Products, Services

What is Service Catalog?

Service Catalog is a tool for service portfolio management decisions. It identifies the linkage between service assets, services, and business outcomes it also identifies the demand for a service and shows how the service provider will fulfill the demand. OR

A service catalog maintains information on all services that you currently offer to customers. A service catalog should be a subset of your entire service portfolio, likely because not all services are currently available. A document, an online portal, a website shopping experience, or other forms can all comprise your service catalog.

Purpose and Objectives of Service Catalog Management

The purpose of the service catalog management process is to provide and maintain a single source of consistent information on all operational services and those being prepared to be run operationally and to ensure that it is widely available to those who are authorized to access it. The objective of the service catalog management process are to:

Manage the information contained in the service catalog
Ensure that the service catalog is accurate and reflects the current details, status, interfaces, and dependencies of all services that are being run, or being prepared to run, in the live environment, according to the defined policies
Ensure that the service catalog is made available to those approved to access it in a manner that supports their effective and efficient use of service catalog information
Ensure that the service catalog supports the evolving needs of all other service management processes for service catalog information, including all interface and dependency information.

Scope of Service Catalog Management

The scope of the service catalog management process is to provide and maintain accurate information on all services that are being transitioned or have been transitioned to the live environment. The services presented in the service catalog may be listed individually or, more typically, some or all of the services may be presented in the form of service packages. The service catalog management process covers:

Contribution to the definition of services and service packages
Development and maintenance of service and service package descriptions appropriate for the service catalog
Production and maintenance of an accurate service catalog Interfaces, dependencies, and consistency between the service catalog and the overall service portfolio
Interfaces and dependencies between all services and supporting services within the service catalog and the CMS
Interfaces and dependencies between all services, and supporting components and configuration items (CIs) within the service catalog and the CMS.
The service catalog management process does not include:

Detailed attention to the capturing, maintenance and use of service asset and configuration data as performed through the service asset and configuration management process.
Detailed attention to the capturing, maintenance and fulfillment of service requests as performed through request fulfillment.

Components of a service catalog

Since the service catalog is a customer facing service, it should be designed with the end user in mind. It is meant to provide clarity on the IT services offered, and typically includes the following information.

Service name
Service category (hardware, software, email, data management, etc)
Service description
Service owner
Service availability
Service level agreement (an agreement between the service provider and the end customer defining the expected level of service)
Service costs (if applicable)

This isn’t a comprehensive list, and organizations may choose to include more or less information based on what’s relevant to their stakeholders.

The service catalog is meant to communicate services clearly to end users, so it’s important that concise and accurate information is provided. The idea is to let the end user know what they can expect and when they can expect it.

Examples:

Manage your product and service catalog, and your prices and margins

Manage your product and service catalog

Create and update your product or service catalog. You will be able to reuse the catalogs in all the other features available in the application with one click (proposals/quotations, orders, invoices, and stocks). Manage the sale or purchase status.

A lot of native data can be defined on the product and service cards such as sale prices, tax rate, duration or dimension, cost price, accounts, accounting, stocks, notes or add your own personalized custom fields.... Describe your products or services in any language of your choice. Any data can be reused in other modules, thus saving you a lot of time.

Attach any files (Pictures, Photos, PDF notices,) to your products.

Clone Products and Services to create new ones in just a few clicks, or reuse the Variant feature to generate variant products (similar products with a different color or size, for example)

Manage your selling and buying prices

Define your selling and/or buying prices, and keep a history of all your changes. Define your prices per customer segment, per quantity, or per customer.

Track the performance of your products or services

Filter your product catalog on any property of your choice.

Predefined and dynamic statistical reports allow you to view graphs, charts, and tables showing you the quantity and amount of products and services offered in proposals, orders and/or invoices.

Margins

If you use the purchase features, the margins module may help you to review financial data and margins for each product or service.

And more...

Kit/Virtual products
Define virtual products with quantities of sub-products, so that when the stock of your virtual product is modified, stocks of sub-products will also be modified automatically.
Variant products
If you want to sell variants of a product (for example, a dress can be pink or blue, size S or XL etc.), use the variant editor to create your product variants quickly and easily.