This Guide covers:

• Introduction to Assessments
  
  
• Building an Assessment Template
• Creating Templates
• Assessment Scoring & Evaluating Assessments
  
  
• Sending Assessments

1. Creating a Project
2. Selecting a Template (or Creating a New One)
3. Assessment Details
4. Sending Assessments
   
   

• Notifications

Introduction

The Authenticate Assessments module enables you to create questionnaire templates and then issue these to your direct and indirect suppliers, eliminating the need for spreadsheets and enabling you to focus physical audits in the areas of most interest.

The module has several key concepts:

• Templates: This is a list of questions you want to ask your suppliers - for example, worker welfare, sustainability. Creating templates should be given a lot of consideration as you want them to stay the same over time so you can compare supplier performance.

• Scoring: Templates can have scores associated with each question. These scores can then be viewed in two ways – as a “Risk” score or a “Compliance” score. If risk scoring is selected, reports assume low scores are good. If Compliance scoring is selected, high scores are considered good.  

• Projects: When you want to send out a template to suppliers, you create a project. A project is a convenient way to track a group of assessments allowing you to see progress and report on aggregated results. Each project is associated with one template. Projects might be used to group periods of activity – for example, “Worker Welfare Assessment Q1 2020”.

• Assessor: The assessments in a project can be managed (i.e. you will carry out the assessment on the supplier), or self (the supplier will complete the assessment).

Creating Templates

Templates are predefined collections of questions that you will use to assess suppliers. You can set up as many templates as you like. As far as possible, templates should remain static once created so you can compare performance over time and see that you are reducing risk and improving the quality of your supply chain.  

Templates can either be created during the creation of a new project or directly, from the 'Assessments' area, from there navigate to the 'Assessment Templates', and then select 'Create Template' from the sub-navigation menu.

If creating a template from the My Templates area, click “Create Template”

Scoring Type

The first screen asks you to name the new template at select a scoring mechanism. The scoring mechanism

• Risk - low scores are good
• Compliance - high scores are good 
• Audit - 

Grades

You then can associate grades with a template, click “Manage grades for your template” and assign score ranges to each grade. Adding grades always starts from 0, up to 100%. In the example below 0-29% would score grade D and 30% - 59% grade C.   

Sections and Questions

You can now proceed to build your template. Templates are made up of sections and questions. Sections are used to both group questions and provide “sub-scores” for a template that you can use to compare suppliers. For example, you might have a farm assessment template that contains sections for Animal welfare, Environment & Sustainability, and Worker welfare. You can then compare suppliers on their overall assessment score as well as plot comparison charts by section. (See next section evaluating assessment results).

If you indicate that a section is not applicable to all companies you might assess, you can add a tag to the section. When you issue assessments, this enables you to choose whether to include this section.  

For example, if you had a general supplier onboarding assessment with an extra section if the supplier was a farm, you could tag this section “Farms only”. When you create a project and issue an assessment, you would send the assessments out in two batches. First to non-farms. In this process, you would not include the tagged section.

Secondly, you would send out the assessment to farms and indicate in the Assessment details screen that you wanted to include the farm section. This enables you to maintain the ability to compare companies across common sections and ask for specialist information as well.  

For each question you add to a section, the above screen is shown. Question responses can be of the following types:  

• Single response from a list: You can provide a list of options, for each option you can specify the “category” of this response – e.g. Excellent, Satisfactory and also provide a score for that answer.  
• Multiple responses from a list: You can provide a list of options from which multiple items can be selected. Each answer is associated with a category and a score. The score for the question can either be leading (the score of the highest answer will be used) or cumulative (the score for all the selected options will be added up)
• Text response: The response to the question is free text and is not scored.   
• Numerical response: The response to the question is a number and is not scored 
• Percentage response: The response to the question is a percentage and is not scored 
• Sub-questions: The question is made up of a series of sub-questions. Each sub-question can have a numeric or percentage response. These questions do not count toward the assessment score.

Below is an example of a question created with the type of single response from a list. If the user selects “weekly” or “monthly” as the answer, these will be categorised as excellent and contribute 4 points to the overall score.  

