Business services are activities that help a business to operate and serve its customers. They are distinct from goods in that the provision of a service does not result in the production of a physical product, but rather it involves the exchange of value and benefits between two parties.
Examples of a business service include consulting, software development, marketing and advertising, and information technology support. These services enable businesses to focus on their core operations by outsourcing noncore functions to specialist providers. The business service sector is one of the largest in the European economy, contributing 11% to GDP.
Using Business Service Management (BSM) best practices, organizations can effectively manage IT services and ensure that they are aligned with business goals. These best practices include fostering collaboration between IT and business functions, communicating with stakeholders to understand their needs and priorities, and automating processes to reduce manual efforts and improve service availability.
BSM can be challenging, particularly in large organizations that have diverse systems and processes. In addition, the implementation of BSM often requires significant change to organizational culture and mindsets. This can lead to siloed approaches and resistance from stakeholders.
You can map technical services to business services to give non-technical stakeholders context on an incident’s impact to the organization. This is useful for providing transparency and increasing the visibility of business-critical services on a status dashboard. To create or edit a business service, navigate to Services Business Services and select the name of a service. To set a business service as a favorite, click the star icon next to the service.