IT Service Catalogs and portals are proliferating. How many Service Catalogs do you need? Should you have separate IT and business service catalogs? What do you do when a service combines parts of both? How do you not totally confuse your customers? Evergreen shares how to create and manage a federated Service Catalog approach – enabling both a consistent service face to your customers and giving your IT teams the latitude they need to execute effectively. We also briefly demonstrate our beautiful and innovative customer-centric Service Catalog (on ServiceNow) – with our service taxonomy framework built in! Recorded event with live demo available at http://content.evergreensys.com/it-service-catalog-webinar-separate-catalogs-slides
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Speaker Bios
DON CASSON, CEO,
EVERGREEN SYSTEMS
Don has led Evergreen
Systems since its founding in
1997. Over the years he has
spoken at conferences,
authored white papers and
been interviewed for
numerous industry
periodicals.
Contact:
dcasson@evergreensys.com
JEFF BENEDICT, ITSM PRACTICE
MANAGER, EVERGREEN
SYSTEMS
Jeff manages the ITSM practice
at Evergreen and has worked
with ITSM tools for 15+ years.
Jeff is an active contributor to
the Evergreen Blog and Twitter.
(twitter.com/JeffSBenedict)
Contact:
jeff.benedict@evergreensys.com
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Today’s Agenda
• About Evergreen
• Separate IT & Business Service Catalogs?
• Evergreen’s User-Centric Self-Service Portal /
Catalog (built on ServiceNow)
• Possible Next Steps / Q&A
4. • 80-person U.S. IT Consulting Firm
• Worked with hundreds of Mid-Market,
Fortune 1000 Companies and Public Sector
Organizations
• Full lifecycle firm with deep ITSM / ITIL
transformation experience
• One of Top 5 ServiceNow U.S. partners
• Primary Focus – “Customer-Centric IT
Service Management”
4
About Evergreen Systems
Sample ClientsQuick Facts
5. 5
What About the Customer?
Evolving…
IT’s Value
Customer Experience
6. 6
IT Service Catalogue
A database or structured Document with information about all
Live IT Services
The Service Catalogue is used to support the sale and delivery
of IT Services
The Service Catalogue includes information about
deliverables, prices, contact points, ordering and request
Processes
ITIL def
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Services
IT Service. A service provided to one or more Customers by an IT Service
Provider
Business Service. An IT Service that directly supports a Business
Process, as opposed to an Infrastructure Service
The term Business Service is also used to mean a Service that is delivered
to Business Customers by Business Units
Infrastructure Service. An IT Service that is not directly used (or visible)
by the Business, but is required by the IT Service Provider so they can
provide other IT Services
ITIL def
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Here’s a Fun One – Service Culture?
A Customer-
oriented Culture.
The major objectives of a
Service Culture are…
Customer
satisfaction and
helping the Customer to
achieve their
Business
Objectives.
ITIL def
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Attributes of a Service Taxonomy
Classification of things – often
from general to specific
Generally organizes things
into groups
Includes the principles
underlying the classification
Parts of a whole
Parent - child relationship can
be multi-parent
A Service Taxonomy is the practice and
science of classification of services
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Start With a Common Understanding
What is a service?
Who are the customers?
Who are the providers?
What really matters?
What does everyone
need?
How do we measure it?
17. 17
Labels Are for Customers, the Framework Is for Providers
Labels are for the
Customers
Framework is for
the Providers
18. 18
Use a Visual Service Taxonomy Tool
Labels are for the
Customers
Framework is for
the Providers
See Services
“hanging” off the
Framework
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Use a Consistent Service Design Process
Provide the customer
enough information to
make a self-service
determination…
• Name & description
• Fit for my use
• Who can request it
• Cost
• Quality
• Delivery time
• How to request it
• Service owner
20. 20
Use Configuration Management for Services Sanity
Build reusable service modules
Combine them to create new
services
Manage each service as a
configuration item (CI) to give you
accountability
21. 21
3-Phase Customer-Centric Services Road Map
Employee Self-
Service Portal Service Catalog
Fulfillment
Automation
Demand Build Manage Retire
Services Taxonomy Services Health
Services Lifecycle Factory
CMDB
Customer
sees…
IT sees…
Costing
Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us!
