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Questions addressed:
Page 1:
• What is a service and
a service offering?
• How is a service
different from a
project?
Page 2:
• What are the different
types of services?
Examples?
• How do different
services relate to each
other?
• How should we
categorize services?
Page 3:
• What best practices
should I consider?
What are services and service offerings?
A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve without owning
the costs and risks.
A service offering consists of one or more service commitments that uniquely define the level of service in terms of availability,
scope, pricing, and packaging options. Customers can choose to receive different levels of performance and features for a
given service through service offerings (typically made available as distinct items in the service catalog).
A service can have multiple service offerings (each made available as separate catalog items) with different service level
agreements (SLAs).
How is a service different from a project?
Examples of a service and service offerings
Project Service
• This is a point-in-time effort to
build new functionality or
deliver a business change, such
as deploying a new
application.
• This is the ongoing management
and enhancement of existing
functionality or a business activity,
like server management.
• Success is measured in terms of
project delivery (schedule,
budget, scope).
• Success is measured in terms of
ongoing service performance
(quality, cost, demand, and
business impact).
• A project is managed by a
project manager who moves to
a new project once the current
project is complete.
• A service is managed by a
service manager who owns the
entire service lifecycle from
launch to retirement.
Business service
Financial accounting
Offering #1
General ledger
Offering #2
Payables
Technical service
Hosting
Offering #1
Hosting (standard)
Offering #2
Hosting (advanced)
Example #2:
Example #1:
contains
contains
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contact us.
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© 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Can you give examples of different service types and their relationships?
Here’s one example:
How should we categorize services into different types?
Use these questions to effectively categorize a service:
• What are the outcomes enabled through this service?
• Can this service stand alone, or does it need to be used in
conjunction with another one?
• Who owns this service?
• Who will pay for this service?
• Who are the key users of this service?
What are the different service types available in ServiceNow?
ServiceNow
®
ships with three fundamental service types (below). You can define new types to align with the service architecture in your organization.
For example, if you have shared services, such as an analytics service, you can have a separate service type defined in ServiceNow.
A business service is a service type that is published to business users. It typically supports one or more business capabilities. A business
capability is a high-level capability (or a set of specific tasks) that an organization requires to execute its business model or fulfill its mission.
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A technical service is a service type that is published to service owners. It typically underpins a business or application service.
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An application service is a service type that is a logical representation of a deployed application stack. Note: An application service is
different from an application, and there is no one-to-one relationship between them. (See the example in the figure below.)
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Consumes
Business service
Financial accounting
Application service
SAP finance
Technical service
Hosting
Shared services
Analytics
Depends on
Contains
Supported by
Business capability
Managing finance
Business application
General ledger
Consumes
Provided by
Tech infrastructure
Application server
Offering
Linux
Offering
General ledger
Depends on
Contains Manages
Consumes
Consumes
Business
Services
Infrastructure
What are services and service offerings? (Continued)
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© 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
What service management best practices should we consider?
Best practice Resources to help you implement
3. Understand the request management process within the Now Platform
®
.
2. Define and categorize service offerings in the service catalog based on
user needs.
1. Create a standard set of definitions for service reporting and service
modeling.
Refer to the ServiceNow Common Services Data Model.
Refer to our Success Playbook on designing a world-class
service catalog.
Refer to our process guide on service catalog and request
management.
4. Align your services model with the data model in the CMDB.
Start with our Success Playbook on planning your successful
CMDB deployment.
5. Manage all services and service offerings within the service portfolio.
Learn about the ServiceNow Service Portfolio module and its
benefits.
6. Define user roles and limit access to service types based on those roles.
Learn about how to enable subscribe by user for your service
offerings.
What are services and service offerings? (Continued)
