Vendor KPI Groups in Vendor Management Workspace reference

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Vendor KPI Groups in Vendor Management Workspace

    Vendor KPI Groups in the Vendor Management Workspace provide predefined sets of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help ServiceNow customers analyze and monitor vendor performance effectively. These groups enable organizations to evaluate vendors across different categories such as IT Services, Vendor Fulfillment, Software, and Hardware.

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    Key Features

    • Predefined KPI Groups: Four default groups are available—IT Services, Vendor Fulfillment, Software, and Hardware—each containing KPIs relevant to their vendor type.
    • Vendor Score Calculation: Vendor scores are calculated using KPIs weighted by their importance. Only KPIs with percentage units contribute directly to score calculations.
    • Automated Vendor Score Indicator: An automated indicator aggregates weighted KPI scores to generate an overall vendor score, which is visually presented with color-coded thresholds.
    • Scheduled Jobs: Two scheduled jobs update vendor scores daily and vendor profiles monthly, with options for on-demand execution to maintain current data.
    • Custom Formulas: Customers can create custom formula indicators to tailor vendor score calculations further, enhancing flexibility.
    • Indicator Direction Impact: The effect of KPIs on the vendor score depends on whether higher values are desirable (maximize) or undesirable (minimize), influencing score computation accordingly.

    Default KPI Groups and Indicators

    • IT Services: Includes indicators like Average Customer Satisfaction, Vendor Satisfaction, Average SLA Achievement, Average Availability, Average Request Activity, and Total Incidents Created.
    • Vendor Fulfillment: Focuses on Average Customer Satisfaction, Vendor Satisfaction, Incident and Request Fulfillment SLA Achievements, Total Incidents Created, and Average Request Activity.
    • Software: Contains Vendor Satisfaction, Vendor Requested Items count, and Manual SLA from External Source.
    • Hardware: Similar to Software, includes Vendor Satisfaction, Vendor Requested Items, and Manual SLA from External Source.

    Important Considerations

    • The legacy Service Offering Metric Data table and four related indicators have been deprecated as of the Utah release. Customers integrating Vendor Management Workspace with Service Portfolio Management should note that legacy metric data is no longer available and adjust accordingly.
    • Vendor scores are calculated using KPIs with percentage units, ensuring consistent and meaningful scoring.

    Practical Outcomes for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging Vendor KPI Groups, customers can:

    • Gain structured insights into vendor performance by category, facilitating targeted improvements.
    • Use automated scoring and scheduled updates to maintain timely, accurate vendor assessments.
    • Customize vendor score calculations through formula indicators to reflect unique business priorities.
    • Understand how KPI directionality affects scoring, enabling more precise performance management.

    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%