Business services are the non-tangible value that companies provide to their customers and clients. These services may include accounting, payroll, customer support, human resources management, and marketing. In addition, business services may encompass more specialized operations such as providing legal advice or financial services.
Business to business (B2B) service refers to the activities that take place between two businesses. For example, a car manufacturer performs B2B transactions with a wholesaler or supplier that provides the rubber hoses, tires and other materials necessary for assembly of a car. B2B activity also includes the services provided by companies that act as intermediaries, such as freight transporters or insurance brokers.
A key to a successful business service is identifying the business benefits and outcomes of a use case. This involves understanding what value the service creates and how it will improve your organization’s ability to achieve its goals. It is also important to understand what your organization’s expectations are for the business service and who will be accountable for delivering the desired outcome.
In order to successfully launch a new digital business service, you need a clear roadmap for the end-to-end system of engagement and for the workflows required for fulfillment of the service. This includes an understanding of how the service will be used by your customer and how to communicate with them in a way that is clear, simple and intuitive.
Once you have a clear roadmap and plan for your business services, you can begin mapping the components of the digital business service. This process includes defining the customer-facing elements of the service (the service catalog, accessed through a service portal), and the back-end systems that support it. This step is essential to the success of your digital business service because it ensures that all of the necessary elements are in place and ready for the customer experience.
The business service model is a process for managing the creation, maintenance and retirement of services within an organization. It involves a combination of business service management, which oversees the creation, maintenance and retirement of services grouped by objective or capability, and service portfolio management, which tracks the creation, maintenance and retirement of services based on their value to the customer and the organization.
When launching digital business services, it is important to start small and focus on a few pilot use cases that will help you to get up and running quickly. These can include common business transactions such as employee office moves or customer order modification. The use cases will allow you to test the digital business service, determine if it meets your needs and expectations and make changes as needed. Once the pilot is successful, you can then expand the digital business service to a wider set of users. SL1 allows you to add one or more services to your favorites list so that they display at the top of the Business Services page by default. You can add or remove a service from the Favorite Services list by clicking the star icon.