Proponents of single sourcing will identify value for money in the close working relationship, saved time through removal of ramp up requirements and extensive knowledge of the organisation. So why do procurement professionals frown upon single sourcing to the point of implementing policies and extended approvals in an attempt to deter it?
Establishing a detailed and concise set of response criteria not only facilitates the extraction of key information in vendors responses, helping to align their solution with the actual requirements, it also allows easier evaluation and scoring of those responses, but not all criteria has equal importance. This is where applying a method of weighting the criteria provides the ability to define which criterion will have the greatest benefit to delivering the requirement and is therefore more important. But the question is, should the weighting be published as part of the invitation for offer, or should it be for internal information only?