Creating your Service Catalog

What is the purpose of a Service Catalog ?

The purpose of a Service Catalog is to provide and maintain a single source of consistent information on all operational services and to ensure that they are widely available to those who are authorised to access.

What information is contained in a Service Catalog ?

A Service Catalog contains information on services directly consumed by the users as well as relationships to user roles and processes.

The Service Portfolio not only include the active Services but also the retired and the new Services being developed and ready for activation. . When defining a Service Catalog and while defining the Services, the following sections should be addressed and written in a language that every end-user, client, consumer, user can understand :

• Service name. ...

• Service description. ...

• Service scope (In & Out)

• Service type/category. ...

• Service levels. ...

• Service costs. ...

• Service hours. ...

• Service support.

What is then the difference between a Product Catalog and Service Catalog ?

The Service Catalog is a strategic vehicle designed as an aggregation of IT components and innovative capabilities giving the business customer the power to solve problems.

The Product Catalog (or Request Portal) is a simplified, tactical and transactional tool that support the immediate business needs.

What should the Service Catalog be for your organization ?

The Service Catalog is the face of the organisation to their customers ! It must be complete, simple and beautiful.

Can my current ITSM system support a Service Catalog ?

Many ITSM tool providers claim they have a Service Catalog build into their product. When diving deeper into what they claim it usually turns out that they are actually talking about a Product Catalog and not a Service Catalog.

What if my current ITSM tooling is not easily supporting a Service Catalog ?

No need to panic or rush into replacing your current ITSM tools!

Often, creating your Service Catalog in a different tool is the simplest and most cost-effective short-term solution.

As a consultant working with various (legacy) ITSM tools, I frequently need to be innovative, starting the Service Catalog creation process on paper and then gradually transferring the information into a spreadsheet.

Many organizations already have a platform capable of disseminating information to their internal or external users/clients. They likely refer to it as the intranet or extranet for external users, and these tools can serve as an excellent starting point.

For many clients, the simplest approach was to begin creating the Service Catalog in Microsoft SharePoint (or any other tool that can publish content).

While this may not be the ultimate goal, it's an effective way to start, experiment, and refine the content. Later, you might develop something within your existing ITSM tools (usually involving extensive customization, which I don't recommend) or consider transitioning to a Next Generation ITSM/ESM Service Management Platform (which will ultimately be the best solution, and I can assist you with that).

Check out the brief presentation on what I've set up for several clients who wish to implement their Service Catalog but lack ITSM tools that support them or require excessive customization and have chosen a different approach.

The Service Catalog is built in Microsoft SharePoint using only the standard web parts. It took me about half a day to set up the framework, including sample content used to engage in discussions with various Service Owners, who then need to provide detailed information for each Service Description.

Click HERE for the presentation