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Service Catalog – Reasons, Hints, and Tips
The Situation
Faced with continued economic pressures and growing unit
demand for services with higher service levels, IT organizations are
embarking on a fundamental transformation:
• Aligning services with the needs of the business
• Improving internal customer satisfaction levels
• Deploying standardized processes
= Service Catalog!
The Need to Do More
Service Catalogs offer a way to:
• Define and publish available services.
• Standardize service fulfillment processes.
• Establish achievable service levels.
• Determine the associated costs to manage performance.
Making a Difference
The most important concept is that IT services align with the business unit’s needs.
Establishing a standard set of service offerings, with associated levels and costs to be made available to internal IT customers, means that the organization can leverage market forces and in turn manage the demand for services.
Catalogs allow us to become more informed of our customer desires as well as our offering potential.
Alignment
The focus of the catalog should be tuned to customer needs to provide the basis for a balanced and strengthened negotiation with regard to trade-offs for costs and quality of services.
The result is ongoing communications between the customer and the service provider that delivers value to both sides, ensuring improved customer satisfaction, and perfect SLA compliance.
Customer demand will drive the actions and choices that produce alignment.
Alignment doesn’t weaken us; it makes us stronger!
Ongoing
Once the Service Catalog is in place, it will enable changes to the IT organizations that will reduce operational costs and improve service quality.
The ability to accurately measure the value performance of the service delivery enables IT to adapt to changing business conditions and apply resources in the most optimal way.
What to do first?
ITIL recommends the Service Catalog as the first document to be produced at the beginning of process improvement initiatives.
It is essential that sufficient planning takes place with regard to how the catalog will look including the format and content.
Two Parts – Business and Technical
Too often, catalogs are created but do not work in the real world.
ITIL recommends that the catalog is created in two parts (essentially two perspectives):
• A Business Catalog
• A Technical Catalog
Think Like a Customer
The catalog must be actionable—containing terms that are familiar to the customer—not just a list of what the IT organization thinks it does.
Services need to be articulated using non-technical terminology and should address the immediate concerns or needs of the customer.
Ideally, services should be tied to a desired business goal or outcome.
Use What They Know!
Customers are familiar with catalogs they use everyday, such as Amazon.com, eBay, Dell, etc. These websites are used by millions of consumers and are great examples of the types of catalogs your customers are used to, and expect to, interact with.
Easy to use, user-friendly descriptions, intuitive store-front interface for browsing available service offerings should all be included in a successful customer-facing catalog.
Relevant Content
Effective catalogs should also segment the customers they
service and provide different content based on roles and needs,
e.g.
• End users
• Business unit executives
• IT managers, etc.
Transactional
Key Objectives Catalog Elements
Appropriate Expectations Service Names, Descriptions
Service Level Commitments Pricing, SLA Metrics
Efficient Searching Categories, Keywords, Icons
Streamlined Ordering Auto Fill Forms
Complete Orders Service-specific Forms
Correct Orders Field-level instructions
Real-time Status Status e-mail templates
Accessible
Key Objectives Catalog Elements
Organizational Design Service Teams, Work Queues
Governance Standard Authorizations
Consistency Standard Delivery Plans
Quality Checklists
Efficiency and Speed Intelligent Workflows
Automation Task Level APIs
Appropriate Expectations Service Level Standards
Continuous Improvement Operating Level Standards
Control Alerts and Escalations
Additional Bonuses
An actionable catalog can serve as a system of record for data
that you need to run your IT service organization like a business
within a business.
It can be a vehicle to:
• Manage customer demand
• Map fulfillment processes for each service
• Track service levels
• Drive process efficiencies
• Govern vendor performance
• Determine costs
Actionable
Key Objectives Catalog Elements
Demand Management Published Prices
Cost Management Activity-based Costing
Billing Management Billing Directories
Resource Management Utilization Benchmarking
‘SMART’ Work Routing Routing Algorithms
Management Visibility Dashboards, Drill-down Analytics
Compliance Audit and Compliance Reports
Vendor Management Vendor Performance Reports
Foundation for Success
Industry leaders create actionable Service Catalogs that:
• Define services in the language that your customers will understand
• Provide a venue where a service order can be placed
• Provide performance management data for IT services
Benefits of doing it right
IT Benefits Business Benefits
Create a communication vehicle Clear service definitions
Demand-driven alignment Business value
Demand planning Budget transparency
Ensure enforceable standards One-stop shopping
Identity cost drivers Price comparison
Standard delivery process Reliable delivery commitments
Governance Spend control
Continuous improvement Higher productivity
Operating as a Business
When the new catalog is in place, IT organizations can begin to
operate as a business. Services that are not frequently requested
by customers can be discontinued, and delivery processes for high
volume services can be optimized.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provide greater visibility to
control costs and respond to customer demand. This same data
can help drive infrastructure requirements and support broader
budgeting conversations.
