Imagine having an environment where several third party suppliers are involved in delivering your end-to-end services to your customer community, irrespective whether they are internal or external customers.

 

All is great until it fails or goes wrong. If you like 'bun-fights' you may need to stand back!

 

Finger-pointing and reluctance to take responsibility for the incident is the precedence of the day, as for financial penalties to be paid it can get very nasty - very much like asking your children to get off the 'Playstation' or 'MSN'.

 

Time taken during the lifecycle (project phase), to ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and agreed for each supplier delivering the service, can eliminate costly squabbling between suppliers. In addition suppliers can potentially work together and recover the service as quickly as possible, having the interests of the customer as the priority.

 

The Technical Service Catalogue contains details of all IT services delivered to the customer community, relationships to the supporting services, shared services, components and Configuration Items (CIs) needed to support the provision of the service.

 

Consideration should also be given to drawing out the end to end service solution using an appropriate desktop package e.g. Microsoft Visio. By then overlaying a second layer to denote the demarcation of which supplier has responsibility for each CI or component that comprises the service. By then obtaining agreement from all suppliers, resolution of incidents become so much easier as and when they do occur.

 

An additional advantage is that if the services offered by a particular supplier are put out to tender, it becomes easier to determine the services currently offered and potentially offer a more accurate price comparison from the responses received.

 

The Technical Service Catalogue is used and maintained internally by the IT department.