Service Catalog: because it is more than just a list of services

Often a limited perception regarding the Service Catalog leads to consider it as a static list of services, whose usefulness does not go beyond the mere listing. In reality, it is a fundamental tool for managing digital services: let's delve together into how it helps us ensure that the offer always meets the needs of the organization and end users.

A superficial understanding of the Service Catalog and its essential function leads to an underestimation of its usefulness in the management of digital services, where the Service Catalog instead plays a fundamental role.

This limited perception often results in viewing it as a static list of services, whose usefulness does not go beyond the mere listing of the features offered. It is actually much more than that: it is a structured and detailed register that provides a clear and understandable view of the full range of services and their relationship to business processes and the needs of the business and its users.

Finding in a single source of truth constantly updated the essential information about the services offered, including details such as descriptions, conditions of delivery, requirements, costs, delivery times, and other relevant information has a twofold value:

• EXTERNAL because it facilitates communication between service providers (including their business channels) and users, improving transparency, mutual understanding, and expectation management
• INTERNAL because it enables better alignment with business objectives through continuous optimization of service management that results in efficient use of resources against a user experience that is always in line with expectations

From the perspective of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) practices, the Service Catalog mainly refers to the practices of "Service Catalogue Management" and "Service Portfolio Management." In the latter, which covers the management of the entire IT service portfolio (so all of them, from those being defined, developed, and delivered to those in retirement), Service Catalog focuses on defining, managing, and publishing the catalog of services that are in transition or that are already available in the live environment, with accompanying information.

Let us now look in detail at what information we need to ensure that digital services meet the needs of the organization and end users.

Service Catalog: what information it must contain

Given that, according to ITIL, the main role of the Service Catalogue Management practice is to help the service provider focus on "customer outcomes" (the results expected by the end stakeholder) from a correlation between internal service activities, supporting assets (the CIs) and business processes, the first important distinction to make is about the type of service.

Within a Service Catalog, services can be divided into two main categories:

• Customer-Facing Services : these are those that are directly visible and perceived by end users and directly meet their needs or requirements (e.g., customer support, access to online platforms, delivery of digital services, etc.).
• Supporting Services: are those that support and enable the delivery of Customer-Facing Services but are not directly visible to end users. In short, they are internal services that work behind the scenes to ensure that core services are delivered effectively and reliably (e.g., infrastructure management, systems maintenance, network monitoring and security, etc.).

For example, users want to send and receive e-mail quickly and reliably. This is an example of Customer-Facing Service in that the user is directly involved in using the service and expects it to be efficient and fast. The Service Provider (in this case the IT team) manages Supporting Services to ensure that the mail service works properly without the user having to worry about the underlying technical details.

So if we talk about the management of routers, switches, firewalls, and other network devices that enable data communication, they are all invisible to the user: whether one mail provider or server is used over another, the user is indifferent as long as his needs are met. In this regard we can quote Philip Kotler, the modern marketing guru: "People don't want a drill, they want a hole in the wall."

In the image below, we see an example of how the two service types can tie in with each other and specifically with the business processes and users they support. A service can be listed individually, but also as a "package": in that case to compose it there can be a main service (core service) and one or more additional services (enhancing service). In the case of a "package" there may be a single SLA (service level agreement) to cover it, with the remaining services being covered by their own SLAs.