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Matti Grönroos
What is a Service?
The term "service" is usually — at least in information technology — associated with some kind of continuity. Building the WhatEver V5 software as project work is usually not a service. However, the tasks related to its maintenance are usually considered a service. Drawing the boundary line is not easy.
The service has several different attributes. Perhaps the most important thing to do first is to identify who the customer is. It is not always obvious. The services may also be in a hierarchy with each other or otherwise interfacing: you cannot deliver service A without delivering service B, too.
A key part of IT service production is to keep the Service Portfolio up-to-date, relevant, and well-responding to the demand. It's not rocket science, but a structured approach is to be followed.
The first question is who the customer is. Even the term "customer" can be ambiguous. Often, the customer has at least two faces: The Service Recipient is the entity that buys the service to support or enable the business. Often this role is owned by the customer's IS/IT function. The user is the person who uses the service. The Service Recipient may not even represent the same organization as the user. The structure may be more complex, too. For example, the IS/IT unit as shared interface to the vertical business units, and the corporate finance function to to handle the cash flow. The Service Management must adapt to various options.
Depending on the type of the service, the customer might be
- Infrastructure component as an enabler to upper service layers, or an internal process (technical services, data management, etc)
- Corporate users (office services, networking, email, physical access control, office printing, etc)
- Clients to the corporate customer
- Partners to the customer (for example a car dealer as an insurance broker)
- Consumers over Internet
The typical minimum content of the Service Portfolio is
- The Mission: why the service is in place?
- What value the service brings
- Who will receive the value
- Service hours
- Support model
- Service level targets
- Charging principles
- Ownership
- Roles and responsibilities, including those ones of the customer
These are used to create the concrete content of the portfolio:
- Service Description
- Sales and marketing material
- Implementation plan
- Support model
- Governance model and service level management
- Pricing
- Description of user interfaces to the service
- Instructions
- Cost and profit management
The last but not least: a common understanding must be found between the service provider's organizational units of how the service is produced and organized.