“What are your thoughts on the RPO KPI for the ERP MDM PQQ?” you might be asked.
“20 minutes and an hour!” you will hopefully say.
Or when someone invites you along to their S&M Conference, remember to ask about the dress code. It’ll either be suit and tie or latex’n’leather and may well be very different set-ups.
Being something of a polymath means I bring the most profitable processes, frameworks and practises from other industries to yours.
But abbreviations quickly spin out of control. Several industries even have identical abbreviations for different things (see ARR and LAS below).
So below you’ll find a list I keep of many of the common abbreviations you come across, that everyone saying them assumes you’ll know.
Jump straight to the Business, Finance and Technology sections if you like.
There is something to be said to understanding an industry’s lexicon but at the same time, abbreviations are often used by people who have long forgotten what they mean themselves.
I have worked in all the industries where I learnt these so get in touch if you need help.
Business
(The) 5 P’s - the full marketing mix of Product, Price, People, Place, Promotion. May also be known as the 4 P’s (drop any one you choose, commonly and oddly “People”), or the 6 P’s which adds Positioning.
ACV - Actual Cash Value or Annual Contract Value. Also see TCV.
AML - Anti Money Laundering (also see KYC)
AOB - All Other Business; usually an agenda item at the end of a meeting, similar to “Q&A”
ARR - Average Rate of Return or Adjusted Rate of Return or Annualised Rate of Return or Annual Recurring Revenue. One of the worst abbreviations to use without explanation, given its wildly different interpretations.
ARPU - Average Revenue Per User
ASP - Average Sale (or Selling) Price
ATL - Above The Line (eg. the budget line; it refers to paid promotional marketing, otherwise known generally as ‘advertising’ though it can include stuff like tradeshows, etc). Also see BTL.
BOD - Board of Directors is the most common meaning, but there are many other alternatives.
BOM - Bill of Materials (Electronics Manufacturing)
BoL - Bill of Lading. Can also be eBoL, BL or eBL. #trade
BPMN - Business Process Model and Notation. Or flow charting, as it’s been called for decades.
BTL - Below The Line (see ATL)
C&P - Open to so much interpretation and industry specifics, just visit this link and choose the most likely.
CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost
CAD - Cash Against Documents #trade
CAGR - Compound Annual Growth Rate
CBDC - Central Bank Digital Currency. #crypto
CC - Creative Commons
CE - Consumer Electronics (category)
CFR - Cost and Freight. Similar to CIF, Cost Insurance & Freight. #trade
CMA - Competition and Markets Authority (UK)
CMS - Content Management System
CMYK - Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK (Printing)
COB - Close of Business
CoC - Certificate of Conformity
COGS - Cost Of Goods Sold
COO - Certificate of Origin. Can also be eCOO.
COP - Close of Play (English for COB)
CPG - Consumer Packaged Goods. Similar to FMCG, but less frequently purchased. An example is cosmetics.
CPQ - Configure Price Quote
CRM - Customer Relationship Management (System)
CTA - Commodity Trading Advisor (Investment Finance)
COT - Commitment of Traders (Commodities)
CSP - Company Service Provider; a company that sets up companies for third parties.
CTR - Clickthrough Rate
CXO - Generic term for a senior “C” level manager eg. a CEO, CIO
DDGS - Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles #commodities
DDP - Delivery Duty Paid (Logistics and Freight)
DeFi - Decentralised Finance; a blockchain innovation.
DFM - Design For Manufacture; the process of taking a designer’s designs and making them suitable for manufacturing.
DI - Documentary Instruction #trade
DOM - Distributed Order Management (Trading). Or a Dominatrix if you’re in that trade; not one I’ve worked or played in.
DPI - Dots Per Inch (printing)
EA - Executive Assistant. see PA.
ETA - Estimated Time of Arrival
ETB - Estimated Time of Birthing #trade
ETC - Estimated Time of Completion #trade
EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation
ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning
EXW - Ex Works (Logistics and Freight)
FMCG - Fast Moving Consumer Goods. Most of what you’ll find in a grocery store or supermarket; things bought frequently.
FOB - Free On Board (Logistics and Freight) #trade
FX - Foreign Exchange
G&A - General and Accounting
GS - General Sales. This is the most common, but it may have other possible company-specific meanings.
GxP - Good Practice. The ‘x’ denotes a multitude of specifics result in confusing other examples like GDP.
HCM - Human Capital Management
INCOTERMS - collectively all the ways you can take delivery of goods.
IP - Intellectual Property (not necessarily a product or service, it can be a process)
IPO - Initial Public Offering
ITT - Invitation To Tender
JSI - Joint Statement Initiative
KPI - Key Performance Indicator
KYC - Know Your Customer (also see AML).
