The Service Catalog

Following on from our previous post on Service Modelling, we thought we would discuss the service catalog. Wait, is that a service catalog or a product catalog?

If you remember, a product is something we sell to a customer. Most businesses would be familiar with a product catalog. At a restaurant the product catalog is called a menu. For some reason, telecommunications service providers struggle with the concept of the product catalog and this is usually because they confuse the definitions of products and services.

The product catalog should contain all the items you advertise and sell to your customers. There are usually many more products than service types, as each product has a unique set of pricing information. If you sign customers up for fixed term contracts for example, each contract length defines a different product, even though the type of service provided to the customer is the same.

The service catalog on the other hand is what drives the operational side of the business. You can think of it as a repository of attributes for each service type and the associated rules of qualification, delivery and monitoring & assurance. The diagram below shows the relationships between the product and service catalogs and inventories of customers, services and networks & equipment.

Service Catalog 0_1

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