ITFM Pathway to Success: Step 2 – Service Definition

The MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success was specifically designed to help those leaders responsible for managing the finances of the IT organization, such as CIOs, CFOs, IT Finance VPs and their respective teams to improve their ITFM capabilities.

In order to achieve the benefits of implementing ITFM processes and best practices, a series of planned and measured steps must be taken in a methodical manner over a period of time. The MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success framework will ensure that the charges for IT services are transparent and that the business understands them. Some benefits include improved financial compliance and control, better operational control and better decision-making.

This framework acts as a bridge between collective financial systems and service management systems as it gives management a better understanding of the delivery and consumption of services.

Step 2: Service Definition

It is vital for IT to provide a single customer facing reference source for all its services offered. This can be achieved by creating a customer facing service catalog. There are numerous benefits of having a well-developed service catalog:

• Demonstrates the value of IT
• Simplifies the process of ordering IT services
• Makes it easier to interact with IT
• Availability of documents and Service Levels Agreements (SLAs) for each service
• Leads to more efficient consumption of services
• Improved transparency
• Increased customer satisfaction

Before creating a service catalog, one needs to understand what a service catalog is and what it is not.

A service catalog IS:

• A communication tool to have a productive dialogue with the business about what services IT can deliver to help make them successful
• An easy-to-use document to help customers understand how to request services, what the service performance levels are, and what they cost
• A leading practice framework for defining services which can be benchmarked
• The foundation for any type of allocation or chargeback process

A service catalog IS NOT:

• An IT operating or service delivery model
• Constrained by the current structure of outsourcing service contracts
• A self-service portal for the business
• A detailed technical process list that shows how to deliver IT services

Where to start?

It is important to understand that a service catalog is a living document that will change as services change over time. The desire for perfection shouldn’t stop one from creating the first service catalog, it can be done in stages and evolve over time as shown below.

MagicOrange has developed a leading practice service catalog template that can be used to develop a customized catalog for any organization. This is available as part of the MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success implementation process.

Basic service listing

However, if it’s a challenge to create a complete service catalog due to time or budget constraints, then a simpler service listing can initially be created, in order to move forward towards chargeback model development.

MagicOrange also has a proven service listing template that can be used to create a custom service listing.

As a minimum, the service listing should include the following:

• Description of the service
• Consumers of the service
• Service owner / department responsible for delivering the service
• Unit of measure for the service
• Performance metrics
• SLAs
• Cost

Ask the Experts

MagicOrange recognizes the complexity of the overall journey to ITFM maturity and its experts are well equipped to guide its customers through the step-by-step process to ensure they realize all the benefits of a successfully implemented ITFM framework.

Guided by the MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success framework, customers can now drive cost optimization throughout the organization by approaching savings initiatives systematically and holistically, from the perspective of both IT supply and business demand.

MagicOrange is an established ITFM solution recognized by Gartner and successfully implemented at a number of large and international enterprises across various industries. It provides business leaders with a progressive cloud-based ITFM tool and professional guidance that brings full transparency into the value of technology in the organization.