operations-vendor-evaluationlisted

# Vendor Evaluation and Scoring ## Purpose Vendor selections are commonly decided by whichever demo landed best and then justified with a matrix built afterwards, whose weightings were chosen to produce the answer already reached. This skill sequences the work so the weights and the scoring anchors are fixed before any vendor contact, applies pass/fail gates that no commercial score can override, and requires evidence per score so the decision survives challenge. ## Prerequisites - **Inputs:** the problem being solved and the process it supports — ideally a validated map from `operations-process-mapping`; the budget envelope and the decision deadline; the named decision owner and the evaluation panel. - **Access:** security, data protection, legal, and finance reviewers; the users who will operate the tool daily; the incumbent's actual cost and performance data if this is a renewal. - **Required:** written requirements before vendor contact. If requirements are written after seeing a demo, they will describe that vendor. If the requirements or the weightings cannot be agreed before evaluation begins, stop and get them agreed. Everything downstream is decoration otherwise. ## Data classification **Confidential.** Pricing, scoring, and vendor commercial submissions are restricted to the panel; many are received under non-disclosure terms — check and honour them. Never send personal data, customer records, or production data to a vendor for trial or proof of con