A Vendor Profile is a questionnaire (or multiple questionnaires) that you can invite vendors to complete. Unlike and traditional RFI, a Vendor Profile does not have a due date. The vendor can access their responses anytime and keep them updated.
Additionally, you can enable Vendor Profiles for scoring to help you with your "Pre-selection" process, AND, your Vendors will like them because they can go back in at any time and update their responses if anything changes on their end.
The goal of a Vendor Profile is to be able to shortlist vendors for specific projects. It's the modern day "Rolodex".
Vendor Profiles behave much like RFPs. You craft questions, invite participants, and view results. But these Profiles never officially "close". You can technically set a date you'd like them to respond by, or you can send them a note at the end of the year for example and ask them annually to update their Profiles so you can be assured that you have the most current info on all your Vendors.
Consultants
If you are consultant, for example, and you have a client need for Web Design. You can access your previously published Web Design Vendor Profile and review, filter, etc. through the responses and see what vendors can fit your client's needs.Procurement Managers
The same holds true for companies with stakeholder needs. If your sales organization needs a CRM and you have been tracking technology vendors, you might have asked the right questions to identify good possible candidates.Vendor Qualifications
One great use of Vendor Profiles is setting up a questionnaire to qualify vendors. Many companies make new vendors fill out Word forms (we have seen our share). If you setup a simple Vendor Profile with these question, you can easily gather and track the characteristics of your vendors.There are a variety of uses of Vendor Profiles. If you'd like to discuss, please contact us.
Create a Vendor Profile