The Questionnaire is where you maintain most of your company’s data on MyAchilles. You must complete the Questionnaire and pass validation requirements in order to become visible to Buyers in search. Some content you will see is sector – or buyer – specific, while some content is common across all Networks. Where multiple Networks want the answer to the same question, you will only need to respond once.
You can check the status of your Questionnaire on the Supplier Profile. The Questionnaire is valid for 12 months from date of publication. You will receive notifications via the Dashboard and email when updates are due. You will also receive notifications when certificates and documents you have uploaded are expiring.
AI Auto-Completion (first-time use only)
Achilles has recently introduced AI systems to help you with your initial completion of the Questionnaire. The system will take your key documents, identify what they are and insert suggested content into the Questionnaire directly. It will also attach the documents themselves to the responses where they are expected. This process will normally save you a lot of time completing responses manually.
When you access MyAchilles and the Questionnaire has not been started, you will see a banner at the top of the page, saying ‘You haven’t loaded any documents yet. Click here to start’. Click on the link and follow the instructions. In the load documents screen you will see a ‘What documents do I need?’ link. Click on this for a list of the types of documents the system will be expecting. The list is customised to reflect the Networks you are joining. Once documents have been submitted the processing gets underway. This can take some time and you can continue browsing the website while it continues. A banner will tell you that the system is working and a link will take you to a progress screen. You can also load additional batches of documents into the processing queue.
Once the documents have been processed, there is a banner saying ‘Your documents have been processed. Click to add more’. Once you are finished loading documents, you can open the Questionnaire and you will see blue ‘AI suggestions’ markers against sections and questions where content has been inserted. You need to check and confirm all of the suggestions before the Questionnaire can be submitted to Achilles for editing. See the section below for more on how to navigate and complete the Questionnaire.
Accessing and Submitting
The AI auto-completion process described above is only available the first time you complete the Questionnaire. The information below applies both to first-time users and those returning to update an existing set of data.
View
You can view the draft version of the Questionnaire, if one exists, by accessing your Questionnaire either via the top left-hand menu or via the Questionnaire – Draft module on your Dashboard. To view the published version of the Questionnaire as seen by Buyers, access the Questionnaire via the Questionnaire module on your organisation’s Profile page.
Edit
If you have edit rights, when you click on the Questionnaire section by accessing it either via the top left-hand menu or via the Questionnaire – Draft module on your Dashboard you will be able to make changes. If you do not have edit rights, you will only be able to open the Questionnaire in view-only mode.
You will see that there are two levels of navigation within the Questionnaire – at the top level there is a list of the main sections and when you click on these you will drill down to a list of the detailed modules within them. This helps you get directly to the content you want to fill out and to see precise statuses. Within the module navigation pages you will find a keyword search box to help you find individual topics. There is also a filter checkbox to show only modules that have issues requiring attention. When you have opened an individual module page you can move backwards and forwards using the buttons at the bottom of the page.
Note that the Questionnaire auto-saves your responses, so you can complete it in multiple sessions.
Module and Section Statuses
There are statuses shown such as Not Started, In Progress or Completed against the top-level sections as well as coloured icons. Where there are issues to resolve such as missing mandatory content or validation problems you will see yellow warnings. Similar statuses are shown in the module navigation pages. Mandatory content is highlighted at module and question level with asterisks. The Questionnaire cannot be submitted for validation until all mandatory questions have been answered.
The core section statuses are defined as follows:
- Not started: This will appear if you are new to Achilles, or have joined an additional Community, and have not yet started answering questions in the section.
- In Progress: This indicates that a section has been started, but there are one or more mandatory questions yet to be answered.
- Completed: All mandatory questions have been completed within the section.
Running Checks
When modules are completed with mandatory content you will see buttons against each inviting you to ‘Run Checks’. This process uses sophisticated rules to check that the content makes sense and that responses in different questions match up. By running checks at this stage, the chance of the content being rejected by Achilles following submission is greatly reduced. Note that checks can be run up to three times. If issues continue to be identified you can submit regardless and Achilles will validate the responses manually and raise issues against any responses that need attention.
