights to graders to increase or decrease the value of the scores the graders specify.
  • Use grading groups to control which user groups can score content sections or items.
• Automatic grading (auto-grading or pre-grading) can be configured to have the system automatically grade supplier responses.
• Scorecards provides an overview and export all event content and grading details in a guided sourcing event.
• Blind grading can be used if external graders should not see the participant identity or profile during the grading process to increase the level of objectivity and remove bias.

In guided sourcing events, you can also define terms using the Current Minimum Value and Current Maximum Value formula functions. These functions return the minimum or maximum value of all submitted values for a term, which can be useful when comparing responses for scoring.

Weight points are used to rate the importance of each piece of content where the more weight points that are assigned to each piece of content, the more that content contributes toward the final score.

Weights must be assigned before publishing an event.

On the event Create page, the Set weight button in the Items that need quotes or the Questions, requirements, and attachments panels can be used to open the Set grading weight page and assign weight points.

For each hierarchical content, Overall weight shows how that content contributes toward the final score based on the following formula:

The following table demonstrates how the hierarchy weight and the parent-level total weight values are used to calculate the hierarchy overall weight for each content item:

Question 1 has a hierarchy weight of 60%, and Section 1, its parent category, has a total weight of 70%. Therefore, the combined hierarchy weight of Question 1 is 42% as a result of 60% times 70%.

The Subtotal weight and Total weight values should not exceed 100%. If the values exceed 100%, the system does not allow you to save the weight points.

After publishing an event, you can use the Display → Scoring option in the Items that need quotes, the Allocate awards, or the Questions, requirements, and attachments panel on the event page to open the Scoring page and view the weight points assigned to each piece of content.