product snd service catalogue

RaymondR.KOHhttp://sg.linkedin.com/in/kohraymond/

There is a lot of talk of product service catalog (Catalogues), portfolio management and the need to develop true business-led IT services. So, what is this about and what value can be achieved?

A service catalog (or catalogue), is an organized and curated collection of any and all business and information technology related services that can be performed by, for, or within an enterprise.

Well this is how I used to picture an Product and Service catalogue in my early years of understanding ITIL – “a menu card at a restaurant.”

All the services that are being offered listed in a simple concise way, so that the customer can understand it, while giving just enough information about the ingredients & how the dish was made.

But creating one is not so simple as reading it or ogling at the photos of the dishes.(c'mon, we all ogle!) It is a difficult, time consuming & frustrating process to say the least.

And that goes for an Product and Service catalogue as well.

Since we now have a business need to define and manage products in a service-focused way – an IT version of Supply Chain Management. At the same tine there is an improved awareness of the steps required to be able to deliver on this.


Simply put, most organsations manage systems not services. The central focus of ITSM is to help develop and manage, monitor and deliver Services. SLAs (Internal and external facing) are often embarked without any definition of the Services they relate to. A service catalogue is seen as a means to define and build the structure of services. This is part of the wider view (product management) of the lifecycle of a service and how it is planned, defined, delivered and retired.

So why create one?, why do we need it? - I mean we should not spend our time & money on creating something, just because the ITIL Gurus say so.. Hell No!

Managing product data across unconsolidated BSS systems

Many telecommunication / communications service providers (CSPs) are facing the issue of managing several Product and Service catalogue s across their business support systems (BSSs). Product information (e.g. tariff plans, bundles, eligibility rules and accounting rules) is part of order management, configure/price/quote (CPQ), CRM, provisioning, inventory, charging/rating, billing, invoicing, and account receivables. To make things worse, many incumbent operators run several poorly integrated legacy


BSS systems supporting different lines of business (residential/corporate, mobile/fix, narrowband/broadband etc.).

Managing product data across BSS: tasks are often performed manually with no orchestration, information

between departments, responsible for different parts of BSS, flows through e-mail and office files.

In such environment, introducing a new service or tariff plan, providing convergent user experience and bundles spanning across different lines of business, is challenging. Manual entry of product data into several systems is time-consuming and leads to poor time to market. At the same time, customers demand a single order and a single invoice for all services (regardless of underlying technology). These are costly to implement due to poor integration and no central approach to Product and Service catalogue management.

Centralized product or service catalogues

Having a single application, that manages all data for all products and services, is a solution to the problem described herein. A central product or service catalogue should


be flexible enough to support various types of services: from traditional fix & mobile communications services, to modern cloud-based, M2M/IOT services, as well as non-telco services provided by 3rd parties and integrated into CSP's product portfolio. If done properly, CSPs can leverage existing investments in the BSS infrastructure, create new revenue streams and increase their competitive advantage through digital services provided by external partner companies.

On the other hand, the Product and Service catalogue should maintain data for all systems comprising enterprise business support system. Eligibility rules for order entry, service decomposition rules for order handling, activation instructions for provisioning, usage charges & alterations for rating/charging, one-time & recurring charges for billing, accounting rules for account receivables should all be part of the Product and Service catalogue .

Therefore, a centralized Product and Service catalogue will provide a synchronization mechanism that automatically transforms & populates product data to different proprietary models of client applications.

TMF Information Model (SID): products are comprised of resources and services and offered to the market as product

offerings, billing information is modeled with the price concept, divided into charges and alterations.


Thankfully there are a lot of logical/practical reasons why every organization should create one. Below are a few.

Provides a Complete Picture - A catalogue will not only describes each service but it also links them to components & business goals.

Better Service Delivery - It provides an insight to better allocate your resources - people & technology

Cost vs Profit - Greater insight into how much services cost, as well as the returns they deliver

Promotes Transparency - Gives the users a channel to know what they can expect from the product houses.

Boost IT Productivity - Helps product and solution teams eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies in the services being offered. (Can lead to a Shared service model as well)

Sales! Sales! Sales! - A Product and Service catalogue acts as an insight to the customer on what services a telco or vendor can provide & why they created it!

So since we got the "why" out of the way, let's look at the "How" , shall we?

Sure, but before you begin this journey, do get a buy-in from your executive management.

With out that I am not sure if you would be able to gather ample support/information which Is required to build a Product and Service catalogue.

While you are getting a buy in, also try and get a few resources with good knowledge about the infrastructure on your side. This little help will go a long way, as you will realize when you read through the article.


Step 1: Prepare for Battle!

"The Service catalogue is just a list of all the services which an organization delivers to it's customers" - This is the answer I got when I asked my peer about what he thinks of Service catalogue. Which is right at it's surface but mind you, the word "just" is a loaded one.

Especially when you consider that many organization's have never actually gone through the process of clearly defining the Products and Services that should be delivered to the business and customers, & some have taken years to get it right.

This could be because of many reasons, the most common ones can be -

• Not understanding what the business and customer requirements are (Needs and Wants)

• Not able to define a product and service

• Not able to figure out who owns the product and service

• Cost implications of a product and service

• Information about components underpinning the product and service

• Etc etc!

I am not trying to scare you all, (may be a little!). But you have to take all these factors in mind when you are taking up this initiative.

A good way is to limit the scope of the 1st initiative to a single or couple of customers. This will enable you to showcase a proof of concept to the management, to gain their confidence & will also allow you to break the cultural barrier piece by piece.


