Vendor KPI Groups in Vendor Management Workspace reference

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Vendor KPI Groups in Vendor Management Workspace

    The Vendor KPI Groups in the Vendor Management Workspace provide predefined key performance indicator (KPI) groups to analyze vendor performance across various categories such as IT Services, Vendor Fulfillment, Software, and Hardware. These KPI groups help ServiceNow customers monitor and evaluate vendor effectiveness using relevant performance metrics and thresholds.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Default KPI Groups: Four groups are included by default:
      • IT Services: KPIs related to service offerings like customer satisfaction, SLA achievement, availability, request activity, and incident counts.
      • Vendor Fulfillment: KPIs focusing on fulfillment-related metrics including customer satisfaction, incident SLA achievement, and request fulfillment SLA.
      • Software: KPIs measuring vendor satisfaction, requested software items, and manually added SLAs from external sources.
      • Hardware: Similar KPIs as Software, focusing on hardware-related vendor metrics.
    • KPI Group Components: Each group contains KPIs with weighted indicators, threshold values to determine KPI status, and a list of vendors under analysis.
    • Vendor Score Indicator: An automated composite indicator calculates and displays an overall vendor score based on weighted KPIs within each group.
    • Scheduled Jobs:
      • VMW Update Vendor Score: Runs daily to update vendor scores, with on-demand execution available.
      • VMW Update Vendor Profile: Runs monthly to refresh vendor profiles, also runnable on-demand.
    • Score Calculation: Vendor scores are computed by weighting each KPI’s percentage score and summing these contributions. The direction of indicators (maximize or minimize) affects score calculation accordingly.
    • Indicator Deprecation Notice: As of the Utah release, four legacy indicators related to SLA achievement, customer satisfaction, availability, and request activity have been deprecated. Customers integrating with Service Portfolio Management standard portfolios should note these changes and rely on current indicators or custom formula indicators to track vendor scores.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    • Use the predefined Vendor KPI Groups to benchmark and analyze vendor performance comprehensively across IT services, fulfillment, software, and hardware categories.
    • Leverage the weighted KPI scores and thresholds to identify performance issues or strengths quickly and take data-driven vendor management actions.
    • Run scheduled jobs regularly or on-demand to ensure vendor scores and profiles reflect the latest performance data.
    • Customize vendor score calculations by adding formula indicators if needed, particularly when adapting to changes like deprecated metrics.
    • Understand how indicator direction affects scoring to interpret vendor performance metrics accurately.

    Use Vendor KPI Groups that are provided by default to analyze vendor performance.

    Vendor KPI Groups

    The following Vendor Key Performance Indicator (KPI) groups are available by default:
    • IT Services—Includes KPIs to analyze vendor performance related to IT Services.
    • Vendor Fulfillment—Includes KPIs to analyze vendor performance related to fulfillment.
    • Software—Includes KPIs to analyze vendors related to software applications.
    • Hardware—Includes KPIs to analyze vendors related to hardware applications.
    Each KPI group provided by default has the following related lists:
    • KPIs—Indicators with a vendor breakdown that measure the performance of your vendors.

      Each indicator that contributes toward the vendor score has a weight associated with it.

    • KPI group thresholds—Defines threshold values to indicate the status of each KPI group.
    • Vendors—List of vendors to analyze their performance.
    IT Services KPI Group

    This table shows the indicators provided by default in this KPI group. All indicators that have the unit as percentage are used to calculate the vendor score.

    Indicators name Description Unit
    VMW: Average Customer Satisfaction Measures CSAT scores based on service offerings. Number
    Vendor Satisfaction Provides monthly breakdown of vendor satisfaction scores. Percentage
    VMW: Average SLA Achievement Calculates average value for SLAs that have been successfully completed. Number
    VMW: Average Availability Calculates average value achieved for incident SLAs. Percentage
    VMW: Average Request Activity Average value calculated from fulfilled request items derived from service portfolio catalog items. These items must be connected to service offerings. Number
    Total Incidents Created The total number of incidents created for vendors. Number
    Vendor Fulfillment KPI Group

    This table shows the indicators provided by default in this KPI group. All indicators that have the unit as percentage are used to calculate the vendor score.

