Buying Into the Service Catalogue
Service Catalogues seem to be gaining in popularity as IT organizations continue to wrestle with the age-old challenge of positioning and presenting themselves to their customers as strategic, value-add business partners. I am seeing a lot of webinars, white papers, presentations at conferences, and technology solutions that address the Service Catalogue subject. It makes sense as IT organizations work to find ways to better align themselves with the business. The Service Catalogue can certainly be an effective vehicle in helping achieve that goal.
I recently completed delivery of an engagement with a customer who seemed to be perceived by the business as essentially a technology provider and cost center when, in fact, IT saw themselves as a much more strategic partner. The IT organization set out to begin evolving to a services-based provider that would enable them to more effectively align with the business, contribute to business growth while maintaining operational costs, and increase their responsiveness to the needs of the business.
Thus the Service Catalogue project was launched as a springboard to begin the transformation to a more services-based organization with several key objectives:
- Structure IT as a Service Provider through a services based model
- Define IT services in terms the business understands
- IT staff to deliver services in business terms
- Establish ownership and full accountability for business and IT services
- Define service metrics to allow IT and technology partners to fully understand service offerings
- Create a solid foundation and road map for other IT initiatives
But what are the business benefits of a Service Catalogue? The customer project team and stakeholder group started by taking the basic benefits as they are spelled out in the ITIL books and tailored them to articulate the benefits they expected their organization would realize. Here is what the team came up with:
- Allow IT to confidently put standard, repeatable services in front of the business that IT can deliver on
- Position IT as a strategic partner with the business
- Enable a clear understanding and set expectations of the services IT provides to the business
- Drive accountability as each service has an owner with end-to-end accountability
- Help IT be consistent in managing service offerings and managing change to those services as everyone in the organization (business and IT) will have a common understanding of the services offered and the details behind each
- Business can speak business language - IT will have translated services into business-friendly language
The benefits and business value of a Service Catalogue are definitely tangible and real. Given this, why not start shopping the idea of a Service Catalogue in your organization?
