View Categories

How to Evaluate Your Vendors with ScopeMatch

0:00 4:13

Overview #

Vendor Management turns vendor evaluation into one shared, repeatable process. You define the steps and the documents you need. Vendors join through a link and upload what you ask for in their own secure supplier portal. Your team reviews, comments and decides in one place.

Use the same process for new vendors, re-evaluations, customer-requested evaluations and project evaluations.

Before You Start #

  • The Vendor Management add-on on a Basic, Pro or Premium plan. The person who purchases it becomes its Admin.
  • The steps your team follows to evaluate a vendor, and the documents you need at each step.
  • The colleagues who review and approve vendors.
  • Contact details for the vendors you want to evaluate. Vendors do not need the add-on or a paid plan.

Steps #

Step 1: Design your evaluation workflow #

Go to Evaluation Workflow > Customize Workflows and create a workflow. For each stage, add a name, a colour, a description, checklist items and the documents it requires.

For each required document, choose who provides it:

  • Vendor uploads this document: the request appears in the vendor’s supplier portal.
  • Staff upload: your team adds it, and the vendor does not see it.

Duplicate a workflow to create variants, for example for projects or re-evaluations, and archive the ones you no longer use.

Step 2: Set up your team #

Go to Team and add your colleagues as Admin, Manager, Reviewer or Viewer. You can then assign an evaluator to each vendor.

Step 3: Bring your vendors in #

  • With an invitation link: go to Invitation Links, create a link with a title and description, and choose the workflow it belongs to. Send the link to your vendors. You can see how many people opened it, joined the workflow and signed up.
  • Directly: go to All Vendors, add the vendor’s company and locations, and optionally choose a workflow, an assignee and a risk level.

Step 4: What your vendor does #

When a vendor opens your invitation link, ScopeMatch takes them through four short steps:

  • Open the invite and see who invited them and which workflow they are joining.
  • Sign in or create a free ScopeMatch account.
  • Confirm their company profile. A headquarters location is required.
  • Join the workflow. They appear in the first stage of your workflow.

The vendor then finds Inquiries in their workspace switcher: a secure supplier portal that lists every buyer evaluating them, the current stage (for example, “Stage 2 of 4”), the documents you requested, and a Discussion & Feedback thread with your team. They can upload a new file or reuse one from their company profile. Files are shared only with your evaluation team.

Step 5: Review what they submit #

Open Documents and the Document Review page. Give each submission a status: Pending Review, Approved, Rejected or Changes Requested. The vendor sees the status in their portal and can fix and re-upload a file when you ask for changes. Each document has its own comment thread for file-specific questions.

On Pro and Premium, Document Intelligence adds a short AI summary of each document, so reviewers see the key facts first.

Step 6: Work through the checklist and stages #

Open the vendor from the workflow board, from All Vendors, or from the vendor view of a supply list. Tick off each checklist item, add details where needed, and drag the vendor’s card to the next stage when everything is done. The vendor’s progress updates in their portal.

Use Internal Notes for comments that stay on your side, and Discussion & Feedback for anything the vendor should see.

Step 7: Decide and record the result #

Move the vendor to your final stage and set their risk rating (Low, Medium or High). The vendor’s workflow, stage, risk, incidents and document status then show on their card in your supply lists, and on Pro and Premium, Network Atlas uses this data in its risk scores.

Step 8: Keep the evaluation current #

Approval is not the end. Watch Expiry Alerts for documents that expire within 30 days, log incidents when something goes wrong, and run a re-evaluation for key vendors once a year.

Learn more: Keep Vendor Compliance Current

Tips #

  • Keep workflows short; three to five stages is usually enough.
  • Ask vendors only for the documents you will actually review.
  • Create one invitation link per workflow, so vendors land in the right process.
  • Assign one evaluator per vendor so nothing falls between people.

What’s Next #

Need help? Contact us at helprequest@scopematch.com.

What are your Feelings