Your Ultimate Glossary for Mastering Source-to-Pay (And More)

Like all great technologies, ServiceNow is continually advancing and evolving with every release - and so has the language we use to navigate it. Pretty exciting, right?

With all that change afoot, we thought it was time to build a definitive guide to some of the new and exciting platform elements we’ve been learning about over the past few years. 

So here at CoreX, we decided to build out the 2024 Official ServiceNow Glossary, including new and exciting Finance, Supply Chain and Source to Pay (S2P) terminology – plus a quick refresher on some critical business and ServiceNow platform terms you might have heard before… but could really use a little reminder on.

That includes: 

• ServiceNow Product Suite Details 
• Sourcing and Financial Operations Terms
• Business Value Metrics (that your BU might ask about)
•  Operations and Procurement Nitty Gritty 
• A Few More ServiceNow Terms for Ecosystem Newbies 

Even better, this glossary isn’t just a list of definitions; it’s your starting point to tackle business challenges head-on. From decoding S2P and ServiceNow acronyms to uncovering the real impact behind each term, this glossary will help you become a catalyst for progress, transforming confusion into action and frustrations into solutions. 

Fair warning: This 60+ page glossary dives deep into ServiceNow. Whether you're starting or continuing your platform transformation, it’s designed to be your go-to resource for ServiceNow’s Finance and Supply Chain suite. Since its release at Knowledge 2023, over 200 customers are already on board. But don't worry - there’s still time to explore the powerful features of Finance, Supply Chain, and Accounts Payable. Leading enterprises are expanding their platforms to leverage the new power of FSC workflows, and you can too. 

Designed to be more than just a collection of terms, this eBook is your launchpad for mastering ServiceNow and transforming finance and supply chain from routine work to the strategic powerhouse driving your business forward. 

Since the glossary is extensive, here are 20 key terms from our eBook to start out with! 

1. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): a software application that integrates processes across an organization - including planning, purchasing, inventory, sales, marketing, finance, human resources–all in a single system. 
2. Master Data Management (MDM): focused on creating and maintaining a single, consistent, and accurate view of critical business data (‘master data’), which includes information about customers, products, suppliers, locations, and other core entities. 
3. Procure-to-Pay (P2P): the process encompassing all activities involved in acquiring goods and services, from identifying a need to making the final payment - this includes requisitioning, purchasing, receiving, invoicing, and payment processing.    
4. Strategic Sourcing: a proactive approach to procurement that focuses on optimizing the entire procurement process. This involves analyzing spend data, identifying cost-saving opportunities, building strong supplier relationships, and implementing risk mitigation strategies. 
5. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM): a strategic approach to managing an organization’s relationships with its suppliers. This involves building strong partnerships, collaborating on mutual goals, and optimizing the value derived from the supplier network and extends beyond transactional interactions and focuses on creating long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.   
6. Supply Chain Management (SCM): the oversight of the entire process of creating a product or service, from inception to delivery, encompassing the management of the flow of goods, data, and finances involved in production and distribution.   
7. Accounts Payable (AP) Cycle Times: the time between receiving an invoice and transmitting its payment. AP cycle time measures the efficiency of the accounts payable process.   
8. Flexible Budgetary Controls: financial management practices that allow for budget adjustments and account for changing business conditions while maintaining financial oversight.   
9. Guided Experiences: structured interactions or processes that lead the user through specific tasks or workflows, providing clear instructions, prompts, and support at each step.  
10. NPS (Net Promoter Score): a metric that is used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction based on customer responses to a single question: On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? 
11. Operational Cycle Time: the total amount of time it takes a company to convert its investments in inventory and other resources into cash flows from sales. This encompasses the time required for a product/service to move from raw materials to monetary value.   
12. Spend Under Management (SUM): the percentage of an organization’s total spending that is actively managed and controlled by the procurement function, representing the portion of spending aligned with procurement strategies and policies.  
13. Configuration Management Database (CMDB): a data repository that stores and manages information about all components of an IT system, including hardware, software, network devices, and other IT assets, for improved configuration management.   
14. Discovery: the process of identifying and collecting information about IT assets within an organization’s infrastructure, which can include hardware, software, network devices, and other IT components.   
15. IT Operations Management (ITOM): designed to ensure efficient and cost-effective operation of IT services, managing provisioning, capacity, performance, and availability of IT infrastructure and resources.   
16. Integration Hub: a centralized platform that facilitates the connection and interaction between software applications and systems. It effectively acts as middleware and allows data and processes to flow smoothly between various platforms.  
17. Orchestration: the automated coordination and management of complex IT processes and services. This involves automating tasks, workflows, and dependencies across multiple systems and applications. 
18. Service Legal Agreement (SLA): a formal contract between a service provider and a customer, which outlines the level of service expected and typically includes metrics, such as response times, uptime, and resolution times, and remedies for service failures.   
19. Service Portal: a user-friendly, self-service interface that provides access to IT services, information, and support. It is a single-entry point where employees and customers can interact with IT. In the ServiceNow Ecosystem, the Portal has a more specific connotation to an element available by default on the platform that interacts with parts of the platform so users can access platform features through portals.  
20. Virtual Agent: a computer program designed to stimulate human conversation, usually through text interactions, by leveraging artificial intelligence and natural language processing to understand and respond to user queries, provide information, complete tasks, and direct users to appropriate resources.

We can't wait to see what you accomplish, from effectively communicating real-world outcomes with stakeholders to leveraging new technology like ServiceNow to innovate and elevate your operations.