Skip to main content

Service Strategy and the Service Portfolio

Image
By
Service Portfolio Management is a process that ensures that an organization has the right mix of services to meet business and customer requirements.  Strategists can use the service portfolio to evaluate offerings that are under consideration for investment and also to determine which services should be retired!  A complete history of people, process, technology and information from concept to end of life could be tracked via the service portfolio.  This investment framework is a valuable asset to every service provider.  The Service Portfolio and the activities performed in service portfolio management process serve as an overall basis for making strategic decisions regarding service offerings.  Major changes (those requiring executive approval) will be processed through the service portfolio management pipeline.  It is here that a proposal is defined, analyzed, approved and chartered before moving into service design and more importantly before moving to project management.  

Project Management and the Service Portfolio
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.  Project management applies resources to project activities to meet the project timelines, deliverables and budget requirements.  One could say that portfolio management sets the priority of the projects and ensures business alignment while project management oversees the individual project.  A project has a starting point and a stopping point.  A service on the other hand is ongoing and must be monitored and analyzed to ensure ongoing value and relevance.  Without executive analysis and prioritization and without the detailed tracking of information and knowledge via the service portfolio, businesses are at risk and projects could miss the mark when it comes alignment with strategic initiatives and business outcomes.

The Value of Service Portfolio Management
  • Ability to fuse IT provisions with strategic business initiatives and business outcomes.
  • Strategic insight into the impact that IT services have on the performance of the business
  • Improved productivity from staff and IT resources, through increased focus on services that offer the most value.
  • Lower cost (dear to the heart of business) can be achieved through the consolidation of duplicate services, enhancement of inefficient services, and retirement of services that no longer deliver value.
  • Relevant decisions are made relating to the creation, improvement, delivery, and retirement of services.
  • An enhanced ability to meet the dynamic business requirements and service demands.
  • Increased customer confidence (branding)  and reputation in the industry.
To learn more about creating and integrating your service portfolio and service catalog:
ttp://www.itsmacademy.com/Detail.bok?no=117

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Four Service Characteristics

By
Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.”  Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...
Post a Comment
Read more

From the Four Ps to the Four Dimensions: ITIL (Version 5)

By
By Donna Knapp  and Lisa Schwartz For years, people , process , and technology (PPT) provided a widely recognized framework for balancing and integrating the components needed to achieve effective performance and outcomes. In the ITIL v3 Service Design publication, this perspective expanded to the four Ps: people , processes , products , and partners . ITIL 4 developed these ideas further through the four dimensions of service management. ITIL (Version 5) carries the same four dimensions forward into digital product and service management, emphasizing their importance throughout the product and service lifecycle. The four dimensions are: Organizations and people Information and technology Partners and suppliers Value streams and processes These dimensions provide complementary perspectives for managing digital products and services. They apply across the ITIL Value System, including its management practices and the activities through which products and ser...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Is A Service Offering?

By
The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group.   As a service provider, we can’t stop there!   We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer.     Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include:     Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods.   Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you.   You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you.      ...
Post a Comment
Read more