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What is a Service Catalog?
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With Brad Andrews
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Page 10
The Service Catalog also provides a link between the
business and IT.
Advantages
Implementing a Service Catalog can result in:
• Signifcant improvement in internal and external
communications
• Fosters a better understanding of business
requirements and challenges
• Ability to allocate and match costs to specifc
business departments/units
• Positively (and signifcantly) alter end-user
consumption and behaviour
• Increase demand awareness and visibility into IT
Service Provision
• Reduce IT service and process inefciencies
• Reallocation of IT resources to critical business
systems
A Service Catalog is a listing of the products,
services, and prices that an IT department ofers
to their customers. The Service Catalog is the
foundation for defning products and services and the
communication of those to the business. The Service
Catalog establishes a standard set of deliverables by
creating business-oriented agreements associated
with Service Levels and their costs.
A Service Catalog can appear in many diferent
formats, such as word documents, spreadsheets,
websites, etc. Considerations for the type of inclusions
are:
• Service Name
• Basic Service Description
• Key Business Users
• Importance of Service
• Key Support areas
• Planned Maintenance/Outage data
• SLA (in place and where it is located)
A Service Catalog gives the organization and
customer alike one location to view and order
products and services provided by the IT
department as it organizes and bundles services in a
way that non-IT customers can understand and use
them.
Organizations use the service catalog to rationalize
end-user demand and to optimize that demand based
on organizational planning and spending. The Service
Catalog also helps IT departments control service
usage by using request management and compliance
procedures to maximize and automate workfow.
Why Should Your
Organization Implement a
Service Catalog?