With Information Technology (IT) becoming an integral part of our lives, the services that it offers businesses or users is key to its success.
With Information Technology (IT) becoming an integral part of our lives, the services that it offers businesses or users is key to its success. Most organizations’ IT departments offer their services in the form of a Service Catalog. This catalog varies from business to business as well as user to user.
According to ITIL, a Service Catalog is a database or structured document with information about all Live IT Services, including those available for Deployment. The Service Catalogue is the only part of the ITIL Service Portfolio published to Customers and is used to support the sale and delivery of IT Services. The Service Catalogue includes information about deliverables, prices, contact points as well as ordering and request processes.
To design and develop an effective service catalog, the following 5 activities are essential:
1.Involving the Right People
2.Specifying In/Out Scope Services
3. Defining Services Clearly
4.Service vs Support Team(s) Mapping
5.Reviewing Service Catalog Items
1. Involving the Right People – Developing a service catalog needs support from senior staff and stakeholders. So, make sure the team is formed by people from all IT departments.
2. Specifying In/Out Scope Services – Clearly specifying what IT can support and cannot support is important and must be as detailed as possible. IT service providers must know what they are currently providing and what they can additionally provide. Also, this list must be taken into consideration for future services. Managers, team leaders, support staff and business owners should work together to consolidate this list and categorize services like Email, Hardware, Software, etc.
3. Defining Services Clearly – Workshops should be conducted to discuss services, types of support and expected level of support with customers to ensure that everyone is on the same page and the boundaries are clear.
4. Service vs Support Team(s) Mapping – It is a must to map each service to a support team. Following best practices, there should be a 3-tiered hierarchy to support each service. Along with the escalation procedures, there should also be clear definition on what each level can support and provide.
5. Reviewing Service Catalog Items – Each item in the service catalog has a life cycle. Due to the nature of the IT environment, these service catalog items need to be reviewed periodically. To keep service catalog up to date, each item needs to updated and expired items need to be removed.