IT service catalogue
IT service catalogues serve as a central tool for IT organisations to provide their customers and users with an overview of the IT services and benefits provided by the IT organisation. An IT service catalogue can contain information on various IT services, including descriptions, features, availability, costs, support levels and service level agreements (SLAs).
An IT service catalogue can offer several benefits, including:
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Increase transparency by giving customers and users an overview of the services available and the associated costs and SLAs.
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Improving service quality, as better informed customers and users make better decisions by selecting the services best suited to their needs.
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Increased effectiveness in IT service management, as the service catalogue provides a clear structure and uniform standards for IT services.
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Cost savings by enabling customers and users to select more effective and cost-efficient IT services that are better tailored to their needs. This can help to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the IT organisation.
Overall, an IT service catalogue can help to improve service quality and customer satisfaction, increase the transparency and effectiveness of the IT organisation and reduce costs.
The Metrics Service Model for planning, control and billing
For the design and management of IT services, Metrics uses a hierarchical model that optimally integrates the requirements of service management (service catalogue), controlling and billing.
There are usually multi-level models on the market. At the top level are business processes such as ‘order to cash’, below which are usually company-specific business services. Typical IT services are at the third level in this model. At this product level, services are usually purchased on the market as managed IT services. Further subdivided into service components, the basis is the IT costs at level one.
Services are planned top-down and invoiced bottom-up. The entire IT costs are always allocated level by level.
Metrics Service Library MSL:
De facto market standard for IT services
The Metrics Service Library is part of our data lake of real service descriptions from the market and provides an overview of the standard market design of IT services from a best-practice perspective. This allows us to check whether the services match the current market level in terms of content, SLAs and prices.
The Metrics Service Library contains the essential content for each service:
- Service description: Completeness, delimination, involvement, service content, duration, cancellation periods
- Functions: Coverage of the required functions, coverage of the required process support, use of tools, interfaces
- Cost drivers: Operating costs, implementation and dismantling costs, TCO consideration, financing, cost forecast
- Quality: Coverage of service quality requirements, technical metrics, measurement method, reporting, risk provisioning
- Technology: Technology specifications, consideration of new developments, development of standards, architecture roadmap
- Billing: Billing model, scaling, framework conditions, acceptance flexibility, contractual penalties, price adjustment
Video: The Metrics Service Library
explained by Susanne Franke from Bayerischer Rundfunk
The IT service catalogue is the menu in system catering and presents the price-performance ratio to the customer
Some best practices in system catering can also be transferred to IT:
- Customer centricity: quality scout tours, flagship restaurant
- Automation: using self-services
- Sourcing and efficient cost management: supply chain management with AI-supported demand forecasts per location
- Standardisation: ‘Think global, act local’, which is why there are, for example, ‘halal’ dishes in countries with a high proportion of Muslims
- Signalling: use of certificates, e.g. Rainforest Alliance (coffee from sustainable cultivation)
- Strong governance: managed data connection to each of the mostly majority-owned franchise restaurants
