A common challenge for many medium sized ICT departments who provide internal services to their organisation, is managing non-standard service requests. For example, internal customers may ask questions such as:
- “I need IT support 24/7”, or
- “Wy can’t I use Open Office – It’s free” or
- “You have limited my mailbox to 10MB, but I can get a 20MB mailbox online through Google”, or
- “I would like a faster response from ICT to my problems”
There many more examples which either have a productivity, cost or usability driver associated with the request.
So, how does the ICT team manage these requests in a cost effective and efficient way, whilst providing flexibility for users, managers and the organisation?
The answer lies in the development of a ICT Service Catalog. With a Service Catalog, the ICT department can detail all service offerings (and variations of offerings) to internal customers and departments. It provides much needed transparency and documentation around how (and what) ICT charge internal customers/departments for their services, and should include both products and services consumed/sold to customers within the organisation. Although money may not necessarily change hands, it helps to clarify expectations when ICT costs are distributed across the organisation.
In developing an effective ICT Service Catalog, it is important to:
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Understand the various lines of business within the organisation, to ensure the catalog (and the deliverables/products) are appropriately tailored. Consultation with key stakeholders is critical.
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Describe the deliverables (or the end result), rather than the tasks involved in producing them
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Have sufficient detail about what is included in the deliverables, and clarify the subsets of what is available and how much. Effective catalogs define each of the specific things customers may (or may not) choose to “buy”.
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Solutions / products must be defined consistently, at a uniform level of granularity, and always in terms of deliverables rather than tasks.
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Ensure Managers have buy-in, and understand the products/services in detail.
Obviously the organisations culture needs to be ready to embrace any move to Service Catalogs. Internal charge-backs processes, activity based costing methods, contractual arrangements and service level agreements also require consideration and review when planning for ICT Service Catalog implementation. Service Catalogs, done well, are essential in providing a flexible, transparent and cost effective ICT function.
Ben Ward 