Step 2: Talk to the Business

IT organisations exist because some business organisation out there needs some one to take care of their IT, so that they can leverage the same to gain a competitive advantage in the market.

If that's true then it is really important to understand the link between business services & how an IT organization is supporting those services. Basically to strike a proper alignment between business needs & IT services.

To accomplish this you will probably have to get IT & Business representatives in a room & wrestle out (some times literally!) the details of which services the business requires, how important they are and how they support the business. While you are at it try to reach a consensus on what the priorities are among the services, the required service levels and availability requirements.

Step 3: Define the services

This is a pretty complicated step, and mostly where IT organisations go wrong. But thank fully there are some ways to get it done.

Take the list of services which you got from the customer/business (step 2) , & identify the IT service(s) that support the delivery of this product to end-users.

Eg - If Email service is required by the customer, the corresponding Product and Service would be Exchange services, Network services, application services etc etc.

This will take time, so be patient with it. Take all the support you can from the technical operations teams & Service Level Managers.

Since you are doing the hard work any way, try and get the information about the IT Services from an availability stand point as well :). This will be helpful in comparing the availability the business requires for it's services & how we are delivering the same from an IT standpoint.


Making a note of the personnel accountable & responsible for these services is also important. If no one is currently accountable, talk to your senior management to have a resource assigned as the owner.

Business transformation through Product and Service catalogue

Below are 4 major reasons why a centralized Product and Service catalogue is seen as a business transformation enabler.

• First, it enables CSPs to implement a catalogue-driven BSS system. When introducing a new product, legacy BSS systems required involvement of highly skilled IT professionals; using the catalogue-driven approach, these activities can now be carried out by tech-savvy product managers. This significantly reduces costs and time to market.

• Second, a centralized catalogue enables CSPs to provide convergent bundles and convergent user experience. Although a CSP runs several legacy BSSs for various lines of business, implementation of a single order and a single invoice for all services is possible due to a master Product and Service catalogue.


• Third, migrating product data from several legacy systems into a single Product and Service catalogue, can be used as an opportunity to clean and simplify existing product portfolio. During this process customers are migrated to newer products, older products with high costs and low profit margin can be phased out.

And last, using a Product and Service catalogue that is based on a generic data model, CSPs easily include 3rd party products in their portfolio. This way, CSPs use existing BSS infrastructure to offer innovative digital services.

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Phew! This is going to a big article & pretty much a dry read I guess. And this how most of the Catalogue initiatives fail. It get's dull/mundane & sometimes you would wonder if all this hard work is ever going to deliver results… But hang in there, because if done well the Product and Service catalogue will give you an amazing advantage over other IT organisations.

The advantage to knowing the bigger picture, to have information about your services & it’s attributes at your beck & call.

Enough of the pep talk, now let's just get to finishing the catalogue we started.


Step 4: Link IT Services to Devices

So step 4 is all about devices. And since we are all ITIL savvy here , let's call the devices as CI's (Configuration Items)

During this step you have undertake the painstaking effort to link the IT services to related configuration items . Eg - Exchange services - Exchange server, data center rack etc etc. Please do leverage the existing configuration or product management database (if any) to get this done.

In case you don't have a configuration or product management process/system.. Well this step will take a bit more time :)

And like we did in step 3, make a note of the teams/personnel accountable & responsible for maintaining these CI's.

Step 5: Publish the Catalogue V1

Now since you've got an amazing gamut of information, now is the time to showcase your work! Arrange all the info in an excel or any application of your choosing & share it with your executive management.

Schedule a meeting, have a presentation made, showcase what you did, & what your plans are further on Service catalogue. Remember this is a cultural change rather than just an IT one, so be patient & accommodating with the responses & feed back which you will receive (even at times, when you don't even need one)

And hey do not forget to mention a note of thanks for the people who helped you along the way.


Step 6: Keep the momentum going

This was an humongous effort!! Pat yourself on the back! Break into a amazingly choreographed victory dance!

And once you are done with all that, get back to work :)

the beauty of ITIL is that it's evolving, starting from the very high level to each & every concept, & so should your catalogue.

At this stage chart a plan to make your catalogue more stronger, transparent & knowledgeable. Plan out improvement phases, add financial information to the mix,

Assign policies to govern the catalogue, host it at a centralized location, create user profiles with access levels & hey , also assign a team to manage it & keep it up to date.

Conclusion: What does it deliver?

A Product and Service Catalogue will delver the following:

• Build a clear picture of the service and solutions required. • Get organized to deliver these services and solutions. • Report and manage performance, quality and efficiency of services and

solutions. • Deliver and manage services and solutions.

o Incident management resolution is faster and cheaper. o Root Cause Analysis can be better performed when there is logical link

that can be traced from CI to service Catalogue. o Change management can be more business and risk aware.

• Remove unnecessary systems and costs. • Gain credence and security, improve customer relationships.


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Creating an Product and Service catalogue is a complicated task to say the least, & I hope the above steps gives you an idea of what all it might entail and the potential it can achieve.

For more information or help on the topic, just drop me a note. Will be glad to help out as always! :)

At the end, I hope you do enjoy the article & please don't hesitate if you have any comments on the same!

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TeleManagement Forum's Information Framework (SID), which is a component of Frameworx, provides standard definitions for all the information that flows through the enterprise and between CSPs and their business partners.

SID proved to support a wide range of products and services.

Data, stored in a SID-based model, can be converted to various proprietary data models of different BSS vendors, which simplifies integration.

product snd service catalogue

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