Vendor Manager Workspace | Overview - YouTube

This video is an overview of Vendor Manager Workspace...

... a ServiceNow application to help you manage the vendors that support services within your company.

This video is for the admins who set up and manage the Vendor Manager Workspace application…

…and for the vendor managers who use it.

You can jump to these topics from the YouTube description for this video.

Vendor Manager Workspace puts all your vendor information in one place so you don’t have to search and integrate data from many sources.

It calculates vendor performance so you don’t have to do it manually…

… and it shows their performance in a single score based on indicators you choose.

And it tracks vendors’ performance against SLAs and indicators so you don’t have to rely on vendors to do it.

It’s an easy way to manage your vendors…

…and compare competing vendors.

Let’s take a quick tour.

Our first stop is the workspace home page.

This page lists all of your company’s vendors.

A vendor is any company in the Organization > Companies table…

…that’s identified as a vendor.

Over here you’ll see the total value of all your contracts with each vendor…

…and the number of people in your company who use the services each vendor supports.

Together, those two values are a measure of how important the vendor is to your company.

You can filter the list by any field.

Let’s see all the vendors based in Japan.

You can save these filtered lists.

Let’s save this one as All Vendors - Japan.

The lists you save appear in My Lists.

Let’s take a look at the information for a single vendor.

Here’s the vendor profile for Cloud MSP.

Here’s the vendor score we mentioned earlier, a daily metric of the vendor’s performance.

Here’s the average score for the current month so far…

…the change since the previous month…

…and a chart of the monthly averages over the past 12 months.

Here are the indicators that go into the vendor score.

We’ll take a closer look in a minute.

Here are some other useful metrics for the vendor.

And over here you’ll find general information about the vendor, including internal and vendor contacts.

This feature combines information from many sources so you can find it all in one place.

If you have the Risk Management application integrated with Vendor Manager Workspace...

... this link takes you to risk details.

Let’s take a closer look at the vendor score.

This score comes from a vendor score metric model...

... which is based on a combination of performance metrics.

This score is based on the IT Services metric model, which combines two metrics…

…the Average Performance Score of Service Offerings…

…and Vendor Satisfaction.

And here’s the weighting of those two metrics in the score.

Here are the two metrics…

…with the current value…

…and historical values.

The metric models in your instance are managed by your Vendor Manager Workspace admin.

The IT Services model is supplied with the product.

It’s tailored to vendors that support IT-related services.

Your admin can create more models, using different indicators, for other types of vendors.

In the IT Services model…

... here are the indicators that go into the vendor score.

Here’s the weighting of the two indicators…

…and here are the thresholds for green, amber and red highlighting.

Here are those other useful indicators we saw, which aren’t included in the vendor score.

And here are all the vendors we’re using the IT Services model for.

Your admin can change all these elements.

Now let’s take a look at one of the indicators, the average performance score of service offerings.

This is another useful metric...

... a single score that measures the vendor’s performance based on the performance of the services that the vendor supports.

This page shows the current average performance score for all the services...

... and the recent change...

…the scores over the past 12 months…

…and the performance of the individual services that the vendor supports…

…including the current score…

…and historical scores going back 12 months.

Now let’s drill down into the performance score for a single service.

The info tab…

…shows the metrics that go into the score…

… and the weighting for each metric.

Your admin can change the metrics and weighting in Service Owner Workspace.

The other tabs on the profile page give you more information about the vendor.

Some of that information comes from integration with other ServiceNow applications.

It’s only available if you have those applications on your instance.

The Service Offerings tab shows the services this vendor supports.

This information comes from Service Portfolio Management.

The Contracts tab shows your contracts with the vendor.

This information comes from Contract Management.

The Improvement Initiatives tab shows initiatives for the vendor.

This information comes from Continual Improvement Management.

And the SLA Definitions tab shows SLAs that apply to the vendor.

This information comes from Service Level Management.

Together, this information helps you evaluate the performance of your vendors...

... and get better value from them.

For more information, see our product documentation, knowledge base, or podcast.

Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.