LAU - Legal Age User (Tobacco industry)
LAS - Legal Age Smoker. Or confusingly also “Liquid Applicator System” (Tobacco industry)
LCV - Lifetime Customer Value
LE - Legal Entity
LTV - Loan to Value. May also be Lifetime Value (of Customer) which is more commonly LCV.
NSFW - Not Safe For Work (see S&M)
M&A - Mergers and Acquisitions
MDM - Master Data Management
MLP - Minimal(ly) Lovable Product. Also see MMP, MVP, MVS
MMM - Market (or Marketing) Mix Modelling; a model that attempts to use data analysis techniques to quantify the value of each individual marketing tactic across the “5 P” spectrum (see above).
MMP - Minimal(ly) Marketable Product. Also see MLP, MVP and MVS.
MoSCoW - Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have but would like
MSME - Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise
MSRP - Manufacturer’s Recommended Retail Price
MVP - Minimum Viable Product. Also see MMP and MVS.
MVS - Minimum Viable Subsidiary
NBIE - Non Binding Initial Estimate
ODM - Original Design Manufacturer. Also see OEM.
OEM - Original Equipment Manufacturer. Also see ODM.
OM - Order Management
The 5 P’s - Product Price Place People Promotion; the components of ‘Marketing’.
PA - Per Annum or Personal Assistant.
PDM - Can mean many things… Partnership Development Manager and Product Data Management being the two most common.
PHP - originally “Personal Home Page” but now “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”; a web coding language
PiC - Person in Charge. Alternative to POC.
PIM - Product Information Management
PLM - Product Lifecycle Management
PMF - Product Market Fit
POC - maybe Point Of Contact but there are many other definitions of POC, like “Proof of Concept” making it confusing. Alternative to PiC.
PQQ - Pre Qualification Questionnaire
PSRB - Professional Statutory Regulatory Body
PTO - Paid Time Off
R&D - Research and Development
RFI - Request for Information; an early tender stage.
RFP - Request For Price; generally called a ‘tender’.
RGB - Red Green Blue
ROI - Return On Investment
RPA - Robotic Process Automation; a pending ‘supertheme’.
RPO - Recovery Point Objective (also see RTO)
RRP - Recommended Retail Price (tip: illegal to enforce in most countries)
RTA - Regional Trade Agreement
RTO - Recovery Time Objective (also see RPO)
S&D - Supply and Demand. Also generic term for commodity traders’ daily information summary sheets.
S&M - Sales and Marketing. Or maybe that other NSFW thing.
SAM - Serviceable Addressable Market; portion of the TAM you can acquire with your current business model. See also TAM and SOM.
SBU - Strategic Business Unit. This is the most common interpretation, but it may mean other things.
SG&A - Sales, General and Administration (an accounting layer of a business)
SIEM - Security Information and Event Management
SMAC - Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Challenging
SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-constrained
SND - Supply and Demand; a frequently-used report on commodities trading desks
SOM - Serviceable Obtainable Market; Portion of SAM you can realistically capture in future. See also TAM and SAM.
SQL - Structured Query Language
STAR - Situation, Task, Action, Result; a useful way to frame experiences in interviews, and when interviewing
TAM - Total Addressable Market. See also SAM and SOM
TCV - Total Contract Value.
TCO - Total Cost of Ownership
TM - Trademark. (can be unregistered, claimed or registered)
UX - User Experience (may relate to a product or service, commonly software)
VC - Venture Capital/ist
WCM - Web Content Management (like CMS)
Currencies
All have their own abbreviations, too many to list here including GBP, CNY, USD, NZD, EUR and more.
Combinations, known as ‘crosses’ also exist, like EURGBP. They sometimes even have names, so GBPUSD is also known as ‘cable’, USDCAD is called the ‘loonie’ and there are more.
You can tell from the layout of the cross what its number, or quote, represents. More on that here.
Sometimes a currency ‘strengthening’ will be mentioned with its quote rising or falling, depending on the type of ‘cross’. You’re not going mad, it’s complicated.
Investment Banking/ Trading
Every traded company, financial derivative, commodity and currency are all known by abbreviations called ‘tickers’. There are tens of thousands of them - too many to list here.
Often derivatives are abbreviated with a mix of a ticker, a month abbreviation (strictly not an abbreviation, but hey) and the year. For example the abbreviation -the ticker- for the May 2020 Oil futures contract is CLK0. CL is Crude Oil, ‘K’ is May and ‘0’ is 2020.
WARNING! To further confuse issues, the SAME FINANCIAL PRODUCT may have different tickers across different systems. Yes, this is absurd and has been known to catch out the pro’s. Here’s a useful cheatsheet for all the CME tickers and their equivalent, different tickers across several different systems.
