Affymetrix used its vendor scorecard, fed by data from its ERP system, to compile the data. With that information, Healey could easily see the top 15 companies whose representatives he needed to meet. The scorecard also provided the names of the account executives for every vendor, giving Healey the opportunity to contact each one proactively.

"I found many names in that list, such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Sun, but I also found names that were unfamiliar to me, including some temporary employment agencies and technology service providers," Healey says.

He reached out to these top vendors to introduce himself and to get familiar with their businesses. "Without a scorecard, I wouldn't have been able to do this right away," he says.

IT managers use scorecards to organize and evaluate data about their IT suppliers and processes. Score-cards allow them to monitor the performance of their vendors in order to cut costs, mitigate risk and drive continual improvements in products and services. It's the measure by which they manage vendors. Here are five key issues to consider in building your own scorecards.

1. Metrics. The effectiveness of a vendor scorecard depends on the type and quality of the information that it tracks. The most common mistake companies make is trying to measure too many things and losing focus on key metrics for the business, says William Maurer, an analyst at Gartner Inc.