Submit for Review
All sections’ mandatory content must be completed and automated checks run successfully (or failed three times) before the Questionnaire can be submitted for review by Achilles. You will receive a notification in the Dashboard when the review process is complete, and your Questionnaire has been published for Buyers.
Download
Download the full Questionnaire by clicking the download button in the top right corner of the Questionnaire page. A downloaded Questionnaire will only include the questions and responses currently visible in the Questionnaire.
Question Types
Within the Questionnaire there are various types of questions you should be aware of:
- Repeating questions are those that are replicated multiple times. You should click on the Add icon to add another set. Examples include financial information for multiple years or multiple contract references.
- Evidence-based questions require an upload of evidence. You will see an upload icon.
- Conditional questions are triggered by your answers to earlier questions. For example: Can it be demonstrated that this QMS has undergone any third-party assurance (e.g.: audit) or certification to ISO 9001:2008 or equivalent? If the answer of this question is ‘yes’, additional questions will appear that ask for details of the Awarding Body and the expiry date of the certification. The triggered questions are shown below a grey line and slightly indented.
- Reusable-response questions allow you to pick responses used for similar questions elsewhere rather than re-entering each time. One example of this is contact addresses. If the answer you want to use does not exist in the list of available options, you can add it by clicking the plus icon. Be aware that any changes you make will apply wherever the answer you are editing is used.
Questionnaire Status
The top of the Questionnaire navigation page provides information about the current status of your organisation and the degree to which the version of the Questionnaire you are viewing is up to date.
The Status indicator refers to your organisation’s status regarding completion and submission of the Questionnaire.
- In Progress: You are completing your organisation’s draft Questionnaire for the first time and have not yet submitted it for review.
- Editing: You are viewing the draft version of your Questionnaire. This status differs from ‘In Progress’ because there also is a published version of your Questionnaire that Buyers can view.
- Submitted: You are viewing the draft version of your Questionnaire, which has been completed and submitted. You are awaiting feedback from Achilles regarding its publication.
- Review Required: You are viewing the submitted draft version of your Questionnaire. Issues have been raised, and you need to address the issues before you resubmit it.
- Published: You are viewing the validated and published version of your Questionnaire.
- Update Due: You are viewing the published version of your Questionnaire, which is now close to its expiry date.
- Expired: You are viewing the published version of your Questionnaire and it has been more than 12 months since it was last published.
‘Last Published’ shows the date when your company’s Questionnaire was last successfully validated and published by Achilles in its entirety. ‘Review Due’ shows the date when the next update needs to be completed. You must update and submit your Questionnaire at least once every 12 months.
Review and Publication
When all mandatory questions are Completed and any outstanding automated checks have either been completed successfully or exhausted their available attempts, you can click on the Submit for Review button, which will send the Questionnaire to Achilles’ team of validators.
Your submission will be reviewed, and a notification will be generated when this is complete. If there are no issues with the submission, your Questionnaire will be published and become available to Buyers. You will receive a notification, your Questionnaire’s status will be ‘Published’ and you will see new ‘Last Published’ and ‘Review Due’ dates.
If problems were identified, the Questionnaire’s status will be set to Review Required and the sections you need to check will be highlighted. You will receive a notification in your Dashboard and your company’s designated Questionnaire Contact will receive an email. Prompts will also appear in the relevant sections of the Questionnaire navigation page.
- Click on a section that is highlighted in yellow.
- Each question that has had an issue raised will be highlighted. This is also the case for issues found by automated checks.
- Click on the ‘View Issue’ link to see the comment left by the Data Checker.
- Make the necessary updates and save the section.
- Once all issues have been addressed, resubmit the Questionnaire.
- Note that you will only be able to update question responses related to those that have been marked as requiring review.