A service catalog is an essential tool for any enterprise that wants to optimize and streamline its IT services. By documenting all the services, an organization offers, the service catalog provides a single source of truth that can be used by everyone from IT staff to business stakeholders.
While the service catalog may seem like a simple concept, it is not a cakewalk to create one that meets the needs of your entire organization. To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of the best service catalog examples.
What is a Service Catalog?
A service catalog is a collection of services that an organization offers. It typically includes the service description, how to request the service, who is eligible, and the SLA (Service Level Agreement).
A service catalog supports individuals and businesses in finding the accurate service for their needs and is used as a tool to track and monitor services. For example, an individual may use a service catalog to request a new service or check an existing service’s status.
Organizations can use service catalogs to improve customer and partner communication and increase customer satisfaction. They can reduce confusion and increase transparency by providing precise and concise information about their services. Additionally, organizations can continuously improve their offerings by tracking services and monitoring customer feedback.
How to Use a Service Catalog?
A service catalog is a document that lists all of the IT services that an organization provides, along with information about each service. Service catalogs help enterprises track and manage their IT services and ensure they align with business goals.
Service catalogs can be used in many ways, including:
- Reference for IT staff to quickly find information about the services that they need to support
- Training tool for new IT staff members
- Communicate IT services to other parts of the organization
- The basis for SLAs (service level agreements) between the IT department and other departments or business units
Benefits of Using a Service Catalog
There are many benefits of using a service catalog. The most apparent benefit is that it provides a central repository for an organization’s services. This can be extremely helpful for customers and employees, allowing everyone to easily find and browse the available services.
In addition to providing a central repository, a service catalog can help streamline and improve the service delivery process. By documenting each service in detail, including information on who is responsible for delivering it, what steps need to be taken, and what the expected outcomes are, service catalogs can help ensure that everyone involved in the delivery process is on the same page. This can lead to faster, more efficient service delivery and improved customer satisfaction.
Finally, service catalogs can also be used as a marketing tool. By showcasing the organization’s services in an attractive and easy-to-use format, service catalogs can attract new customers and encourage existing ones to use more of the organization’s services.
Some of the Best IT Service Catalog Examples:
Employee onboarding: Since employee onboarding is a repetitive task involving multiple departments, it is a must-have as an HR service in the service catalog. HR will make an onboarding request from the service catalog, and the ticket will be raised and auto-assigned to the technician. Next, tasks related to onboarding get created automatically, and HR receives the mail when the technician closes the ticket.
Employee Designation Changes: When someone gets promoted or moves to another team, enterprises update that into the HRMS. Now companies can also create a service item in the catalog, making it easier for HR managers to create a request and ask for approvals. Next, HRs will create a ticket for changing the employee designation, which goes directly for the manager’s approval. Lastly, automated tasks get created for HRs to update the database; once updated, the ticket is closed.
Requesting a salary adjustment: This is a common request during an appraisal cycle. If you want to create such a service item, it will require the involvement of multiple departments. The workflow looks like the HR department uses a request service that creates a ticket with the task when you start it. Once relevant departments are looped in and updates have been made, the ticket is closed.
Employee Exit Process: HRs need to work on the exit process of employees leaving the job. While the process differs, it follows the same general workflow as onboarding. The marketing will give you a time sheet of hours worked, finance will take care of any taxes related to your pay check, and human resources will send the paperwork for you to sign.
Request for New Hardware/Software: It makes sense to have a service item for new items since the ticketing module is usually integrated with asset management. In such a case, a user creates a ticket. The ticket is assigned to a technician, who subsequently creates a purchase order. The PO is approved, and the item is ordered. The item is assigned from the CMDB and becomes in stock; the ticket is closed.
Request for Travel Tickets: People often book travel tickets for business trips with the helpdesk. To prevent this, departments can create a travel tickets request item in the catalog. The workflow for this is that users raise a travel ticket request, which gets assigned to the relevant personnel. Next, approval is created, and the tickets are booked.
By and large, there is no one-size-fits-all answer regarding the best service catalog examples for enterprises. However, some factors to consider are the size of the enterprise, the industry in which it operates, and its specific needs and requirements. With that said, we hope our list of service catalog examples has given you a good starting point from which to create your custom catalog.