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.