Creating ITIL compliant Service Catalogue
As of late, I’ve been involved in a project, which aims to create a Service Catalogue-like system at work. We’re still at prestudy phase, but already I see a lot of challenges.
ITIL is a new thing. There’s little about the specifics of Service Catalogue in ITIL – it’s really up to the organization how they want to implement it. I’ve read several white papers on common pitfalls and implementation of succesful service catalogues, but everything still sounds a bit too vague. There are promises of 70% increase in IT satisfaction (sorerly needed) and instant wins. I’m hearing the hype, but I’m not seeing any case studies with hard infrastructure facts and not just marketing speak. E-commerce front-ends are not new, but I’d like to hear how they’re effectively tied to propietary legacy service delivery systems. We have a ticketing system which now recieves our current static service catalogue’s forms, but it’s a pain to update in four different languages.
The definition Service Catalogue. Our aim is to offer all services, IT and non-IT, on our intranet, which makes this a cross-SU project which is lead by the corporate IT department. The tendency to go for anything technical is apparent in the IT dept, while the other SU’s shun everything they see too IT or too expensive (these seem to go hand in hand). Too many people think of a simple list when they hear these two words and why not, a simple list might be enough. Take a look at this univerity’s service catalogue, or Google’s service catalogue.
Infrastructure environment. After getting familiar with Infopath and SharePoint Services, I’ve gone through an enlightement on Microsoft Office-centric workflows. If our organization is 100% Microsoft, why not actually use all the cool functionality we have? On infrastructure side, MOSS is an ideal and already existing database to store Service Catalogue items, I think. At least that would be the cheapest way to implement it as we already have all the tech we need. How to build an attractive and easy to use front-end and how tie all that with our proprietary back-end service delivery processes is a problem – but a problem every solution I’ve looked at so far share. I guess this would be a place where wider/ubiqutious adoption of web services would probably pay off big time.
Off-the-shelf-solutions. Apart from a couple of vendors with really expensive tools, there seems to be very little. The IT department has a history of doing everything themselvs, which have led to a situation where many important systems are not really maintainable and are at best nice hacks with lot of duct tape. My previous project was upgrading one such system to a more robust solution with actual application support functions. What I learnt from that project was to evaluate what’s on the market more carefully than just blindly go “there’s nothing on the market what suits us, let’s develop it ourselves”.
It’s a web thing… …and everyone is a web designer. As soon as I have some mock-ups up, the service managers are pointing out how it’s not in our brand colours and how we could use that space for documentation and how someone things it looks too much like a list, etc. While I’m more concerned about connecting Service Catalogue to our Service Level Management processes and Service Order Delivery processes, these guys are all of a sudden UI usability experts.
Guess who’s left out on all of this? Yep, you’re right. At no point have we asked the opinion of our customers, the end users. The Service Unit Service Managers are fighting over whose service printers are while I believe the correct place for it is where our customers think they can find it. This is internet people, webspace costs nothing, we can list printers in all the places we wish!
So here I am, holding Introduction to ITIL book in other hand and on the other hand changing PowerPoint slides and trying to explain that UI details are the least of my project’s problems. One of the biggest decisions I’m faced is, make or buy? Do you, dear readers, had any contact with ITIL Service Catalogues or IT service in general? Is the development of own solution worth it or even feasible?
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You should take a look at http://www.service-now.com as an alternative
Thanks Robert, but that seems to be a totally integrated ITIL solution, which is not suitable in this situation. Otherwise, looks like something interesting.
I think I can tell that we went forward with custom solution by a partner. And yes, Jeremy, we used Microsoft solutions… =)
Hi Jeremy, In fact you can just use the service catalog if you wish. Service-now.com’s Service Catalog is the next generation of service catalog allowing all workflows from service request to delivery, through approval and notification to be administered from one system. The service catalog is inspired by the simplicity that the every day user sees at Amazon.com and Google. Legacy service catalog vendors were designed as point solutions or application islands lacking integration to supporting workflows and delivery plans. Customers were left trying to integrate service request technologies with technologies that got work done with limited success. Instead of costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for software Service-now.com provides service catalog functionality at no cost to all the end users and their managers who are part of the approval process. Organizations can itemize, prioritize, and advertise their service offerings to their business customers, allowing them to see delivery times, SLAs, and other business critical information about all listed services. In addition, Service-now.com’s Service Catalog offers tight integration with the rest of the Service-now.com suite, meaning that the Service Catalog is more than just an informational tool. Services can be ordered directly from the catalog, thus closing the loop with the business customers so that they can not only see what IT makes available to them, but also order specific services directly from the catalog. IT and the business can automate complex workflows to support the provisioning of servers, databases, IT services, end user device or simple self service requests. It offers a consistent and intuitive online ordering experience with as much flexibility as an end user or IT employee needs.
Robert, I’m not sure you’re promoting your business or leaving a comment, but the one thing I’m sure is that the person who wrote this excellent post isn’t me but Kari.
It is an excellent post indeed. ITIL V 3 goes some way in defining the Service Catalog.
Robert,
thanks for your comments, but this is not really a place to advertise your products.
[...] I’ve seen a steady stream of visitors finding their way to my last year’s post about ITIL service catalogues. At one point I had to finally close the comments, because some people felt it was a correct place [...]
So it’s been a year – did you implement a service catalog?
Bill, well, it’s been two years and no, I did not implement it. I’ve since moved on to the world of academia, so I’ve no idea what happened to that project. I did write a follow-up post to this a year ago, http://www.techiteasy.org/2008/01/23/revisiting-itil-service-catalogue/ . Maybe it’s time to write another follow-up? =)
In my opinion, the management didn’t give enough support for the project and didn’t understand the implications. I think we also tried to solve a process problem with simple software.
If the CIO’s secretary still spends her July manually editing HTM [sic] rewriting that company’s service catalogue, I truly feel sorry for her.
Wow Kari – thanks for the quick reply and fixing my date issue. Perhaps someone else HAS implemented a service catalog successfully, especially one that advertises more than just IT services. Anyone?
We’re in the throes of acquiring software ($$$) that’s going to take 4-6 months time to configure/implement. With our changing workforce, so many customers don’t know who does what for them and we believe a service catalog (or menu as someone suggested) will fill a new gap.
…more google search to do… Good luck!
– Bill
Infrastructure environment. After getting familiar with Infopath and SharePoint Services, I’ve gone through an enlightement on Microsoft Office-centric workflows. If our organization is 100% Microsoft, why not actually use all the cool functionality we have? On infrastructure side, MOSS is an ideal and already existing database to store Service Catalogue items, I think. At least that would be the cheapest way to implement it as we already have all the tech we need. How to build an attractive and easy to use front-end and how tie all that with our proprietary back-end service delivery processes is a problem – but a problem every solution I’ve looked at so far share. I guess this would be a place where wider/ubiqutious adoption of web services would probably pay off big time.