Vendor Management Workspace | Customer Service Management
By: Simon D. 

What is the Vendor Management Workspace in Customer Service Management?

The Vendor Management Workspace is a place to see all vendor-related information in one central location. Not only does it track vendor health and their respective progress toward certain goals, but it can also integrate with other areas on the ServiceNow platform. This includes Service Portfolio Management (SPM), Contract Management, Assets, SLA Contracts, Vendor Risk Management, and Continual Improvement Management (CIM) applications.

How does this benefit agents working within ServiceNow?

Collecting and analyzing data to see trends and improve company processes is a great way to utilize the ServiceNow Platform. One of the features that amplify this ability is the tracking of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The Vendor Management Workspace harnesses the power of ServiceNow to create metrics based on KPIs to assess the performance of your Vendors. This is done by organizing vendors into KPI groups so that each set of metrics for a vendor can be accessed at a single point. Not only that, but the Workspace gives the ability to drill down into tabs for specific vendors to see all the related contact information and metrics. Since this is all done in a Workspace, there is flexibility in the placement of report widgets, and the customizable interface expands integration capabilities by having a single pane for everything you want to view.

In terms of benefits to the company, Vendor Management gives users a better experience and manages costs by identifying duplicate services across vendors. Other features worth mentioning include Vendor Success Indicators and Service Credits. Vendor Success Indicators allow you to compare how different vendors are performing, as well as see which attributes contribute toward high performance with the help of Predictive Intelligence. Service Credits help to manage compensation that vendors owe your organization based on breaches in their respective service agreement.

Where do I get these capabilities?

The Vendor Management Workspace can be obtained by installing and activating the sn_itsm_vendor plugin from the ServiceNow Store. This plugin is available with the ITSM Pro subscription package. Some related plugins include Success Indicators (com.snc.vendor.insights) and Vendor Management Mobile (sn_vendor_mobile). To integrate Vendor Management Workspace with the Vendor Risk Management application, enable the Vendor Risk Management (app-vendor-risk-management) plugin.

Sources from ServiceNow Documentation:

Vendor Management Workspace: Vendor Management Workspace

ServiceNow Products – Vendor Management Workspace: Vendor Management Workspace – ITSM – ServiceNow

Vendor KPI Groups in Vendor Management Workspace: Vendor KPI Groups in Vendor Management Workspace

Vendor Success Indicators in Vendor Management Workspace: Vendor Success Indicators in Vendor Management Workspace

Service Credits in Vendor Management Workspace: Service Credits in Vendor Management Workspace

Set Up The Vendor Management Workspace application: Configuring Vendor Management Workspace