I am Don Casson, CEO of Evergreen and with me is Jeff Benedict who heads up Evergreen’s ITSM practice, and is a phenomenal solutions architect to boot.
If you are new to our webinar series, welcome. If you are a past attendee thanks for joining us again. Our goal is to share valuable information & insights you can use in your planning and activities right now. The topic we will explore today is, “Who are the customers, what are the services?”
Here is our agenda-
After a very little bit about Evergreen, we will dive into our topic today – which sounds simple enough, but there is quite a lot going on here under the covers.
Beyond that we will briefly demonstrate our always evolving view of a very advanced, self-service experience, built on ServiceNow.
Then we will answer some questions if you have any. At any time during the webinar you may submit a question using the Q&A function.
Evergreen is a US based consulting firm and we have worked with hundreds of mid market, Fortune 1000 companies and public sector organizations to improve their IT Service Management execution.
We are a full lifecycle firm, or in the words of one customer, “you have both process and technology in one company.”
We are one of the top 5 US ServiceNow partners and have over a decade of domain experience in each area of the ServiceNow portfolio, but we view all of this from a perspective of customer centric IT Service Mgmt.
AT Evergreen WE THINK CONVENTIONAL ITSM WISDOM IS WRONG
ITSM has been done the same old way for the past decade – incident, problem, change and a little knowledge. At the end of it, we may be running a little better – but so what? What about the customer? Are we making a difference for them? Or are we waiting to phase 2 or 3 to even think about them. This old model is broken. If you are considering moving to ServiceNow, or any other platform for that matter – demand more! You need to start with the customer in Phase 1. You absolutely CAN deliver a big customer experience improvement in Phase 1. One the customers and the CIO will notice. And if you are already a couple of years into your latest ITSM journey – even more importantly - NOW is the time.
For the past two years at Evergreen we have been working very hard on exactly this – focusing from the customer in, not IT out – with IT and the customer evolving together from the start. Let me share a short story. Late November we were contacted by a prospective new client who had been using ServiceNow for two years, with little to show for it. She wanted to dramatically change her employee’s IT experience by year end. On New Year’s eve she went live with a beautiful, new Employee Self-Service Portal, and told us it was the most impactful IT project of the year. She should know, she’s the CIO.
Ok let’s get started! As I researched this topic I found a lot of confusion out there. ITIL is as good a place to start as any for definitions. Determining what ITIL means or could mean is kind of like reading a religious text, and asking “what did God mean when he or she said…” The answer may be affected by the context of the question, the perspective at the time it was written, and the perspective now. If we look at the ITIL definition of the term “IT Service Catalogue” we see that it is a structured source of data with information on IT Services, that information needs to support the sale and delivery of those services, and includes information a customer would need to make “purchase” decision on a particular service. Seems straight forward enough.
Next I looked at the definition of a service. Seems there are three kinds – Infrastructure Services which are in essence IT services delivered to other IT people – or what we generally call Internal IT Services. Then there are IT Services – which are what IT delivers to non IT employees – which we call IT Customer Services, and last – there are Business Services.
Now it gets a little harder. Business Services has two definitions – they can be an IT Service that directly supports a business process, or they can be a service delivered to outside customers by the business. I think that can be a little confusing. So that means providing an App like SAP to people in finance is a business service, and finance people using SAP to collect money from customers is the “accounts receivable” business service. To me – if we are just providing SAP as an app to an employee – that sounds like an IT Customer Service. To make it more interesting – maybe we think E mail is an IT Service. But what if finance uses e mail with SAP to collect accounts receivable from customers – then in that case is e mail a business service?
Here is a view of that conversation from a Visual Service Taxonomy perspective. At the top IT is providing an Infrastructure, or Internal IT service called business continuity / disaster recovery, in support of an application - SAP. The customer for the service is the IT employee who owns the app SAP. That IT employee provides the service we call “SAP app” to his customer the finance department, in this case, at a college. The college finance department provides the service “collect amounts owed” or “pay your tuition online here” to their reluctant customer – the college student.
