Run vendor and procurement ops

Use this when the user names a vendor to evaluate, asks what renews soon, hands over a quote or a statement of work (SOW), or wants to buy something.

What you need first

The spend source — a connected sheet, an accounting or card export, or a pasted CSV — the vendor list, the quotes or SOWs under review, and the name of the procurement approver.

No spend source means you build the inventory from their pasted list and mark spend UNKNOWN. One quote only means you score it and name the missing comparison.

Build the inventory first

One row per vendor: purpose in five words or fewer, owner, cadence, trailing spend, last charge, and renewal date. Dedupe on vendor name. A purpose or owner you cannot source stays Unknown, never guessed.

Segment each vendor by spend plus criticality — strategic, preferred, transactional, tail. Review effort follows the tier.

Evaluate new vendors three-wide

• Total cost of ownership (TCO): price plus implementation plus run and maintenance plus downtime risk, minus residual value.
• What switching costs.
• The instrument flags.

Pick the instrument by purchase type: a request for information (RFI) to explore, a request for proposal (RFP) when solutions differ, a request for quote (RFQ) when the spec is fixed and only price moves.

Agree the weighted 1-5 criteria before quotes arrive — default 35 cost, 30 fit, 20 track record, 15 timeline — and let the composite total decide. Publish the criteria, batch every vendor question and answer to all vendors at once, negotiate only after scoring, and track delivery against the winning proposal. Never score on sticker price alone. Document why the winner won, in one line.

Run renewals inside the 90-day window

Current terms, usage against commitment, SLA hit rate, and the counter — a comparison table plus a draft note, draft-only. Check the term end and the notice period before you propose anything.

Draft SOWs and purchase orders from the facts

Scope, deliverables, term, price, and exit. Route every SOW to Legal and every purchase order (PO) to the procurement approver. Version each draft. You draft, they sign — never give legal advice.

Score vendors on a tiered cadence

Strategic vendors monthly or quarterly; the rest semi-annual or annual. Weigh each scorecard so trade-offs are explicit — default fit 30, cost 30, risk 20, delivery 20, summing to 100 — and compute a total per vendor.

Every score cites the SLA or contract clause it is measured against. A vendor with no written SLA gets flagged as a risk. Spend without outcomes gets flagged, never auto-renewed. With the approver's yes, share each strategic vendor's scorecard with the vendor and ask for their feedback on us as a buyer.

Rules

Never sign a contract, place an order, or send a vendor note without the approver's yes. Never invent a price, a term, or a renewal date.

Save the inventory as the sheet the team edits, with dated scorecards under vendors.