Measuring vendor performance is a good and worthy goal. It can also be very difficult. The first decision Buyers must make is what exactly will they measure.
It probably won't be how fast they get answers to their questions or how quickly billing discrepancies are resolved, though those would be interesting facts to learn. More likely, metrics will include delivery time (on site physical response time if it's a service-based commodity like copy machine repair) delivery accuracy, and number of backorders.
Here are three reasons why Buyers should track metrics:
1) To establish a base line service level and then monitor improvement
2) To have something to compare new vendor proposals against during the next bidding phase for that commodity
3) To determine where in the ordering/delivery process changes should be implemented to improve efficiency
What do you think is the most important vendor metric your organization tracks?
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