Book Image

A Practical Guide to Service Management

By : Keith D. Sutherland, Lawrence J. "Butch" Sheets
4 (1)
Book Image

A Practical Guide to Service Management

4 (1)
By: Keith D. Sutherland, Lawrence J. "Butch" Sheets

Overview of this book

Many organizations struggle to find practical guidance that can help them to not only understand but also apply service management best practices. Packed with expert guidance and comprehensive coverage of the essential frameworks, methods, and techniques, this book will enable you to elevate your organization’s service management capability. You’ll start by exploring the fundamentals of service management and the role of a service provider. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with the different service management frameworks used by IT and enterprises. You'll use system thinking and design thinking approaches to learn to design, implement, and optimize services catering to diverse customer needs. This book will familiarize you with the essential process capabilities required for an efficient service management practice, followed by the elements key to its practical implementation, customized to the organization’s business needs in a sustainable and repeatable manner. You’ll also discover the critical success factors that will enhance your organization’s ability to successfully implement and sustain a service management practice. By the end of this handy guide, you’ll have a solid grasp of service management concepts, making this a valuable resource for on-the-job reference.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Importance of Service Management
6
Part 2: Essential Process Capabilities for Effective Service Management
18
Part 3: How to Apply a Pragmatic, Customized Service Management Capability
Appendix B: SLR Template

Basic BRM activities

The word activities was mentioned from the very outset of this chapter. Activities are simply time-consuming things that are done. In the context of formal service management, BRM has the overarching activity to perform all those tasks that, together, provide a bi-directional conduit between the SP and its business customers. This goes well beyond being just a supplier of services. The following diagram represents a basic interpretation of the BRM role, which acts as the intermediary between provided services and the specific services utilized by a particular business partner, each with its own unique business processes:

Figure 14.1 – Interpretation of the BRM role

Figure 14.1 – Interpretation of the BRM role

Note that all of the services would be reflected in a service catalog. Also, note that some business partners are reflected in black while others are in red. This is intended to represent that the IT SP provides services not only to the business partners that generate...