Introducing Smart Assessments in Supplier Lifecycle Operations

Puja Srivastava · 2 hours ago

We're excited to introduce Smart Assessments — a powerful capability in Supplier Lifecycle Operations (SLO) that makes it easier than ever to configure, distribute, and track supplier assessments at scale.

What's in Smart Assessments?

✅ Assessment Templates Build reusable, richly structured questionnaires in the Assessment Designer.

✅ Targeted Audience Delivery with User Criteria: Provides one of the standout capabilities of Smart Assessments – precision targeting.

✅ Supplier Collaboration Portal Integration: External supplier contacts complete their assessments directly through the Supplier Collaboration Portal.

✅ Assessment Workspace for Supplier Managers: The Assessment Workspace gives supplier managers full visibility and control over every active campaign.

Whether you're running a compliance review for a specific supplier tier or collecting due diligence information from a newly onboarded cohort, Smart Assessments brings the whole process into a single, unified experience within the Source-to-Pay Workspace.

No more spreadsheets, email threads, or disconnected questionnaire tools — just a structured, guided assessment experience for both your team and your suppliers. Let's take a closer look at what's included!

Assessment Templates

Structured questionnaire templates built with the Assessment Designer support:

Multiple question types (single select, multi-select, text, numeric, and more)
Conditional visibility — follow-up questions surface only when relevant
Scoring logic at the question level and overall assessment level
Rich text instructions to guide respondents through each section
Automated response rules that pre-fill answers based on existing supplier data, reducing repetitive effort for respondents
Post-assessment actions — automatically update a supplier record, generate a follow-up assessment, or trigger a downstream workflow when an assessment is submitted

Templates are versioned and published before use, and Quick Edit lets template managers make controlled inline updates — such as tweaking descriptions or adjusting reader roles — without needing a full republish.

Targeted Audience Delivery with User Criteria

When setting up an assessment, supplier managers define the audience type (internal users, external supplier contacts, or both) and apply User Criteria to filter recipients automatically — by supplier tier, commodity category, geography, relationship type, or any other relevant attribute.

No manual list building. No chasing down the right contacts. The system resolves the audience for you.

Supplier Collaboration Portal Integration

External supplier contacts complete their assessments directly through the Supplier Collaboration Portal — a self-service, guided experience where suppliers can view assigned assessments, respond to questions, track their submission status, and communicate with your team. Assessments appear as actionable tasks, with the full template experience rendered in a clean, step-by-step layout.

Assessment Workspace for Supplier Managers

From the Assessment Workspace view, supplier managers can:

Monitor in-progress and completed assessments across all campaigns
Track individual respondent progress
Reassign assessments when contacts change
Cancel assessments that are no longer needed
Review scoring outcomes and verify that post-assessment actions have executed

How does it work end to end?

Here's a quick look at the full flow:

Create and publish a template — Build your questionnaire in the Assessment Designer, configure scoring and automation, and publish when ready.
Configure the campaign — Select the template, define your audience type, apply User Criteria to scope recipients, set the due date, and configure notifications.
Assessments are distributed — Internal users receive tasks in the Source-to-Pay Workspace; external contacts receive tasks in the Supplier Collaboration Portal.
Respondents complete the assessment — Conditional logic keeps the experience focused, and automated responses handle pre-existing data so respondents aren't answering questions unnecessarily.
Track progress in real time — The Assessment Workspace gives you a live view of completion status across the entire campaign.
Post-assessment automation runs — On submission, configured actions execute automatically, keeping records up to date and follow-on processes moving without manual intervention.

Known Considerations

Here's are a couple of things to be aware of before you enable Smart Assessments in production:

Plugin and subscription readiness. Smart Assessments requires the Smart Assessment Core plugin (com.sn_smart_asmt), along with the Assessment Designer and Assessment Experience applications. Confirming these are entitled and activated on your instance before you start building templates saves a lot of back-and-forth later.
Template design upfront. Assessment templates are versioned and must be published before they can be used in a campaign. It's worth investing time in the template structure — question types, conditional visibility logic, and scoring — before publishing.
Audience and User Criteria planning. The power of Smart Assessments comes from precise audience targeting through User Criteria, but this requires your supplier data (tier, category, region, relationship type, etc.) to be clean and consistently populated.
Supplier Collaboration Portal access for external respondents. If your assessment includes external supplier contacts, those contacts need active portal accounts and login credentials before assessments can be distributed to them.
Post-assessment action design. Automated post-assessment actions — record updates, follow-on assessments, workflow triggers — need to be defined and tested before a campaign goes live.
Roles and permissions. Template management and assessment configuration involve distinct roles (template manager vs. supplier manager). Confirming the right people have the right roles before you start avoids bottlenecks mid-setup.

Documentation Resources

Here's where to go to learn more and get started:

Your Feedback Matters!

Have you deployed Smart Assessments yet? We'd love to hear how you're using User Criteria to scope your audience. Drop a comment below or post in the Source-to-Pay Operations forum — we're always happy to connect. 💬