A Quick Peep into Service catalog management

Since the speed of digital transformation increases, more and more organizations have discovered IT to be a crucial enabler in creating greater value and getting a competitive advantage. End users depend on the IT department for various indispensable services related to workstations, email, internet, software, etc.

These are the services that you need to present to end-users in an organized, convenient -to-access interface with proper documentation. It helps provide clarity on what services are offered, how, and when they are going to be delivered. IT teams also get the advantage of having clear workflows for offering services, mainly consistent information collection. Here, you can use Service catalogue management to ensure things get performed and taken care of in the best manner.

Without such an interface, end users have no clearness on what services they are entitled to. This could end up in the service desk getting flooded with requests that cannot be serviced, or pleas that demand more information on service offerings. IT technicians need to spend significant time resolving such types of requests, shifting their concentration away from other crucial IT functions.

It is true that  coordinating and fulfilling service requests also turns out to be  a challenge, as the service offerings are not clearly connected to end users. As customer satisfaction dips and information technology productivity decreases, it is the business that ultimately aches.

How and what to do?

Here you need to think about content and cataloguingmanagement. Your organization needs an interface or process that offers all the stakeholders and simplifies service delivery end-to-end. Here,  catalogue management is a main IT practice contained that is within the Service Design goes a long way in helping organizations overcome the above problems.

In simple words, an ITIL Service Catalogue is a database or simply a structured document with data about all live IT services encompassing the ones that are available for deployment. Here, the service catalogue is a part of the service portfolio and possesses information about the two kinds of IT services:

·         Customer-facing services that are visible to the business

·         Supporting services that are needed by the service provider to offer customer-facing services.

What is the Composition of Service Catalogue?

Mostly, the below given elements are present in each element in the service catalogue:

·         A description of the services being provided

·         An identification label for the service

·         Categorization of services which allow it to be grouped with similar services

·         The types of related service requests.

·         Supporting services

·         Ownership and accountability for the services

·         Service Level Agreement (SLA) data

·         The costs associated with the service

·         The points for escalation and important contracts

What are the main objectives of this Catalogue Management?

The objectives of service catalogue management can be like:

·         To upkeep all the information that is present in the service catalogue and make sure that it is exact and up to date.

·         To offer consistent information on all the services that are agreed upon.

What is the scope of catalogue management?

The scope of service catalogue is to offer and upkeep exact information on all the services that are getting transitioned or have got transitioned to the live environment.

What are the benefits of catalogue management?

There are different benefits and your organization can make the most of service management once you implement it. Following are some of the many benefits you should know about:

Centralized Management of Request

Whether being a user you need to request access to an application, saving a backup or purchase new equipment, the Service catalogue is the access point to all types of products and services offered by IT or other departments. In this way you get the access to this information and how it is processed.

Simplicity for the user

The users request what they require and they get it without perturbing about the procedure of providing the service in this way, since everything is easily available, everyone stays contented and happy about everything.

Self-service

The usage of a Service catalogue massively facilitates user self-service capabilities, lessens management costs and improves the user experience by offering the detailed information about their requests (description, cost , delivery, approvals, etc.) And the overall status of their application.

Reduction in the Costs

A good Service catalogue lessens the time that the user needs to process applications. It permits these applications to be processed more efficiently and also allows the most qualified IT staff concentrate on those tasks that bring more worth to the organization, lessening total operating pricing.

Better business processes

Every product or service can have its own procedure of processing, based on the data offered by the user. It is not the same to proceed the registration to a training than to process the provisioning of a personal computer.

Standardization and supply

A crucial benefit of using a Service catalogue is the ability to offer each user complementary products and services, such as eliminating the possibility that someone who should not have access to an application, may apply the access to it, simplifying the catalogue for every single user profile and reducing the workload by removing the processing of inappropriate applications.

You get better control

One of the chief needs of any IT department is to have utmost control over the entire operation. The use of a Service catalogue with the Request Management process permits you to get traceability of the entire process right from application to delivery recording and documenting all the midway steps.

Overall Improvement in financial management

Centrally process all requests via the Service catalogue facilitates the allocation of costs linked to each corresponding department or business. Besides, understanding the price of each product or service offered, permits each area to make its budgets more precisely.

Users satisfaction

It is time that you offer user a single point where to see everything that IT offers, where to can send your it requests and always understand the state of the same, not just improves the management of service delivery but even greatly increases the satisfaction of the user.

Conclusion So, it is crucial that you invest in proper content and cataloging with proper service management. Once you use the right tools, you can manage everything with excellence and effectiveness.