ecratum questionnaire module provides a way to automate and track supplier qualification process. With the help of the Questionnaire Module you can :
- Create questionnaires from our catalogs of questions
- Send them out to all or sub-groups of your suppliers
- Track the progress and completion of all the sent questionnaires
- Streamline review of answers (Accept/Reject)
- Automatically send questionnaires when you add new suppliers (with Questionnaire Automation)
- Automatically forward the reviewing of certain answers to one of your users (with Questionnaire Workflows)
| Note: To be able to use this module:
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In this article, you can find the needed information to work with the Questionnaire Module.
- Create a questionnaire
- Send a questionnaire
- Track completion of your sent questionnaires
- Review your supplier's anwsers
- Automate sending off questionnaires
- Setup a workflow for questionnaires
Create a questionnaire
- To start creating a questionnaire, you should go to the Configuration menu in the sidebar and select My Questionnaires.
- Then, click on the Create Questionnaire button top right.
You are now taken to the 3-step process to create a questionnaire.
Step 1 - Naming the questionnaire
- Enter a questionnaire name and press the button on the view to proceed.
Step 2 - Choosing the questions you wish to include
- These are categorized into several catalogs according to the nature of the question. The first catalog contains more general questions and subsequent catalogs are more specialized.
| Note: Questions are not meant to be used in several questionnaires, so you should select carefully which questions you wish to include in a given questionnaire. They will not be available for any future questionnaire you create. |
Step 3 - Rename catalogs and reorder questions
- In this third step, you can rename the catalog to create sections of your choice. You can also reorder the different questions within each section.
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After clicking the Save Questionnaire button bottom right, your questionnaire will be available for sending out.
Send a questionnaire
To send out a questionnaire, you will effectively need to create Question Tasks.
- Click the Add New Task button on the top left of the screen and select Question Task.
Here you can select :
- The company that will receive your questionnaire ( you can also select a group of suppliers to which you can send your questionnaire)
- The questionnaire you wish to send
This will send the questionnaire to all of the companies you selected. In practice, this means that for each question contained in the questionnaire, a question task will be created and sent to the receiver's inbox.
Your suppliers can then decide to deal with each question separately, or they can display the whole questionnaire on one page and provide their answers in one go.
Track completion of your sent questionnaires
Viewing your sent Questionnaires
After sending a questionnaire to your supplier, each individual question will be sent to their Inbox in the form of question tasks.
However you can also check the questionnaires you have sent on the Received Questionnaires Status page, where you can:
- View a list of all the questionnaires you have sent to your suppliers (and filter if you want)
- See the status of each questionnaire (in terms of the number of answers you have accepted vs. total number)
- Click through to the Questionnaire Overview page (see next section)
- Click through to the Questionnaire Preview page directly, where you can review answers
Review your supplier's answers
Reviewing answers in your question tasks
When you send off a questionnaire to your supplier, they receive Question Tasks in their Inbox to which they can provide answers. To get further information about how your suppliers work with Questionnaire Tasks, read this article: How Can I Reply To Questionnaire Tasks As A Supplier?
Whenever they provide an answer to one of your question and send it, you will receive the Question Task back in your Inbox under the state Pending Review.
It is then ready for your review. You may either :
- Accept the answer, in which case the Question Task will close.
- Reject the answer, in which case you will be asked to enter a comment explaining why you have rejected the answer. The Question Task will go back to your supplier's Inbox.
Reviewing answers in your questionnaire preview page
If you wish to review answers to your questionnaire overall, instead of individually for each answer like above, then you can display all the answer together on the Questionnaire Preview page.
- Go to the Questionnaires section in your sidebar as indicated in the screenshot. Click Actions next to your chosen questionnaire and select Preview.
On the Questionnaire Preview, you can view all the questions contained in your Questionnaire and review the answers that have been provided.
Answers provided will appear in state Pending review (see screenshot).
As with reviewing question in the question task, you can :
- Accept the answer, in which case the Question will change to state Accepted and the Question Task will close
- Reject the answer, in which case you will be asked to enter a comment explaining why you have rejected the answer. The question will change to state Rejected and the Question Task will go back to your supplier's Inbox.
Automate sending off questionnaires
You can now configure ecratum to send a questionnaire off automatically:
- to any new supplier, you add to your main list of suppliers which is My Suppliers
- or to any supplier, you add to one of your custom created Supplier groups
This is done by defining a Questionnaire Automation. Any Questionnaire Automation you define on a questionnaire will send the questionnaire to any supplier you have in a supplier group and to any supplier you add to the group in the future.
- To set up questionnaire automation, go to the Configuration and click Automate Questionnaires.
- Click on the New Automation button.
On the following screen you will be asked to :
- Select the group to which you would like to send the questionnaire. This could be for example :
- My Suppliers to send the questionnaire to ALL your suppliers
- [YourSupplierGroupName] to send the questionnaire to the suppliers in one of your custom Supplier Groups
- Select the questionnaire(s) you wish to send off to this group
Setup a workflow for questionnaires
If you would like a particular user to be responsible for all questions of a certain type, you can add a workflow for that user and that question.
Any time that question will be received for review by your company (i.e any time any supplier sends an answer for that question), the corresponding task will be automatically assigned to the user you define in the workflow.
- To setup, a Question Workflow, go to your Configuration menu and click Question Workflows. On the following page, click Create New Question Workflow.
You will then be taken through a multiple step process to define your workflow.
Step 1 - Choose the type of workflow
In your case, you will want to select Sending Tasks as you are the company emitting the Question Tasks. Click Next.
Step 2 - Choose on which company or group for which you wish to define the workflow.
This workflow will only apply to the questions you send to the companies you select here.
Step 3 - Choose the questionnaire and questions which you would like to assign to the workflow
The workflow will only apply to the questions you select here. You can select several questions.
Step 4 - Choose the responsible user
This user will be forwarded for reviewing any question tasks containing the questions you selected in Step 3, received from companies selected in Step 2.
Step 5 - Confirm and create the workflow
Make sure that all of the information is correct and click on Create Workflow to finalize the process.
Once your workflow is created you can come back to your Question Workflows page and delete it if you wish.
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