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This aspect should underpin the organization’s Service
Catalog without forming part of the customer view.
The combination of the customer-focused and
technically-focused aspects within a Service Catalog
can be invaluable to the organization. The customer-
focused aspect of the Service Catalog is certainly
benefcial to Service Level Management during SLA
negotiation meetings with customers, whereas the
technical service catalog helps the IT service provider
to better understand the relationships between
services, including service dependencies, and even
help to form part of the confguration management
process.
Common Pitfalls
The Service Catalog can serve
as a cornerstone for success: an
actionable, customer-focused
Service Catalog can make the
diference between a tactical and
a strategic implementation of IT
Service Management. However,
the most common pitfall is that
IT departments invest many
hours into creating hundreds of
documents in an efort to develop
a service catalog that no customer
will ever read or act upon. IT
departments often have a tendency
to focus on the underlying technical
infrastructure and support activities
performed by IT but not on how
the service will be interpreted and
acted upon by its customers.
These types of technical Service Catalog documents
never achieve the expected results because they
never connect with the customer and their business
concerns. They may provide extensive and exhaustive
service documentation, yet they fail to articulate
those services in a way that is meaningful to the
business. Ultimately, the majority of these static
Service Catalog documents are rarely seen or read by
the end user and business unit community—and thus
have little to no impact.
IT then continues to do what it has always done, and
the customers of IT continue to complain that IT is too
costly and not responsive to their concerns.
To be efective, the Service Catalog must be
relevant to the customer’s needs; written
in a way that can be understood by the
organization, any customer, or end user; easily
accessible from a Web browser; and fexible to
accommodate changes to the organization or IT
department.
Once in place, a Service Catalog can also enable
changes internal to the IT department that will
both reduce operational costs and
improve service quality. The ability
to accurately measure the value
and performance of service delivery
enables IT to adapt to changing
business conditions and apply
resources—whether internal or
external to the company—in the
most optimal way.
Service Catalog should provide
details about the characteristics of
the products and services, including
Service Level Requirements, Service
Level Agreements, and even
Operational Agreements.
Q
How do you make Service
Catalogs work?