In reality there is no ITIL definition for the business service catalog, or the technical service catalog – just IT service catalog.
ITIL envisioned an IT Service Catalog – so it was simple and logical to separate Internal IT Services from Customer IT Services – and we do the same. But that is not what the world sees now – the world is beginning to see everything as a service, and from the eyes of the customer for that particular service – not just IT services in the service catalog. And the delivery of nearly all those services today is technology enabled, so are they not, in some fashion, IT services? Some component of them is. Services can be combined and recombined in hundreds or thousands of ways – with OLAs and SLAs combining and recombining at the same rate. This is the essence of the federated service catalog.
Let’s take a little breather. Here is the ITIL def of a Service Culture. It says a lot. Customer oriented – with the KPIs of customer satisfaction and mission alignment.
No matter how many services, providers, and components you have – this is what the customers expect to see.
We have talked about how the layering of services and customers can quickly lead to a lot of complexity. As the providers, you can also see how it is very easy to get lost in the volume. How can we manage this? The key to managing this is an effective Service Taxonomy.
A Service Taxonomy is a logical, repeatable way to classify the services we offer, as well as the ones we might want to offer. The taxonomy of homo sapiens here is a pretty good type of taxonomy model for IT Services – the classification goes from very broad to specific, from millions to one. The 140 year old Dewey decimal system is a good taxonomy example as well, in use at over 200,000 libraries today. Could you imagine trying to find a book or manage a library without it?
So a taxonomy is a logical and extensible way of classifying things. Most taxonomies organize things into categories, groups, and even sub groups as the classification gets more and more specific. Taxonomies don’t have to be hierarchical groups, they can be alphabetic listing of things as well. The best type of taxonomy for you is the type that is most useful in creating and managing the services you want to offer.
Let’s look at a handful of guiding principles to help you be successful with the Service Catalog & Taxonomy
Start with a common understanding. I know many of you have had ITIL training. I bet you found it was much easier to discuss and develop IT Service Management principles with co-workers who had been through ITIL training as well. The same thing is true for moving from a silo based, inwardly focused IT organization to a services based, outwardly focused, customer centric organization. Building a common understanding with your team of what a service really is, who a customer is, who a provider is and what everyone expects is essential for success.
Creating a single, broad taxonomy early on is critical. We see this as a Phase 1 “must do.” At the highest level the framework should capture the broadest view of what you see as potentially within the scope of your effort. Of course the taxonomy can be grown or shrunk later – it is never locked down. But it is easier to start with a broad view as there is no downside to it. You don’t have to use all of it right away, and you will minimize any re-classification efforts downstream that could come from changing the taxonomy.
The parts of a taxonomy are meant to be parts of a whole. Here is a simple example of a broad framework covering Line of business services, shared services, and two types of IT service categories.
Here’s another example – specifically designed for Higher Education, where in addition to the categories in the last example – we have relabeled Shared Services to Campus Services, and added end customer facing service categories like future students, current students, alumni, and parents.
If you only remember one, remember this one. Everyone has customers – these are the people who make requests of you every day. What you do for them are your services. Most organizational units can have a variety of customers – IT internal, IT customer, line of business, shared service, and so on. I was in a taxonomy workshop last week with a VP of Apps. As we discussed what is a service and who is the customer, he pointed out that he provides patch services and anti virus for the IT guy who runs SAP, but he also gets calls from non IT employees in the business, to ask for estimates on developing new functionality in their services, or to commission new projects for new services.
If you ever feel lost in the work – which will probably happen - remember two grounding questions. Who are the Customers? What are the Services?