At any point, from the template screen under “My templates”, you can reorder the questions in a section, or reorder the sections by clicking the “order” button. To edit a section or a question, click the “manage” drop-down and select what you want to do.  

Dependant Questions

Questions can be included in an assessment and triggered based on a response given from either a single-response or multiple-response question type only. 

When building the template first add your single-response or multiple-response trigger question. Once you had added your trigger question and set the list of responses, then add your dependent question. 

When adding the dependent question you will first need to enter the question text and select 'How should this question be answered?' once you have set these additional options will be displayed. You can then select the question and which responce it is dependent on.

Once you are happy with the template, click “publish” and it is then available to send for completion.

Assessment Scoring & Evaluating Assessments

Assessment scores are calculated by working out the maximum possible score for a template, for a supplier (given which dependent questions are triggered) and then calculating the supplier score as the sum of the responses they have provided. The ratio of the responses to the total score provides the percentage.

For example, if an assessment template has three questions as illustrated below  

Question 1 (single list option) Answers

1. 0 points
2. 5 points  
3. 10 points

Question 2 (Multi-select, cumulative scoring)  

1. 1 point
2. 1 point
3. 1 point

Question 3 (single list option, dependent on Question 1, answer A)

1. 0 points
2. 5 points  
3. 10 points

For different suppliers, the scores and percentages are shown below

There are five ways to evaluate assessments  

1.	Individual scorecard: Available from the individual assessment response screen (got to Assessments Dashboard, Select a project -> View assessments then click on an individual assessment). This shows a breakdown of the supplier scores for each section, the number of responses by category (excellent, satisfactory etc) as well as the responses for each question.
2.	Comparison scorecard: The comparison scorecard shows how a supplier performed against the average, both for each section and individual questions. This can be used to help suppliers focus on the right areas to improve performance and enable you to focus on managing risk for that supplier.
3.	Question level report: The question level report shows how the responses to each question breakdown so you can understand trends – i.e. did most people select option [A] for question [x]. It also enables you to understand areas of weakness in your supply chain – i.e. is there an area where lots of suppliers score badly.
4.	Outcome report: The outcome report (available from the reports menu) summarises each supplier's performance and gives two overviews – the total responses by performance category (Excellent, Satisfactory etc.) and Average section scores v average total
5.	Reports / Comparison Scorecard: The comparison scorecard available from the reports menu enables you to see a statistical summary of responses for a template. The summary shows how the best and worst performance compares to the average for each section and how each question contributes to these totals.

1. Creating a Project

In order to send out an assessment you will need to create a new project. From the main menu, select

“Assessments” within the ‘Tools’ area then “Create Project” from the sub-navigation menu displayed at the top of the page or below the project counts.

 Each project consists of the following fields:  

Name > Enter a unique name to identify your project when running reports or viewing assessments Project Owner (who is responsible) > The project owner is the only user who can close or edit the details. Deadline > Set an optional target date for completing and closing the project Description > Enter a description of your project to reference its purpose

2. Selecting a Template

Each project is associated with one assessment template to allow comparable supplier assessments to be added to the projects.  

You might create multiple projects to manage assessment using the same template to monitor individual progress, i.e. by year, business area or supplier group. When assigning a template to a project you can reuse an existing template, create a new one or copy an existing template and modify it.

1. Create New Template - Create a new template by entering a template name and using the builder to create sections and questions before continuing.
   
   
2. Use Existing Template- select an existing template
   • Authenticate default templates (if available)  
   • Published templates (created or shared with my company)
   • Draft Templates (navigate to the template to finish building it).  
     
     
3. Copy Existing Template - copy an existing template to change and complete before sending

Please note: The Template assigned to a project can only be updated whilst the project is in draft status and no assessments have been sent.