Personality
IQ+EQ+TQ+BQCQ+SQ = Intelligence Quotient + Emotional Quotient + Technical Quotient + Behavioural Quotient raised to Creative Quotient + Spiritual Quotient
OCEAN - for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
Technology
AAA - Authentication, Authorization and Accounting. A family of protocols that mediate network access.
AD - Autonomous Driving. Also see ADAS.
ADAS - Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. Also see AD.
AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
AGILE - Not an abbreviation but a common-sense approach to software development and projects in general.
ALM - Application Lifecycle Management; the process of specification, design, development, and testing of a software application
API - Application Programming Interface
ATT - App Tracking Transparency (an Apple system). Also see IDFA.
CDN - Content Delivery Network
CI/CD - Continuous Integration/ Continuous Development.
CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift…. what happens when a website is loading and you see its contents jump around. Super annoying if it’s still happening when you’re interacting with the site… and often ignored by designer. Also see UX.
COTS - Configurable Off The Shelf
CPU - Central Processing Unit; the brain of your computer that runs your operating system, for example. Also see GPU.
CRUD - Create Read Update Delete
CTA - Call To Action. Arguably a business term, but abbreviated in webtech and online design.
DAO - Digital Autonomous Organisation… which uses #blockchain smart contracts to decentralise organisation while maintaining a revenue motivation.
DeFi - Decentralised Finance, pron. DeeFie.
DNS - Domain Name Service, System or Server
DLT - Distributed Ledger Technology (blockchain)
E2EE - End to End Encryption
ECU - Engine Control Unit (automotive)
EV - Electric Vehicle.
F2P - Free to Play.
FLoC - Federated Learning of Cohorts; Google’s post-cookie tracking framework.
GPU - General Processing Unit; the ‘muscle’ behind the brain of your computer that is mostly used for specific tasks, for example video editing, data crunching. Also see CPU.
HATEOAS - Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State ( a type of REST )
HDD - Hard Disk Drive
HTTP - HyperText Transfer Protocol
IDFA - IDentifier for ADvertisiers. An Apple system. Also see ATT.
IDE - Integrated Development Environment. The place you write and compile code; an application to create software. Also see ALM.
IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol
IMU - Inertial Measurement Unit (motorcycling)
ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL
LCP - Largest Contentful Paint… the confusingly-named abbreviation that means how long your web-page takes to load.
L1 and L2 - Level 1 and Level 2; different kinds of Etherum blockchain.
NFT - Non fungible token. A strange blockchain thing that’ll probably become normal before we realise it.
OCR - Optical Character Recognition
OM/DOM - Object Model/ Document Object Model (an API structure)
OOB - Out Of the Box (eg. a standard configuration)
OS - Operating System
OTA - Over The Air… it’s how modern (Tesla and increasingly other) car companies update their cars.
OTP - One Time Password. Has several other meanings too, but this is the most common.
PaaS - Platform as a Service; a main distinction from SaaS being that you can develop on it.
POP - Just don’t… use IMAP (see above)
RAM - Random Access Memory
REST - Representational State Transfer. Commonly used to create interactive applications that use Web services.
ROM - Read Only Memory
RTO - Recovery Time Objective
RPO - Recovery Point Objective
RTB - Return to Base
RTP - Real-Time Transport Protocol
SaaS - Software as a Service
SAML - Security Assertion Markup Language
SCRUM - Not an abbreviation, but a common-sense approach to software development and projects in general based around short bursts of intensive work called sprints run by small sub-teams.
SDET - Software Development Engineer in Test eg. someone who tests software, by using software to automate the process.
SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SNAFU - Situation Normal; All F&^%ed Up
SRTP - Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol
SSD - Solid State Drive
SSH - Secure Shell
SSID - Service Set Identifier
SQL - Structured Query Language
TCP/ IP - Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol
TLS - Transport Layer Security
TMT - Technology, Media and Telecommunications.
TVL - Total Value Locked… the #DeFi equivalent of AUM (Assets Under Management). #blockchain
UDP - User Datagram Protocol
UI - User Interface (see above for “UX”)
UX - User Experience
V2G - Vehicle to Grid; the concept of EV charger stations being able to feed excess vehicle power back into a grid for surge management. Also see V2H.
V2H - Vehicle to Home; the concept of home EV chargers being able to pull excess EV power into the home for surge management.
XML - Extensible Markup Language
Timezones
All have their own abbreviations, too many to list here including GMT, UKT, CET, PST, EST and more.
Know any more abbreviations or groups I should add? Ping me on Twitter or in the comments below.
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