Vendors Inventory and Attributes - Lifecycle and Status attributes for the Vendors Inventory

Vendors Inventory and Attributes

Chapter 12. Lifecycle and Status attributes for the Vendors Inventory

Lifecycle and Status attributes track the current governance state of each Vendor relationship and govern the key dates and plans associated with its lifecycle — from activation through offboarding.

Attribute Name	Maturity	Description and Notes
Relationship Status	Crawl	Description — The current governance state of this vendor relationship. Benefit(s) — Enables the inventory to distinguish active vendor relationships from those in evaluation, under performance review, suspended, or terminated. Without Relationship Status, a vendor registry cannot be used for active governance. Source — Manual. Examples — Active, Under Evaluation, Probation, Suspended, Terminated Notes — Valid values: Active, Under Evaluation, Probation, Suspended, Terminated. Status changes require Enterprise Relationship Owner approval. Terminated vendors remain in the inventory for audit and historical analysis — records are not deleted.
Relationship Type	Walk	Description — The governance classification of this vendor relationship — the level of strategic commitment and preferential treatment the enterprise extends to this vendor. Benefit(s) — Enables tiered vendor governance where Strategic Partners receive executive sponsorship and joint roadmap planning, Preferred Vendors receive preferred pricing and faster procurement, and Legacy vendors are managed to minimize spend. Source — Manual. Examples — Strategic Partner, Preferred Vendor, Approved Vendor, Trial / Evaluation, Legacy (no new spend) Notes — Valid values: Strategic Partner, Preferred Vendor, Approved Vendor, Trial / Evaluation, Legacy.
Effective Date	Walk	Description — The date on which this vendor relationship became Active — when the first governing contract was executed. Benefit(s) — Enables longitudinal vendor portfolio analysis. Long-tenured vendor relationships may carry technical debt, outdated contract terms, or governance gaps that have accumulated over time. Source — Manual. Examples — 2018-01-15, 2022-07-01
Planned Termination Date	Walk	Description — The planned date on which this vendor relationship will reach Terminated status. Populated when a decision to exit the relationship has been made and an exit timeline is defined. Benefit(s) — Enables proactive transition planning — surfacing which applications, integrations, and work items depend on a vendor that is being exited, and ensuring offboarding begins 90–180 days before termination. Source — Manual. Notes — Leave empty for Active vendor relationships with no defined exit plan.
Offboarding Plan Status	Walk	Description — Whether a documented offboarding plan exists for this vendor — covering system access revocation, data return or destruction, financial closeout, compliance handoff, and transition of dependent services. Benefit(s) — A vendor relationship without a documented offboarding plan is a governance gap. Research indicates that a significant percentage of organizations neither track nor remediate third-party risks during offboarding, leaving residual access, data exposure, and financial obligations after termination. An offboarding plan should exist for every vendor before it is needed. Source — Manual. Examples — Documented, In Progress, Not Documented Notes — Valid values: Documented, In Progress, Not Documented. For Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendors, Documented is the minimum acceptable status for an Active relationship.

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