Scorecard · No. 02 / 17
What exactly are you buying?
Last updated
Define the purchase before comparing proposals. Use the following categories as procurement labels, rather than assuming that every offer described as GEO provides the same service.
| Purchase | Decision it should support | Required output |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline diagnostic | Is shortlist exclusion recurring on important buying questions? | Disclosed test set, repeated observations, uncertainty and prioritised investigations |
| Monitoring software | Can our team maintain a trustworthy view of selected answers? | Inspectable observations, stable definitions, exports and change records |
| Technical or content implementation | What information or access problem should we fix? | Deployed changes, quality checks and a documented intervention hypothesis |
| Digital PR or external-source work | Where is accurate independent information missing? | Transparent outreach and editorial deliverables, without guaranteed citations |
| Independent validation | Did the evidence improve enough to justify continuing? | Comparable analysis, alternative explanations and a renewal recommendation |
Score the complete operating plan: supplier capabilities plus explicitly assigned buyer responsibilities. A monitoring platform need not employ your content team to score well on implementation readiness. However, the proposal must name who will turn its findings into changes, with capacity and an agreed handover.
Do not remove awkward criteria after opening bids. For a software-only purchase, attach the buyer’s implementation and measurement plan and score the combined arrangement. Otherwise, a cheap dashboard with no delivery owner can appear artificially superior to a properly scoped programme.
Before scoring, write one sentence:
We are evaluating [purchase] to decide [commercial question], for [customer segment and use case], by [decision date], with [named implementation owner].