Services, Customers, and Stakeholders

To understand the service lifecycle, it is necessary to start with the concept of a service. The framework defines a service thusly:

Services are a means of delivering value to customers, by facilitating the outcomes customers want to achieve, without the ownership of specific costs and risks.

note.gif
Before exploring the concept further, it is important to ensure that you clearly understand this simple statement. Think of it in terms of an actual service, such as email. Email provides the ability to create a written communication in an electronic format, which is a desirable outcome for a business. But the user of the email service does not want to understand or manage the complexity of the infrastructure that supports the email service (network, server, client and application software, user accounts, and so on). The customer recognizes that the service has a cost and that this cost covers the “hidden” elements of the provision, but the ownership of these costs and associated risks in delivery are managed by the service provider, not the customer.

The services facilitate the desired outcomes by enhancing the performance of the tasks associated with the delivery of service, and reducing the effect of constraints, such as technology limitations, funding, or regulation. By enhancing performance and reducing constraint, the desired outcome is more likely to be achieved. This is applicable whether the service is enhancing the performance of a task required by the business or whether it is performing the task itself.

This is a recurring pattern in the delivery of a wide range of services. Understanding these patterns of service provision enables us to manage the delivery more effectively, in terms of complexity, cost, flexibility, and variety. Simply put, it means you can apply the same strategic approach to the management of a wide variety of services and make only minor adjustments to meet the specific requirements of each business. This is the core of ITIL’s approach to service management.

ITIL defines the term outcome thus:

The result of carrying out an activity, following a process, or delivering an IT service etc. The term is used to refer to intended results, as well as to actual results.

By focusing on the desired outcome from a customer perspective and managing services according to the delivery of the outcome, you are able to work closer with your organization, achieving IT and business integration, rather than IT and business alignment. It is only when you fully understand the required outcomes that you can deliver your services effectively.

ITIL defines an IT service thusly:

A service provided by an IT service provider. An IT service is made up of a combination of information technology, people and processes. A customer-facing IT service directly supports the business processes of one or more customers and its service level targets should be defined in a service level agreement. Other IT services, called supporting services, are not directly used by the business but are required by the service provider to deliver customer-facing services.

Customer satisfaction with the services you provide is an important aspect of the delivery. Satisfaction with a service will consist of a number of factors, including the cost and value of the service. Customers do not want to have accountability for or ownership of the associated costs and risks, but the costs and risks must still be managed. Service costs will be reflected in financial terms such as return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO). Customers will be exposed only to the overall costs of the service provision but will use this as part of the basis for judging the value of the service being provided and the outcomes that are achieved.

Identifying Types of Service

Services can be grouped together to the value they provide for the customers.

Core Services These are services that deliver the basic outcomes required by one or more customers. They are services that provide the value the customer wants and for which they are willing to pay. It is usually this set of core services that provides the capability for the business-critical functions to take place. An example that is often considered to be a core service is email. We will continue this example in the other service groups.
Enabling Services These are services that are needed to ensure that the core service can be delivered successfully. These services may not be immediately visible to the customer and may not even be perceived as services in their own right. But without them, the core services cannot be delivered. Using our email core service example, the supporting services would cover the infrastructure and network to enable the service to work effectively.
Enhancing Services These are additional services that enhance the core service, making it more attractive or appealing to the customer. They are not essential to the delivery of the core services but are extra factors that make the offerings more attractive to the customer. Using our core service email example, an enhancing service associated to the core might be the ability to access the email service remotely, through a web-based portal or the use of smart phone access to email. It is not an essential element of the core service functionality but adds something that provides value and customer satisfaction.

Understanding the Customer, Internal and External

Although it may not be relevant in your particular organization, for a great percentage of businesses, there are two types of customers. ITIL differentiates between internal and external customers, because there is a difference between those customers who work within the same organization and those working for a separate organization.

Internal Customers These are people who work in the same organization as the service provider. For example, the HR department is an internal customer of the IT department because it uses IT services. It is likely that the service provider is funded through the internal accounting system, rather than as a revenue stream, although obviously this is entirely dependent on the financial strategy within the organization. Funding internally can sometimes cause challenges in managing the budget for IT services, because it may be hard to demonstrate the direct benefit to the business in terms of revenue.
External Customers These are people who are not employed by the organization or are employed by a separate legal entity. External customers pay for services under agreement through a legally binding contract. In this situation, funding is direct, rather than through the internal accounting systems, and is managed through the specified contractual obligations.

There is often a requirement for internal IT service providers to deal directly with external customers through online services that are part of a standard offering. Organizations need to ensure that the strategies they adopt for IT service provision reflect these requirements and understand the implications for funding and commitment to customers.

Whatever the customer relationship, either internal or external, it is important to ensure that the service is delivered according to the agreed service definition, under the service level agreements in place.

Differentiating Between Internal and External Services

Just as there are internal and external customers, ITIL identifies internal and external services, as Figure 1.2 illustrates.

FIGURE 1.2 Internal and external services

Based on Cabinet Office ITIL material. Reproduced under license from the Cabinet Office.

image

Internal services are delivered between departments or business units within the same organization. As you would expect, external services are those delivered to an external customer.

