It is good practice to audit your vendor before you decide on which vendor you want to
work with.
Use a standard approach to audit each vendor and score them on different criteria, this will make the comparison process much easier when you need to decide.
Key items to consider include:
- A company overview including any product specific locations
- Organization, roles and responsibilities, staff training and experience
- Key products and/or service history and development plans
- QMS implementation at company level and for product-related processes
- Development life cycle processes and deliverables
- Development lifecycle support processes
- Service delivery process
- User training
- Product support/maintenance
- Security
- Their use of sub-contractors
Compare Your Vendors and Suppliers
Use your URS to compare vendors.
Document the pros and cons of each vendor.
If you learn something new during the proposal phase don’t hesitate to change your URS.
Remember until the URS gets final approval it is fine to alter or tweak the requirements to suit your needs.
Look for the following
- Knowledge
- Experience
- And Documentation