As mentioned, we break IT services into two groups – customer facing and internal IT. You don’t have to follow this convention, but these are often mixed together – which can confuse everyone. Here you also see one of our service taxonomy principles – that “the taxonomy labels are for the customer, and the framework is for the providers.” A service can be presented to a customer many different ways. It may be in a “what’s new” flashing icon, or in a list of “people who like this also like this” services. It isn’t just found by drilling down the taxonomy. But any section of a taxonomy is targeted at a particular customer set – and since we want to think like the customer, then the labels in that section should be in the customer’s language – not the provider’s. Beyond that –the labels in the taxonomy will certainly be visible a number of different places – so they have to make sense to the customer. If you look at the 2 categories above – you can see the difference in the labels for the two groups.
What do we mean when we say the framework is for the providers? It is the way the providers can understand the breadth and depth of services, and combinations of services offered. If you have 300 services – could you really understand a numbered or alphabetical list of them? It would be too hard. What about combinations to yield a complex service? It would be impossible. So the framework is for the providers – to help understand the services and combinations offered logically – to avoid creating redundant services, to better combine existing services, and to ensure that services are aligned with the right customer.
We use a visual mapping technology called X Mind. Its powerful, easy to use and inexpensive. A visual approach allows you to better understand the range and types of services offered – even as services reach into the hundreds. It helps you visually “see” where a new service in one area might also be of benefit in another part of the taxonomy. It also makes it easier to prevent duplication of services you already have – driving up re-use of existing services, and enabling you to see where combinations of existing services can more easily create a new service, rather than designing each new service individually from start to finish.
If we look at the extended taxonomy in the area of Mobile Services – we can see how the labels are customer friendly – common sense terms for that target customer. And at the edge of the taxonomy, we can see that services we might offer – like mobile bundles of basic, medium, or advanced; or service activities like add, update or remove – hang right off of the framework.
A good, consistent Service design process is critical for customer satisfaction, simplicity and quality. Here we have an IT service where we provide SAP financial software. We have a description of the core functionality offered so I can decide if this is what I am looking for. I can see that James Vittolo is the service owner if I need to contact someone about it, and I can see that it is rated 4 out of 5 stars for quality. I can also click on the “request this service” button on the upper right hand side if I decide I want it.
A good service design goal is to provide a simple but complete description of the service and its attributes, to the point where a the customer can make a self-service determination.
One more point, that can cause a big change in IT. You see James’ name published right next to the customer quality rating. Do you think James will be thinking about end to end services and happy customers? You bet he will.
It is important to apply a building block mentality to constructing services, then combine the blocks to create new services and variations of existing ones. If all your services are single threaded, custom built – they will be very expensive to create, impossible to maintain, and confusing to your customer. Think about Amazon – what would it be like if every Amazon department had its own checkout procedure?
But this idea has its own challenges too – each service module, say “financial approval process” could be used in hundreds of services. So service Configuration Management is mandatory, with each service being managed as a configuration item (CI), and mapped into any combined services of which it is a part.
You notice I didn’t use any ITIL CMDB diagrams and I didn’t say CMDB – because the CMDB has a bad reputation as a solution in search of a problem. It is important to look past that and use it for managing your services, or you will be lost.
OK that was a lot of information. Let’s go to 30,000 feet and remember where we are headed, with a visual customer centric, services roadmap.
We have classified the phases by color with Blue being Phase 1, Orange Phase 2 and Purple Phase 3.
If you look at the blue line down the middle, above the line is what the customer sees or experiences. Below the line is what IT sees and delivers from a Service Portfolio perspective.
If you found this interesting and wonder what might be a logical next step, here are a few options.
If you are interested in our advanced Employee Self-Service Portal, it is available now as a self-service demo. You can get your own login on our website – follow the front page banner.
If you are looking for a better way to organize and categorize services – you can access a short demo video of our Service Taxonomy Mind Map application on our website.
Or perhaps you are considering a broader Service Catalog initiative but aren’t sure where to start. Evergreen offers a one day, private Service Catalog Workshop on your site for up to 15 attendees. It is designed to educate your team, uncover key business drivers & roadblocks, and create a common language and direction - to get your team on the same page. You can literally save months of effort in consensus building and get your program moving. We feel like it’s a real value at less than 4 thousand dollars, including travel.