As you can see in Figure 1.2, some services are provided internally, and others externally, but all are being provided by the same service provider.

There are sound reasons for differentiating between these two types of service. Remember, the definition of service includes the phrase “facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve.” You need to be able to differentiate between services that support an internal activity and those that deliver business outcomes. It is often the case that an internal service needs to be linked to an external service before you can fully appreciate its contribution to a business outcome. This will have an impact on the funding and management of the services.

As we have identified, an IT service is a service that is provided to one or more customers by an IT service provider. Services are made up of the combination of technology, people, and processes and are based on the use of information technology and support the customer’s business processes.

Table 1.1 shows the differentiation between internal and external services via an extract in the ITIL Service Strategy publication (specifically, Table 3.4, “Types of IT Service”).

TABLE 1.1 Extract from Table 3.4 “Types of IT service”

Based on Cabinet Office ITIL. Reproduced under license from the Cabinet Office.

Type of service Definition Description
Supporting service, sometimes called an infrastructure service, although they are often broader than just infrastructure A service that is not directly used by the business, but is required by the IT service provider so they can provide other IT services – for example, directory services, naming services, the network or communication services. Supporting services are defined to allow IT teams to identify the interdependencies between IT components. They will also show how these components are used to deliver internal and external customer-facing services.
Supporting services enable IT processes and services, but are not directly visible to the customer.
Some IT teams view recipients of supporting services as ‘customers’. Although this promotes good service quality, it is also misleading. Supporting services only exist to be combined with other supporting services to produce customer-facing services. If they cannot, they are of no value and their existence should be questioned.
There can be no service level agreements for supporting services as they are all internal to the same department. Instead, the performance of supporting services should be managed using operational level agreements.
It should be noted that the diagram only refers to services originating inside the organization. In some cases supporting services are sourced from outside the organization. In these cases they are managed in the same way as other supporting services, but using underpinning contracts rather than operational level agreements.
Internal customer-facing service An IT service that directly supports a business process managed by another business unit – for example, sales reporting service, enterprise resource management. An internal customer-facing service is identified and defined by the business. If it cannot be perceived by the business as a service, then it is probably a supporting service.
Internal customer-facing services rely on an integrated set of supporting services, although these are often not seen or understood by the customer or user.
Internal customer-facing services are managed according to service level agreements.
External customer-facing service An IT service that is directly provided by IT to an external customer – for example, internet access at an airport. An external customer-facing service is available to external customers and is offered to meet business objectives defined in the organization’s strategy.
An external customer-facing IT service is also a business service in its own right, since it is used to conduct the business of the organization with external customers.
Depending on the strategy of the organization, the service is either provided free of charge (many government agencies provide services to the public for no fee), or it is billed directly to the person or organization using the service. In other cases, the service may be provided free to the customer, but paid for by a third party, such as an advertiser or sponsor. These services are managed using a contract – even a simple online agreement constitutes a contract of sale and purchase with terms and conditions.

Who Are the Stakeholders in Service Management?

ITIL classifies stakeholders as those individuals or groups that have an interest in an organization, service, or project and are potentially interested or engaged in the activities, resources, targets, or deliverables from service management.

There may be many different stakeholders in a service provider organization, including the functions, groups, and teams that deliver a service. There are also other stakeholders external to the service provider organization; they include the following types:

Customers These are the individuals or groups that buy goods or services. They are responsible for agreeing on and defining the targets in the service level agreements with the IT service provider. They are the people within the organization who have financial authority over the services provided by the IT service provider and may be the key signatories for the service level agreement.
As you have already seen in this section, customers may be internal to the organization or external, dependent on whether they work within the organization or outside of it.
In organizations where the business model is to directly cross charge for IT services, it is easy to understand the concept of the customer. It becomes more complicated when the IT funding is managed through the accounting system and there is no direct connection between the IT services received and the cost for them. The definition of a customer implies that customers have financial authority over the agreements associated to the service. Often one of the most challenging elements of the process service level management is identifying and working with the appropriate customers. Service level management is discussed in Chapter 5, “Service Level Management: Aligning IT with Business Requirements.”
Users This term is used to refer to those individuals or groups that use the service on a day-to-day basis. They are distinct from customers, because they have no overall authority over the service, and customers may not use the service directly.
A key challenge for service management is to ensure that the users are well informed about the items that concern them. An example is keeping users informed of the progress of incidents. Another challenge is to ensure that users are adequately informed of the agreements that have been made in service level management. This can be achieved by using the service catalog, which provides information about the operational services. This will be discussed in Chapter 6, “The Other Service Design Processes.”
Suppliers Suppliers are classed as third parties who have responsibility for the supply of goods or services that are required to deliver IT services. There are many examples of suppliers, such as hardware or software vendors, network providers, and so on.

The engagement of suppliers is now a critical part of most IT service providers organizations, making sure that they perform according to the specification of the contract. This is managed through the supplier management process, which will be discussed in Chapter 6, “The Other Service Design Processes.”

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset