Capture vendor data

A well-established and functional vendor management system is an important part of technology portfolio management, leading to better planning of technology roadmaps for better governance of the enterprise technology portfolio. A vendor is a supplier of software purchased by the enterprise. The vendor can supply multiple technological components that are used in the company. For example, the vendor Oracle may provide the components Oracle Database 11g R2, Oracle WebLogic Server 12C, and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) 7.

Vendors can be manually captured in Alfabet or added to Alfabet via the import of components from IT-Pedia®.

When components are imported from IT-Pedia, their vendors will also be automatically imported to Alfabet. The vendor that supplies the component is based on the Manufacturer of the imported IT product. If the vendor already exists in the Alfabet database, the vendor will be automatically associated with the component. If the vendor does not yet exist in Alfabet, it will be automatically added to Alfabet along with the new component.s

Vendors can be manually captured in Alfabet or added to Alfabet via the import of components from IT-Pedia®. You can add a new vendor from anywhere in the product via the orange New button in the header. Or go to Business Architecture > Vendors. The Vendors explorer displays vendors on the first level of the hierarchy and the components that they provide on the second level. Click a component to display its basic data in a content area.

Click the Navigate  Navigate button next to a vendor to open its content area. Specify the vendors attributes as well as the relationships that the vendor has to other assets in the repository.

Try to capture as much information as possible about the vendor because complete data considerably improves the results of business questions and other analytics.

Once a vendor is in the repository, you can define more details about it in the Vendors data workbench.

Per default, the data workbench displays a limited set of basic attributes. You can add more columns via the Structure column to capture other attributes directly in the data workbench.

Or specify and analyze the vendor in detail in its content area . In the data workbench, click the Navigate button for a vendor to open its content area > Overview page.

Define the vendor's basic data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the vendor and save it.

IT-Pedia® from Eracent is a comprehensive IT product library that provides an up-to-date source of data about IT products of all types including, for example, hardware, software, and network devices. Alfabet provides an out-of-the-box integration with IT-Pedia that allows you to import components to the Alfabet repository. When an IT product is imported from IT-Pedia, it is imported to the Alfabet repository as a component. The manufacturer supplying the IT product is used to associate the respective component with an existing vendor in the Alfabet repository. If the vendor does not exist, it will be created and added to the Alfabet repository.

You can import IT-Pedia products in the IT-Pedia®Catalog - Models or products that you have added to My Product Catalog - Models. For details about Eracent's IT-Pedia®Catalog - Models or My Product Catalog - Models, access your account at: https://itpedia.eracent.com/PB/Account/Login

The following processes are supported in the context of IT-Pedia integration.

To use capabilities available for IT-Pedia integration, you must have access to an IT-Pedia account. If this is not the case, please contact and request access via Alfabet Service and Support.

Be sure to add the columns Synchronize with IT-Pedia and IT-Pedia Enrichment to the Components data workbench in order to keep the component data current in the Alfabet repository as well as in Eracent's My Products - Models.

A nightly batch job triggers the ADIF import job schedule IT-Pedia Integration. This imports the data from IT-Pedia based on the data maintained in IT-Pedia's My Products - Modules. Please note that this does not delete components in IT-Pedia that have been delete in Alfabet nor does it merge duplicate products. The ADIF import job schedule IT-Pedia Integration can also be triggered on an ad-hoc basis by an administrative user.

In Alfabet, responsibilities are documented via the concept of roles , whereby each role is based on a preconfigured role type or a custom role type defined by your company. In contrast to an authorized user who has read/write permissions, a person assigned a role for an asset will not have read/write permissions based on the role definition. The role is primarily for documentation purposes to provide information about stakeholders interested or responsible for the asset. If the user should have read/write permissions, they must either be the authorized user of the asset or assigned to an authorized user group associated with the asset.

Alfabet provides out-of-the-box role types that enable you to understand who is responsible for your IT assets in your IT portfolio. Additional role types that are relevant for your company can also be added.

Assigning users and organizations to roles is critical to understanding responsibility for assets in the IT and is required to answer the business question Who is responsible for our assets?

To define the users and organizations that have a role for an asset, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Responsibilities view and open it. Click in a column cell to open a selector to define a role for the asset. Depending on the role column, you may be able to select a person or an organization. Switch between Person or Organization in the selector.

A person can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  • Architect: A person who is responsible for the governance of the asset.
  • Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

An organization can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  • Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Operations: An IT organization responsible for the operations of the asset.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

You can attach documents to objects in Alfabet in the Attachments view available in object profiles.

To define document or URL for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Attachments view and open it.

Upload a document to the asset. Click New > Add Document. Select the file from your local drive and click Upload. The document is displayed in the data table.

  • Note that when you upload a document, you must ensure that the document is not encrypted. Encryption might be caused by Microsoft™ Information Protection. Only documents with the sensitivity label "Public" can be uploaded. Other reasons for encryption might also apply due to your company's security policies.
  • The following file types are allowed: .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .pdf, .zip, .png, .jpg, and .json

    The following file types are not allowed: .exe, .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .txt, .xml, .wsdl, .html, .svg

Add a URL to the asset. You can define a URL for the selected object. The user must have access permissions to the document and have access to the network path specified in the link and, typically, be in the same network domain.

  • Title: Enter a meaningful title for the URL link to help users understand why you included this URL with the selected object.
  • URL: Enter a valid URL starting with the prefix https://www. or http://www. The URL link may contain up to 511 characters. The user’s Windows® environment must be able to identify the document extension and identify the correct asset to open the document. A validation will be executed to ensure that a new URL is well-formatted and does not contain a period <.> without a leading or trailing blank space.

The following browsers support opening the files via the Web link definition in Alfabet: Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 11.0 and Microsoft® Edge® in conjunction with Windows® 10. Mozilla® Firefox® 24.0 or higher including Mozilla® Firefox® Quantum are also supported but require additional configuration in the browser settings.

The following business questions are relevant for the analysis of vendors: