When Consumer Expectations Are Everything, Advanced Vendor Scorecarding Is A Necessity

Consumers not only expect a wide range of assortment but also timely delivery, regardless of whether the product is being fulfilled from a dropship, marketplace, or owned inventory program. As of 2024, 48% of consumers now expect packages to arrive within two days of ordering, while another 31% expect packages in 3-4 days at most. 

For retailers, the only concrete way to ensure your suppliers are providing consumers with the experiences they expect is through advanced, accurate, and built-in scorecarding through your commerce platform. 

Understanding Scorecarding & Best Use Cases

Logicbroker’s advanced scorecarding, displayed on the dashboard in the Logicbroker Portal, is built on three criteria – shipping time, cancellations, and orders shipped. These three metrics, along with other customizable aspects, make up the backbone of better understanding your suppliers.  The scoring system uses these three criteria to make an overall performance grade that is easy to understand and monitor. 

This is important in our first use case – supplier performance reviews. Whether it’s monthly, bi-annually, or just once a year, Logicbroker’s scorecards make it easy to sit down with suppliers and review key performance metrics while also realigning on expectations should the scores fall flat. 

Should a partner not meet expectations, scorecards provide a live look at each aspect of their performance and help paint a clearer picture of which orders were lost and how to prevent any issues in the future. 

Scoring Criteria

The overall score is the showcase grade that combines three different calculations into an overall letter grade. By default, the letter grade is determined by a weighted system of Shipment Time, Percent Shipped, and Percent Cancelled. 70% of the overall grade is determined by the shipment time, 20% by the percent shipped, and 10% by the number of orders canceled. Retailers can adjust these rations however they see fit and on a per-partner basis, too. 

Next to the overall score, Logicbroker provides a breakdown of each individual section to better understand where a supplier is succeeding and where they are struggling. 

1. Shipment Time – This will be the average time it takes to ship orders in the configured time range. Because an overwhelming average of consumers prefer to receive their packages within the first 4 days, the target will be automatically set to 72 Hours. As long as shipping takes place within the 72-hour window, the system will report a passing grade. However, you can configure this time to whatever window you’d like to accommodate those suppliers with longer lead times, or those who are making “made-to-order” products. Once one order is shipped, the scorecard data will be based on the total shipments made on-time. Fundamentally, this score looks at when the order first changes status within a given range and compares it to the defined shipping target.​ The better your suppliers do, the higher the score.
2. Percent Shipped – Our second most important score is calculated by how many orders are in the system given the time range compared to how many are shipped (ignoring canceled orders for the sake of the score). The target percentage shipped is a dynamic number that will change according to how many orders need to be shipped within the range to meet the shipment time target.​ This calculation helps retailers key in on the On Time and In Full (OTIF) key commerce KPI often tracked by retailer and supplier partners.
3. Percent Cancelled – This shows how many orders were canceled given the time range configured. By default, the target is to keep cancellation to 1% of total orders. This data is calculated by looking at any orders with a status of canceled in the Logicbroker Portal. 

Pulling the Report

The second major use case we’ve seen from internal discussions between buyers and eCommerce managers during supplier performance reviews. As retailers discuss the various ways to improve their business and build upon customer satisfaction, Logicbroker has provided a way to customize and pull scorecard reports at will with targeted time frames to evaluate supplier performance. 

To better serve these managers, we’ve introduced customized scorecard settings and reports to allow users to download scorecards at will, rather than relying on live reports. Users are able to configure scorecards based on three key aspects: shipment interval, cancellation percentage, and weekend exclusions. 

• Shipment Interval – When altered, we will replace the target shipment time with the preferred target​. By default, this is set to 72 hours, but based on your needs it can be set to any time interval. These alterations are important for suppliers who ship internationally or provide “made-to-order” products that require longer lead times. 
• Cancellation Percentage – This configuration is used when looking at the percent canceled metric. Users can easily replace the default of 1% with the preferred target ​of their choice. The most common need to change cancellation percentage is to either give suppliers more wiggle room in their first few months of onboarding or to provide even stricter guidelines for those suppliers already under review. 
• Exclude Weekends – One of the most requested features, some suppliers simply do not ship on weekends and should not be held accountable for those “delays”. With this toggle, turn on and off weekends, on a per-supplier basis, when calculating overall scores. 

Once reports are configured and scorecards are updated based on retailer needs, downloading reports in an Excel format, in any time range requested, is as simple as hitting one button on the dashboard. 

Real-Time Data Gathering

Perhaps the most notable of our scorecarding use cases comes in the form of true transparency. While many performance reviews use data proprietary to one party, Logicbroker’s native scorecarding provides real-time data gathering for both retailers and suppliers to check whenever they please. 

Both retailers and suppliers can pull up timesheets and scorecards for any specified time period. This transparency gives suppliers a head start on making sure they are meeting all agreed-upon KPIs and gives retailers helpful reference points to acknowledge successes and challenge drawbacks. 

This real-time data also gives retailers a leg up on merchandising decisions, as they can easily filter through high-performing suppliers by filtering by letter grade in the Logicbroker Portal. With this information, retailers may choose to expand their assortment with these high-performers and weed out low-performing suppliers for those with similar products but a higher grade. In practice, we’ve seen scorecards ensure retailers continue to provide their customers with what they want, but with better consistency and satisfaction.

Boscov’s, America’s largest family-owned department store, has been utilizing these scorecards as long as they’ve been a Logicbroker client. Jennifer Redcay, Boscov’s Manager of Supplier Direct Fulfillment, said they are consistently reviewing vendor scorecards to get a better picture of how they are performing. 

“We use scorecards to get a better picture of how our vendors are performing,” she said. “If they are struggling, we can help them see the areas we can improve and for new vendors, we use scorecards to make sure they are staying on top of key targets. When we do have a poor-performing vendor, sending them their D or F scorecard rating is really impactful. I always take the time to update specific vendors targets to make sure the scores are as accurate as possible.”

Learn More & Take Advantage of Native Scorecarding

To learn more about our native scorecarding, and to take advantage of this immense benefit, please reach out to the Logicbroker team. Our solutions engineers would be happy to walk you through a detailed demo of how to best utilize the scorecards and how to apply filters to better see your supplier’s overall performance. 

About Logicbroker

Logicbroker is a premier multi-vendor commerce platform that seamlessly connects trading partners regardless of integration types. Our modern solutions empower retailers and brands to take control of their customer experience by harnessing and analyzing vital first-party data, reducing inventory risk, and curating their expanded assortment. By improving the visibility into our client’s commerce programs, Logicbroker can better position retailers and brands for transformative growth.

As business needs and demand shift, Logicbroker provides the ability to quickly switch suppliers and product fulfillment between 3P to 1P and responsibly find new sources of inventory that uphold your brand integrity and meet your delivery promise. ​We work with mid-market and Enterprise manufacturers and retailers across a number of verticals including Health & Wellness, Home Improvement, Consumer Electronics, Toys & Babies, and Consumer Packaged Goods and service brands such as Samsung, Victoria’s Secret, The Vitamin Shoppe, Walgreens, Ace Hardware, and BBQ Guys.