IBM Control Desk (ICD) comes with a Self Service Center that includes a Service Catalog -- but why do you need one? This blog post, written by Interloc's Pete Morell, explores the reasons your IT Department needs a Service Catalog.
By definition, a Service Catalog is a list of services that an organization provides. The Service Catalog is a menu, if you will, of what IT offers. The Service Catalog serves a menu of services IT provides to the organization and allows users to interact with it.
Out of the box, ICD’s Service Catalog has many offerings that are currently available. These can be tailored to show how the offering can be fulfilled, time frames for delivery, who is eligible to receive it, and what it costs (with approvals).
While, on the surface, this may seem like little more than formal documentation, an IT service catalog actually provides tremendous value for those organizations that create and maintain them. By clearly defining, and publishing, their service offerings, IT service catalogs offer benefits to the business and the user.
Business Benefits
ICD’s Service Catalog contains offerings that describe the service, as well as provide attributes to capture data from the user. Implemented correctly, these offerings help ensure that the IT services offered are aligned with business needs.
Optimize Service Delivery
ICD’s Service Catalog, along with the Self Service Center, provides a portal where users can order physical assets (such as hardware and software), on-board a new employee, provide FAQ’s and other information -- eliminating the need for user's to contact the Help Desk. The Service Catalog can even raise a Service Request or incident for issues the user is experiencing. The offerings can have provisioning built-in to allow the rapid purchase and deployment of items. IT can help to relieve calls to the Help Desk by letting users order items directly from the Self Service Center.
Reduce Support Costs
By implementing a IT Service Catalog, support costs can be reduced by:
- Freeing up support personnel to provide high end support
- Providing insight into how much services cost to provide and to receive, as well as the returns they deliver
This can help companies ultimately boost their bottom line.
Boost IT Productivity
ICD’s Service Catalog can help IT departments to recognize and eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies in the services offered. Defining standard services in a catalog and tracking their usage and effectiveness can dramatically improve productivity. By outlining how the service will be performed and in what time frame, the service catalog can help to eliminate errors and waste.
On-Demand IT Service Management
ICD’s Service Catalog can have software offerings that the user can order and have provisioned right to their desktop from the Service Catalog, once the order has been placed. By the use of software as a service (SaaS), reductions in cost by can result by avoiding software manually installed and maintained on a user’s PC by support personnel.
Interested in learning how ICD can help boost your bottom line? Download Interloc's ICD Data Sheet now.
