Vendor Evaluation Process in AX 2012

Like most of the DAXers, I also had a perception about AX 2012.After working with the application for sometime I got habituated in AX 2012 and loved it very much.

Well there are lots of interesting functionalities in AX, which I want to share with you. Lets start with Vendor Evaluation Process today.

These days the growth of the business is flourishing throughout the world with a great extent. And if the business is on Trade & Logistics then most certainly thousands of vendors are associated with it. So out of thousand vendors, it becomes very hard to select the best one. Dynamics AX 2012 provides one functionality where you can evaluate all the vendors. On the basis of the evaluation you can select that vendor for your business purposes. So in this post we will discuss about the Vendor Evaluation Process in AX 2012.

Before starting of the functionality let me give an example. Suppose your organization is doing the business of Laptops (Say Dell Laptops).  Suppose these Dell Laptops are provided by five vendors. We will rate all the vendors and will do business with the best vendor on the basis of the rating. Thus in short, a Vendor Evaluation is needed in order to help the purchasing department to select the best vendor for the specific type of product.

NOTE: For evaluating, we have to first set up the Evaluation Criteria Groups on which the vendors will be rated and then their criteria. For example we create a Vendor evaluation criteria group called Rate all Vendors& then create rating criteria such quality, price, delivery time etc.

For this go to Procurement & Sourcing > Set up > Vendors > Vendor Evaluation Criteria Group.

Now under this evaluation group, we have to enter the criteria’s i.e. the specific factors on which the vendor performance will be evaluated (such as quality, price & delivery time).

For this go to Procurement & Sourcing > Set up > Vendors > Vendor Evaluation Criteria.

NOTE: In this Vendor Evaluation Criteria, create the specific factors by clicking new and associate with it to the Vendor Evaluation Criteria Group.

Now once all the factors have been created and have been associated with the Vendor Evaluation Criteria Group, the next step is to assign the groups of evaluation criteria to the procurement categories & products for which the associate vendors should be rated.

For this go to Procurement & Sourcing > Set up > Categories > Procurement Categories

IMPORTANT NOTE: Create a Procurement category where this Dell Laptops are associated and associate this category with the Procurement category hierarchy.

Now select the category on the left pane (say Dell as per our example) and expand the Vendor Evaluation Criteria group fast tab. Now click on add.

When you will click add, a box will come consisting of all the Vendor Evaluation Criteria Groups (on left side) with its criteria’s associated with it (on the right side). Click Select and Ok for the groups that you want to evaluate.

NOTE: I have associated two more groups Product Development & Custom Installation along with Rate all vendors group.

The next step is to add all the vendors who are associated with the supply of the Dell Laptops.

For this go to Procurement & Sourcing > Set up > Categories > Procurement Categories

Select Dell on the left pane and expand the vendor fast tab. Click add to add

Now we can rate a vendor performance across a set of criteria for a procurement category.

For this in the vendor fast tab select a vendor and click evaluation. A box will appear where you have to select the ratings on the basis of the performance of that particular vendor.

In this way evaluate the ratings of all the vendors and select that vendor on the basis of performance for the purchasing purposes.

In this Initial post I just want to create the positive impression on AX2012 and will be updating interesting functionalities in procurement and sourcing soon.