Hints and Tips
Pilot the Catalog – Determine which services and attributes
need to be included or revised prior to comprehensive rollout.
Publishing the initial service catalog without chargeback, targeting
a specific business unit, or covering only a few primary IT services
may allow for refinement and iterative maturity over time.
Establish Team - The initial catalog should be driven internally within IT and should include adequate representation from all stakeholders within each domain to ensure documented services are appropriate and valid. Executive sponsorship is also critical.
Hints and Tips
Establish Baseline - The team should create a list of all the services that IT offers, regardless if whether or not they will be included in the initial catalog of services. When creating the baseline catalog, it is important to consider the following key guidelines to ensure that services offered can be effectively managed moving forward:
• The service is self-contained and is not part of a larger service offering. • The service can be monitored and measured for consumption levels. • The service has costs that may vary with changes in consumer
behavior. • The business could potentially procure the service externally.
Hints and Tips
Refine Service Offerings - The initial baseline should be refined to include only those initial services to be included in the pilot or first iteration of the IT service catalog. If different levels of service will be provided, cost variations should be documented by consumption type.
Hints and Tips
Perform Service Benchmarks - Once services have been
identified, service levels should be benchmarked using available
monitoring capabilities and measurement techniques. Resultant
metrics should be documented to ensure they are consistent and
repeatable for incorporation into service level agreements with the
customer.
Hints and Tips
Publish Service Catalog - After services are documented,
Reviewed, and finalized, the service catalog should be made
available to the business, preferably through an appropriate
business relationship manager. Business feedback may be
incorporated into the catalog and revised prior to service selection
and establishing formal agreements.
Hints and Tips
Establish Service Agreement - Following business review and
selection of services, any formal service selections and supporting
agreements should be facilitated through the service level
management process and documented in a standard Service Level
Agreement (SLA). Service narratives may be used to define and
continuously update service descriptions.
Hints and Tips
Improve Services - Any service improvement initiative should be iterative in nature and should ensure that ongoing improvement activities enhance communication with the business. Maximize operational efficiencies and continue cost reductions through a continuous service improvement program (CSIP).
Hints and Tips
Refine the Service Catalog - The cost, complexity, and
difficulty of implementing an IT service catalog will vary greatly
depending on the details incorporated into the final document.
Therefore, different variations of the service catalog should be
considered only after an initial catalog has been deployed
successfully and accepted by the business customer.
Hints and Tips
Bottom Line
Most companies have not yet created IT service catalogs, let
alone implement chargeback to the business for IT services.
However, adoption of an IT catalog of services in alignment with
the service level management process can promote rapid maturity
of IT business relationship management practices.
The deployment of an effective IT service catalog will not only
clarify IT services to the business, but can also significantly modify
consumer behavior resulting in streamlined service consumption
and overall cost reduction.
IT Governance
IT Governance is now widely recognized as a critical success factor
for managing today's complex enterprise IT environments. It has
become one of the most popular buzzwords among IT executives
and company boards alike. But, like many buzzwords, this one is far
easier to recite than it is to understand, let alone apply.
Complicating the picture even further is that there is no single IT
Governance standard. Rather, the topic of IT Governance falls at
the intersection of three popular frameworks, which are
contemporary buzzwords in their own right:
• ITIL
• COBIT
• ISO 20000
IT Governance
At the technology level, the key questions are:
• How can we identify the concepts that need to be defined to enable effective IT Governance?
• How can we implement the processes and tools that make these concepts actionable?
The answer is guided by the old "DMMI" maxim:
What is not defined cannot be managed.
What is not managed cannot be measured.
What is not measured cannot be improved.
Role of the IT Service Catalog
IT Governance
By implementing best practices-based IT Service Catalogs,
companies can ensure that "IT Governance" becomes more than
just a buzzword, but rather an actionable methodology to most
effectively harness the awesome power of information technology in
the interests of the business enterprise.
IT Governance
Bonus Documents
The Toolkit adds two additional documents which explores the service catalog in depth:
The Evolving Service Catalog – discusses different options related to the presentation and content of the service catalog.
Viewpoints to Creating a Service Catalog – discusses the service catalog from the context of several specifically defined roles, including consultant, manager, and architect.