Questionnaires are a great tool to collect information from your suppliers in an organised way and with a well-defined structure. They are the central part of Request for Information-type events but can also be very useful in other types of purchasing events. In this article we are discussing what questionnaires are, the different type of data we can collect with questionnaires and go through some use-cases.

What a questionnaire is in Market Dojo

A questionnaire is a set of questions, usually with a single aim and/or pertaining to one topic. The aim can be for example to collect key company details from the suppliers, but you can also create a set of questions to discover the different logistics services your participants offer.

Depending on how many questions you would like to ask and what kind of topics are planning to explore, you can create one single questionnaire with all the questions combined, one questionnaire with the questions organised into different sections within, or you can create several questionnaires which will appear on different tabs within your sourcing event. Choose the way that best suits the logic of your information gathering, but also try to keep in mind the perspective of your participants.

Image 1: Sample questionnaire

When using questionnaires to collect information, you can see the responses of your participants side-by-side, in the same structure, so it is easy to review, evaluate and score the answers. You can also export the result for all participants together into an Excel spreadsheet, if required.

 
Image 2: Answers to sample questionnaire

Different types of questionnaires

In your sourcing event you can create questionnaires for different purposes, using different structures, but in terms of settings there are two main types of questionnaire: normal and pre-qualification.

To illustrate the difference between the two, let us describe briefly the pre-qualification questionnaires: if you make a questionnaire pre-qualification, once the event is launched, the suppliers will only have access to the introduction page of your event and to this questionnaire. They must submit their responses to this set of questions first before they can see further questionnaires, RFQs or other uploaded documents in the event.

This article further explores this topic and describes other ways pre-qualification questionnaires can be useful.

Types of information you can gather with questionnaires

As explained, questionnaires are a particularly great tool in Request for Information-type events, but in general most sourcing events would have place for a questionnaire where you need to collect information from your suppliers.

In a questionnaire you can set what type of answer you want your participants to submit: short text, long text, yes or no, multiple choice, upload a document, answer in a table format, or with a date or number. This way it is clear for your participants how you are expecting them to answer, which in turn makes it easier for your team later to evaluate the responses.