    Indicator Description Unit
    VMW: Average Customer Satisfaction Measures CSAT scores based on service offerings. Number
    Vendor Satisfaction Provides monthly breakdown of vendor satisfaction scores. Percentage
    VMW: Average Incident SLA Achievement Calculates average value achieved for incident SLAs that have been successfully completed. Percentage
    Average Request Fulfillment SLA Achievement Calculates average value for SLAs that have been successfully completed. Percentage
    Total Incidents Created The total number of incidents created for vendors. Number
    VMW: Average Request Activity Average value calculated from fulfilled request items derived from service portfolio catalog items. These items must be connected to service offerings. Number
    Software KPI Group

    This table shows the indicators provided by default in this KPI group. All indicators that have the unit as percentage are used to calculate the vendor score.

    Indicator Description Unit
    Vendor Satisfaction Provides monthly breakdown of vendor satisfaction scores. Percentage
    Vendor Requested Items Provides the count of the vendor-requested catalog items. Number
    Manual SLA from External Source Calculates the manually added SLAs. Percentage
    Hardware KPI Group

    This table shows the indicators provided by default in this KPI group. All indicators that have the unit as percentage are used to calculate the vendor score.

    Indicator Description Unit
    Vendor Satisfaction Provides monthly breakdown of vendor satisfaction scores. Percentage
    Vendor Requested Items Provides the count of the vendor-requested catalog items. Number
    Manual SLA from External Source Calculates the manually added SLAs. Percentage

    Vendor score indicator

    The Vendor Score indicator is an automated indicator. It’s used for calculating and displaying the vendor score. The calculation is done based on all indicators added to the KPI group for evaluating vendor performance.

    By default, the following indicators are used to calculate the vendor score:
    • Average Request Fulfillment SLA Achievement
    • VMW: Average Availability
    • Average Incident SLA Achievement
    • Manual SLA from External Source

    Schedule job

    The VMW Update Vendor Score scheduled job runs daily and updates the score. You can run this job on-demand to get updated scores at any time.

    The VMW Update Vendor Profile scheduled job runs monthly and updates all vendor profiles. You can run this job on-demand to get updated vendor profiles at any time.

    Calculating the vendor score

    The vendor score calculation is based on the weight of each indicator and the KPI score.
    Important:
    The Service Offering Metric Data [service_offering_metric_data] table along with the following four indicators have been deprecated in the Utah release:
    • Average SLA Achievement [ServiceOffering.MetricData.SLA.Daily]
    • Average Customer Satisfaction [ServiceOffering.MetricData.CSAT.Daily]
    • Average Availability [ServiceOffering.MetricData.Availability.Daily]
    • Average Request Activity [ServiceOffering.MetricData.Activity.Daily]
    Therefore, if you have the Vendor Management Workspace application integrated with Service Portfolio Management, and if you are upgrading to the Service Portfolio Management standard portfolio, the metric data from the legacy indicators are no longer available. For information on Service Portfolio Management, see Service Portfolio Management portfolios.

    You can calculate the vendor score using the indicators that have a percentage value. You can also create custom formula indicators and add them to your vendor score calculation. For more information, see Add a formula indicator to track vendor score.

    This table provides an example of how a vendor score is calculated.

    Table 1. Vendor score calculation
    Indicator Indicator weight KPI score Indicator score that contributes toward vendor score
    Vendor Satisfaction 10.00% 54.42% 5.442%
    VMW: Average Customer Satisfaction 55.00% 83.00% 45.65%
    VMW: Average Availability 25.00% 88.50% 22.125%
    VMW: Average SLA Achievement 10.00% 100.00% 10.00%
    Total 83.217%

    The total vendor score has been rounded up to 83.22%. The score is also highlighted in the header with colors that are distinct for the defined threshold values for the KPI group.

    Note:
    The vendor score is impacted based on whether the direction for the indicator is set to maximize or minimize. This table shows an example of how the vendor score is impacted based on the indicator direction.
    Table 2. Vendor score impacted by indicator direction
    Indicator Direction Indicator weight Indicator metric score Indicator score that contributes toward vendor score
    VMW: Vendor Satisfaction Maximize 10.00% 54.42% 5.442%
    VMW: Average Customer Satisfaction Maximize 55.00% 83.00% 45.65%
    VMW: Average Availability Minimize 25.00% 88.50% 2.875%

    [(100 - 88.5) x.25]
    VMW: Average SLA Achievement Minimize 10.00% 100.00% 0%
    Total 53.967%