This article details the Multi-Party Evaluation (MPE) tool, which allows multiple people to take part in the same evaluation, managed by the Buyer. It provides step-by-step instructions for Buyers on how to start, manage, and complete an MPE for a request or tender. 

Prerequisites

• The Buyer manages the evaluation and can invite participants via email. These participants do not need an account to conduct their evaluation.

• You must be the Buyer and be directly logged into the buying account to access the MPE process.

  • Note: Administrators impersonating a Buyer cannot access their MPE process.

• If MPE has been enabled for your enterprise, it can be turned on and off at a Local Group level.

• You must have unlocked the responses before recording your decision.

• If you do not currently have access to use the MPE tool, contact your Administrator or Customer Success Manager to enquire about purchasing an MPE license.

• Price is not suggested as an evaluation criterion as it is displayed on the X-Axis of the results graph. 

Steps

1. Start Multi-Party Evaluation

1. You can view your responses by clicking the green people icon to the right of your request or tender.
   

2. You will need to have unlocked the responses before recording your decision.

3. When viewing your unlocked responses, click the Start Multi-Party Evaluation button.
   

2. Summary

This is the first step of the MPE where you will find the following: an overview of Request and Buyer details, an overview of submitted response, the option to exclude responses (optional), and the creation of Teams (optional).

1. Review RFx, Buyer and response information as needed.
   

2. If required, exclude any responses to your Request by clicking on the Included link next to the relevant response.
   

3. If required, add your Evaluation Teams to your Request. This can be entered as free text.
   

   • MPE teams allow users to organise evaluators into groups that are assigned specific criteria.

   • If teams are used, they are allocated the relevant criteria before the Buyer invites the evaluators into their designated teams.

   • Evaluators can only see and evaluate the criteria that have been assigned to their team.

4. Click on the Next button when you are ready to move on to the next step. 

3. Criteria

Set up the criteria for the evaluation. You can either select to use an existing Criteria Template or create your own Criteria.

1. Choose your pricing evaluation method from the 3 options:

   • Independent Factor (recommended): Pricing is excluded from evaluations until the results step, where the evaluation scores are then compared against the pricing submitted, to create a Value for Money graph. This holds response Scores on the X axis, and Pricing on the Y axis.

   • Price Auto-scored: Buyers are able to choose to have prices evaluated automatically, in line with their other manual evaluations. Buyers choose the weighting given to the price and are given the opportunity to confirm/amend the given price on the Prices step. The Price score is then factored alongside the other evaluation criteria, to receive a single, whole score for the response.

   • Price Manual: Buyers are able to choose to disable price evaluations in order to allow you to include price as a normal criteria, which is to be manually scored by your evaluators.

   • If using 'Auto-scored criterion,' enter the weighting to be given to the price.
     

2. Add/Select Criteria:

   • If using a criteria template: 
     - Select a template from the dropdown menu and click on the Load template button. 
     - You can make changes to any of the criterion in the template, or you can remove them by clicking on the red X button. 
     - You can also add new criteria to the list using the Add criteria button at the bottom of the page.

   • If creating your own criteria: 
     - Click on the Add a criterion button to add your first criteria. 
     - Name the Criteria and give it a description for evaluators to reference. 
     - Decide how many levels the criteria should be scored from (2 - 11), and add/remove levels as required. 
     - You may also name the levels as appropriate. Repeat this until all necessary criteria have been added.
     

3. Set Weighting and Allocation:

   • A minimum of 2 and a maximum of 25 Criteria may be set.

   • Add weighting for each criterion (may be easier once you have added all criteria).

   • Weighting may be customised. Criteria are locked when moving to the consensus step, but the weighting of the criteria can be adjusted up until the results are entered and confirmed. An audit log is added to the end of the PDF report showing what was changed, including the new and previous values.

   • Criteria must be evaluated between 2 (Boolean) and 11 (0-10).

   • Criterion titles, Description, and Levels may be named in free-text.

   • If using MPE Teams, allocate the criterion/criteria to the appropriate Team(s) that you set in the Summary step.

4. Click on the Next button when you are ready to move on to the next step. 

4. Evaluators

Add your Evaluators and customise evaluation settings and document access. The Buyer running the Evaluation is automatically listed as an Evaluator.

1. Add Evaluators: Enter their name, email address, assigning them to a team (if using) and clicking on the Add button.
   

   • Evaluators do not need to be registered on VendorPanel - a Unimarket Company.

   • A minimum of 2 Evaluators are needed (the buyer is counted as one evaluator).

   • Clicking the Add button does not immediately send them the invite.

   • Evaluators can be excluded at any point.

   • If an invitation to an evaluator does not reach its recipient and is 'bounced' by their domain name, an onscreen notification will appear notifying you of the email bounce.

2. Select the Choose comment settings button to select either Disabled, Optional or Required for:

   • Overall response comments - one comment for each response.

