A service catalog has traditionally been defined as:“ A database or structured document with information about all live IT services, including those available for deployment. The service catalogue is part of the service portfolio and contains information about two types of IT service: customer-facing services that are visible to the business; and supporting services required by the service provider to deliver customer-facing services.” More recently though, the term has also been used to describe the capability to provide an employee portal and / or self-service capabilities to end users. This is sometimes also referred to as a service request catalog.
� Better management of changes – with improved insight and visibility, control, and potentially speed of change
� Better cross-team collaboration – resulting in improved change risk and impact assessment, and better change prioritization and scheduling
You can find out more about change management by reading What Is Change Management For? and ITSM Wars, Episode VII: The Standard Change Awakens.
The potential benefits of service catalog management include:
� An improved customer self-service capability for request fulfillment
� More efficient workflow for, and management of, request fulfillment
� The ability to link to automation capabilities for both increased speed of provisioning and the
Problem management –“ The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems. Problem management proactively prevents incidents from happening and minimizes the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.”
A problem is defined as:“ A cause of one or more incidents.”
Problem management identifies permanent solutions and reduces the number of, and resolution time for, repeat incidents.
The potential benefits of problem management include: �
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Less downtime and disruption to business-critical IT services and business operations, and a reduction in the opportunity cost of such disruptions A reduction in the cost of, and the effort invested in, fire-fighting or resolving repeat incidents Better use of scarce IT people resource, with reduced expenditure on workarounds or fixes that don’ t work
You can find out more about problem management by reading Problem Management: no problemo & Defining Metrics for Problem Management.
Service catalog management –“ The process responsible for providing and maintaining the service catalog and for ensuring that it is available to those who are authorized to access it.” associated cost savings
� Lightening the service desk’ s service request-based workload, allowing greater focus on business-impacting incidents over potentially routine service requests
You can find out more about service catalog management by reading 5 Tips for Creating a Successful Service Catalogue and Self-Service: The Benefits and 5 Tips for Success.
Service asset and configuration management –“ The process responsible for ensuring that the assets required to deliver services are properly controlled, and that accurate and reliable information about those assets is available when and where it is needed. This information includes details of how the assets have been configured and the relationships between assets.”
11 itSMFI Forum Focus— September 2016