---
title: Explore Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite
description: The Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite \(SPM Retail\) is a purpose-built extension of the Project Workspace offering from ServiceNow that gives retail organizations a structured, repeatable way to manage store lifecycle projects. Playbooks for these projects give retail project managers a ready-made, step-by-step roadmap for every store scenario. As a result, they execute consistently and never have to invent the sequence or approvals.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/it-business-management/explore-spm-retail-suite.html
release: australia
topic_type: concept
last_updated: "2026-04-29"
reading_time_minutes: 2
keywords: [SPM Retail]
breadcrumb: [Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite, Strategic Portfolio Management]
---

# Explore Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite

The Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite \(SPM Retail\) is a purpose-built extension of the Project Workspace offering from ServiceNow that gives retail organizations a structured, repeatable way to manage store lifecycle projects. Playbooks for these projects give retail project managers a ready-made, step-by-step roadmap for every store scenario. As a result, they execute consistently and never have to invent the sequence or approvals.

## Retail projects

Retail customers regularly execute standard store-related operations such as opening new stores, closing under performing stores, refurbishing existing stores, and relocating stores. These are recurring, high-volume activities common across the retail industry. Retail customers often manage these store operations across many disconnected tools, creating three pain points:

-   Senior executives and management don't have a single platform to see all store-related projects in one place. They also can't track any underlying milestones like signing a lease or grand opening dates.
-   Project managers coordinate manually across scattered tools, chasing multiple stakeholders and managing spreadsheets instead of using a single workflow.
-   Delivery teams such as IT deployment, construction, and procurement don't have easy access to complete their assigned work and report status to leadership.

To learn more about retail projects, see [Explore retail projects](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/it-business-management/explore-retail-projects-spm-r.md).

## Playbooks for retail projects

Playbooks give retail organizations a prescribed, repeatable way to guide store life-cycle projects through every stage from initiation to closeout. The right activities are executed by the right teams at the right time.

Without a prescribed playbook, retail organizations face three pain points:

-   Project managers rely on incomplete knowledge or personal checklists to decide what activities to run, in what order, and when to involve which team.
-   Critical activities such as compliance sign-offs, lease approvals, asset recovery confirmations, and final readiness reviews are skipped, delayed, or completed in the wrong sequence.
-   New project managers and delivery teams have no documented guidance to learn from, so onboarding to retail store operations is slow and inconsistent.

These playbooks work as stages, prescribed activities, approvals, and checkpoints to tailor them specifically for retail store operations. Each playbook is attached to its corresponding project type and guides every persona through the same sequence on one platform.

To learn more about playbooks, see [Explore playbooks for retail projects](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/it-business-management/playbooks-spm-retail-suite.md).