   • Response criteria comments - comments for each response/criterion combination.
     
     
     
     

3. Select the Choose document access button to select what documents are available for the Evaluators to access. This includes a 'no-price' option for each document which excludes the quoted prices from the Supplier's responses.
   
   
   
   

4. Select the Customise invitation email text button to provide a custom message for Evaluators with instructions or background. This is optional.
   
   
   
   

5. When you are ready to send the invitations, click on the checkbox next to each Evaluator and then click on the Send invite(s) button.
   
    

   • Please note: Once invitations have been sent to the evaluators, adding criteria or removing levels may result in completed evaluators needing to do more work. If needed, evaluators' statuses will be updated - further communication and re-inviting evaluations may be required. 
     Other changes may mean any completed evaluations should be re-considered: 
     Criteria & levels (when changing the meaning of a criterion or any levels) 
     Levels (when re-ordering levels if it changes the way an evaluator would interpret them or when adding new levels that an evaluator may have chosen had they had the chance).

6. Once Evaluations are received with all criteria being evaluated at least once, you may continue to the next step.

7. Once all evaluators have submitted their responses, click on the Next button when you are ready to move on to the next step.
   
   

   • Please note: Continuing to the next step will mean that you will no longer be able to invite or exclude any evaluators, or change any of the evaluation criteria. Evaluators will no longer be able to edit their responses. 

5. Consensus

Review the final scores for all responses for all evaluators.

1. View consensus results. The marked level is the average rating from all participants.
   

2. View individual Evaluators' results including their comments provided by clicking on the option at the bottom of each supplier's evaluation details.
   
    

3. Meet with your Evaluators to discuss the results of their evaluations. Discuss these with your team internally and make any changes to the consensus results where required. Adjust the scores/results for each response, if necessary.

4. Add in private notes in the private 'Comments/Notes' section to explain the change in result.

5. Click on the Next button when you are ready to move on to the next step. This will lock the consensus categorisation for each supplier and you will no longer be able to edit the categorisation of any vendor responses. 

6. Prices

Review pricing. Update prices based on discussions or options provided in the Supplier's response.

1. Re-examine the pricing provided by Suppliers.

2. Add private notes to explain or justify the changes to the original pricing.

3. Click on the Next button when you are ready to move on to the next step. Prices may be edited until the Results step has been completed and confirmed.
   

7. Results

Review the final results of your evaluation.

1. Compare Supplier responses on the graph. If using Independent factor pricing evaluations, Supplier responses are charted on a graph that compares their evaluation result (Y-Axis) with their final price (X-Axis).

2. In the table under Vendor responses, accept (select the tick option) or decline (select the X option) each supplier response.
   

3. Click the Supplier's name to add accept/decline notes, or private notes. At this step, you can select the 'do not send an accept/decline email' option here.
    

4. Click on the Next button when you are ready to move on to the next step. 

8. Confirm

Complete the MPE process.

1. To complete your Multi-Party Evaluation, click the Confirm button. This will pull your results and decisions into Go To Market on the responses page.
   
   

Results / Validation

• Your results and decisions are pulled into Go To Market on the responses page. 

• Buyers can generate a draft PDF report at any stage of the MPE process. The document is identified as a draft at the top of the report and amended to the bottom of all pages. This can be downloaded on the Summary tab of the MPE at any time. 
   

• You can download the final Multi-party evaluation report in PDF format using the Download Multi-Party Evaluation button. 

  

What's Next / Related

• Finalise the request to lock your decision.

• If you have not finalised the request and you need to make any changes to your evaluation, you can select the Restart Multi-Party Evaluation button which will restart your evaluation. The evaluations you already completed and the information you have entered will be saved. However, you will need to step through each tab again to complete the evaluation and confirm your decision.
  
  

• Complete a Multi-Party Evaluation (MPE) Survey

• View Supplier Responses to a Request

• Finalize a Request or Tender

Troubleshooting

• Need to make changes after Confirming? Select the Restart Multi-Party Evaluation button. Your completed evaluations will be saved, but you will need to step through each tab again to complete and confirm.

• Evaluator invitation 'bounced'? An onscreen notification will appear.

• Changing Criteria/Levels after sending invites? This may require completed evaluators to do more work, and the statuses will update.

• Cannot access MPE as Admin? You must be directly logged into the buying account. 

Limits & Notes

• Criterion limits: Minimum of 2 and maximum of 25 criteria.

• Scoring levels: Criteria must be evaluated between 2 (Boolean) and 11 (0-10).

• Evaluators: Minimum of 2 needed (Buyer is 1).

• Report: A final PDF version is available to download on the Responses page after the evaluation is completed.

• An audit log is added to the end of the PDF report showing what was changed, including the new and previous values. 

• When providing feedback to a supplier as in the Results step, the maximum length is 4,000 characters.

• Once the request is finalised in Go To Market, no changes can be made to the evaluation.

Appendix - Field Character Limits