| 20100106680 | VENDOR PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT IN SUPPORT OF VENDOR RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS, PLANNING AND EVALUATION - Various examples include a system and methods in support of vendor relationship management, analysis, planning and evaluation including dealing with collections of vendors called vendor portfolios. In various examples the system includes a database, vendor portfolio definer, a vendor portfolio populator, and a vendor portfolio analyzer. The database houses vendor data. In various examples the vendor portfolio definer allows vendor portfolios to be created, meta data, including complex documents, to be associated with vendor portfolios, and user access permissions to be assigned to vendor portfolios. In various examples the vendor portfolio populator facilitates user selection of the vendors that will make up the collection of vendors in the vendor portfolio. The vendor portfolio analyzer analyzes a business metric using vendor portfolios. In various examples the vendor portfolio analyzer allows user to perform what-if analysis on vendor portfolios. In various examples the vendor portfolio definer includes a risk management definer, the vendor portfolio populator includes a risk management screener, and the vendor portfolio analyzer includes a risk manager to facilitate managing vendors base on the organizational risk they pose. In various examples the database contains information about obligations owed to and from a vendor and the vendor portfolio analyzer includes an obligation analyzer to analyze the organizational impact of vendor obligations. | 04-29-2010 |
| 20100106656 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS TO SUPPORT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS DECISIONS - Various embodiments include methods and systems to support IT business decision making, including a data correlator and business, configuration, risk, and application management databases. The business management database contains information pertaining to services offered by IT and other IT business information. The configuration management database contains operational data including the resources required by IT's offered services. The risk management database contains operational constraints on the organization by external sources, such as industry practices or government regulations. The application management database contains information about projects and applications that are in development but not currently operational including resources required by IT's services now or in the future. The data correlator defines relationships between related data residing in one or more of the databases, allowing a single convenient location to access data useful in making business decisions for an organization's information technology department. In various embodiments the data correlator includes a what-if analyzer to model decisions and determine the impact of those decisions. In various embodiments snapshots may be taken of the configuration management database to be used later to determine the operational state at a previous time and assess changes to the configuration management database between that time and the present. | 04-29-2010 |
