• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

These steps are also logical headers for the catalog. You can organize them using your service categories. You can also organize them using any of the earlier “steps.” If you create an electronic (online) version of your catalog, you could allow searches or sorting on any of these steps.

There are other important questions you can ask and answer about your services. One of these crosses the boundaries between a Service/Product Health focused catalog and one built around Process Health. What are the key/core services? This question doesn't answer a customer question, but it can be answered by them. The answer is useful for the Service/Product Health–based catalog, so that you know which services to measure (assuming you don't have the resources to measure them all). From the Process Health-based viewpoint, the key/core services tell you other important information.

Process Health (Efficiency) Service Catalog

If you will use the results of the service catalog for internal process improvement (the second quadrant of the Answer Key specifically), you will need to ask a few additional questions.

Step 8: Key/Core services

The classification of the services and identification of ones considered “key” or “core” to the organization's success can be determined by asking some of the following questions:

Which services are core to the organization's success? Which are the main income drivers?

Which are seen as the customer-generators?

Which services are of higher priority? Where should most of the resources be allocated?

Where should the best resources be allocated?

Which services are seen as representative of the organization's brand? Which services have to be done particularly well?

Which will help set the customers' view of the organization as a whole?

Step 9: Dependencies

Along with the identification of which services/products are essential to the organization's success, it is also helpful to understand where and how a service is dependent upon another service. This builds toward the clarification of service families. The questions you'll want to ask include the following:

Are there internal dependencies? What is required to deliver the service?

Are other services dependent on this service?

How does this service fit into the overall service architecture of the organization? Is this a foundational service?

Is this service a pillar for other services? For a key service?

When you analyze the services in the service catalog, you will use these two possible viewpoints (effectiveness or efficiency) to determine how you will build your metric. So, it comes down to the root question (again). Is the root question a Service/Product Health–type of question, or is it focused on Process Health? There are, of course, opportunities to use both measures. If your root question is not about a group of services, but about a specific service, you may need information from each type of catalog.

Let's say your root question is “How can I increase the customer base for service X?” This question needs a lot of work. How much of an increase? Why do you want to increase the customer base? What is the actual thing you want to achieve? But, let's use this as our starting point. Perhaps the unit that provides this service needs to increase its customer base by 30 percent in order for the organization to consider it a viable part of the service portfolio. So, the manager of this unit, the service provider, wants simply to know how his unit can survive.

The answers to this very specific question can use information from multiple quadrants. It will be important to have information from the customers' viewpoint. Since your goal is to increase the number of customers (by 30 percent), it should be obvious that you need to see the service from the customers' perspective.

You will also benefit from looking at the efficiency with which you deliver the service. If you can improve the delivery, usage, and or customer satisfaction, you'll have a good chance of gaining more customers. While Effectiveness measures will tell