IT vendor management breaks when telemetry, contract terms, and credit decisions live in three tools. An agent watches uptime and ticket data, compares it against the contract's SLA clauses, drafts a credit request, and a vendor manager approves before anything moves. Dock holds the interpretation. ServiceNow holds incidents. Coupa holds the contract and credit memo.
Architecture
ServiceNow stays the system of record for incidents, CIs, and ticket lifecycles. Coupa stays the system of record for contracts, POs, and supplier master data. Dock is the system of record for what the agent INTERPRETS: SLA breach calls, credit calculations, escalation states, renewal flags. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the source (servicenow_incident_id, coupa_contract_id), the agent identity, the reviewer, and the timestamp. When the agent needs current ticket status or contract terms, it re-fetches via fresh API reads rather than trusting a cached field. See Dock for IT operations and Dock for procurement for the adjacent surfaces.
The Dock surface: vendor_sla_events
| sla_event_id | vendor | coupa_contract_id | servicenow_incident_id | breach_type | credit_due_usd | agent | reviewer | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sla-2041 | Cloudpipe | CT-8821 | INC-44119 | uptime 99.5% missed (99.21%) | 12400 | argus | mei.chen | approved |
| sla-2042 | Inkwell SaaS | CT-9034 | INC-44207 | P1 response > 30m | 3200 | argus | mei.chen | pending_review |
| sla-2043 | Northbeam CDN | CT-7710 | INC-44188 | uptime 99.9% missed (99.82%) | 18600 | argus | (unassigned) | escalated |
Each row is the agent's interpretation. The incident and contract numbers are pointers. The dollar figure is recomputed at review time from a fresh Coupa read.
The workflow
The agent (Argus) polls ServiceNow for closed P1/P2 incidents tied to vendor CIs. For each, it pulls the active Coupa contract, parses the SLA clause, and runs the breach math against the incident's start, ack, and resolve timestamps. If a breach exists, it writes a row to vendor_sla_events with the calculation shown end to end. The vendor manager opens the row, sees the underlying incident link and the contract clause, and either approves the credit draft or kicks it back. On approval, Argus posts the credit memo to Coupa under the vendor manager's delegated authority. If the vendor disputes, the row's status flips to escalated and a new agent-drafted escalation summary attaches, with a fresh re-fetch of incident telemetry. The dangerous-ops contract governs the Coupa write step, and irreversible credit submissions use a two-key handshake.
Why it matters
ITIL 4's supplier management practice exists to ensure suppliers and their performance are managed so a consistent quality of service is delivered. In practice most IT teams never close the loop between an outage and the credit they are owed. The agent layer closes it.
World Commerce and Contracting research has long pegged contract value leakage at roughly 9% of annual revenue across surveyed organizations, with unmonitored SLAs a leading source. A persistent row per breach, with the agent's math and the human's approval both captured, turns leakage into a recoverable line item.
The audit trail is the real product. When procurement, finance, or an external auditor asks why a credit was issued, the answer is one row with the incident pointer, the clause excerpt, the agent's calculation, and the reviewer's name. See agent audit and compliance for the broader pattern, or the same piece on agent audit for the schema details.
Try Dock for IT vendor management at dock.com.
FAQ
Does Dock replace ServiceNow or Coupa? No. ServiceNow keeps incidents. Coupa keeps contracts and credits. Dock holds the agent's interpretation and the human approval.
Who computes the credit amount? The agent drafts it from the SLA clause and incident timestamps. The vendor manager approves before any Coupa write happens.
What if the vendor disputes the breach?
The row flips to escalated, the agent attaches a fresh telemetry re-fetch, and the dispute thread persists on the same row rather than scattering across email.
Can the agent submit a credit memo without a human? No. Credit submissions are governed by the dangerous-ops contract and require a two-key handshake from the vendor manager.