3. Assessment Details

After a project & template have been selected the next step is to define who is answering the assessment, when it is due and who can see the responses

1. Overview – Summarises the information entered in previous screens.
   
   
2. Who is answering – Select whether the assessments will be answered by the supplier (self-assessment) or a user/assessor from your company (managed)
   
   
3. Responsible – Select one or more users responsible for answering the assessment (managed only) and reviewing and closing the assessment (any type)
   • Only selected users will see tasks on their homepage to answer or review / complete assessments created by their company
   • Standard users can only see assessments they are assigned to  
4. Dates– Assessment Timetable
   • Due Date: The date the assessment is expected/required to be answered. Due dates will show on assessments tasks to prompt responses
   • Assessment Valid Until: The date the assessment responses are valid until meaning the assessment expires.
5. Assessment Recurrence–
   • Individual – One-time sending of the assessment
   • Continuous – This automatically reissues an assessment on a date you set either on or before the assessment expires
6. Reference – Optional assessment reference
   
   
7. Reason – Optional assessment reason for admin reference or supplier reference for self-assessments or assessments with site review changes
   
   
8. Labelling – Add one or more labels to allow the assessment to be filtered by labels applied when running reports or sent assessments, i.e. 2020, Beef, Environmental… (optional)
   
   
9. Share– Search & select companies to share assessment responses with
   • Shared with companies can see read-only details and run reports on question results – they cannot update or answer any details
   • Sharing preferences can be updated for individual assessment by editing the assessment after sending
10. Visible to Site – Allow ‘managed’ assessors (answered by a company user or an assessor) to be seen by the assessed site whilst answers have been added. The site has ‘read only’ ability  

Once details have been entered click ’next’ to proceed and select sites to assess Clicking 'Save for Later' will store any data entered to continue sending at another time

If you need to send assessments with different detail as part of the same project, e.g. a different responsible user, you can repeat the process and send assessments in groups to enter new details, select new sites and add more assessments to a project. Assessment details are stored on an assessment-by-assessment basis and can be edited independently once sent 

4. Sending Assessments

The final step to send an assessment is to select the sites to assess. Each site selected will have an individual assessment created which can be answered and reported upon.

 To find sites to assess you can search by:

1. Search by – 
   • Supply chain > Find supplier sites linked to products in your supply chain
   • Directory > Search the complete AIS directory
   • Supplier List > If available you can search using any lists created in 'Supplier Manager'
     
     
2. Filter - Based on the search type (1) users can apply filters to restrict their results.  
   • Tier – only show sites linked at selected levels i.e. direct, tier 2…  (Supply chain only)
   • Category - only show supplier sites from selected categories (supply chain only)
   • Country – only show sites in selected countries
   • Type – only show sites belonging to companies with selected ONS types
   • Search Term – only show sites whose name match a search term
     
     Note: When searching the directory, a filter or search term must be applied
     
     
3. Apply – Once a search type and any filters have been added click ‘apply’ to show results
   
   
4. Include assessed sites – Sites which already have a non-expired assessment for the same template will not be shown by default. This is designed to prevent duplicate assessments from being sent. However, if you would like to send the same assessment to a site, check the box include assessed sites box (4) to show ‘assessed sites’ in the results
   
   After applying a search, matching sites will be shown to select from
   
   
5. Found sites – A list of sites will be populated in the found sites panel.
   
   Select one or more sites to assess by clicking the site name or checking the box
   
   
6. Selected Sites – When a site is selected it will be moved to the ‘selected’ list (6) and the count updated to highlight how many sites will be sent assessments once submitted
   
   
7. Submit – Once all sites have been selected click the ‘Submit' button to raise assessments 

Notifications

Who is notified when I raise an assessment?

When you send assessments, emails will automatically be sent to notify the associated user to based on who is answering the assessment as follows:

Answered by company/assessor (managed)  

The Users set as being ‘Responsible’ for the sent assessments will be sent an email to alert them of the new assessments. A task will also be shown on their homepage.

Supplier (self-assessment)

If individual users and contacts are selected only selected people will be emailed.  If no specific selections have been made, all users for a member company will be emailed or all available contacts will be emailed for non-members. Non-member companies will need to register on the Authenticate platform before they can complete the assessment.