Chapter 6. Taking a Customer Approach

The foundation of the Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) is the service model. This is an organized list of services supplied by the ISD organization. The services are a combination of those your customers need and are willing to pay for (direct services), along with those needed by the ISD organization to provide direct services to your customers (indirect services). For example, a service called "server monitoring" might be a direct service that the customer is willing to pay for. From the customer's standpoint, they are not concerned how you provide this service, so long as their servers are monitored and actions are taken to correct problems when they occur. But in order to provide this service, the ISD organization needs to provide an indirect service such as a "paging system." The paging system service is necessary to alert on-call support personnel of problems that need to be fixed. Both direct and indirect services are included in the service model. The service model is the framework for establishing the resource model and cost model.

The service model will become one of the most important communication tools used within the ISD organization. For customers, it shows all the services your organization provides. It is a discussion tool to determine what services the customer requires. Each customer may not need all the services available from the organization. The service model can be viewed as an "a la carte" type of menu in which the customer can choose those services needed. It also helps determine the delta in services not provided, but requested and/or needed by the customer. As an ISD organization, you can determine to add a new service being requested , or decline the business. But in the end, there will be a clear understanding of those services the ISD organization will provide to each customer.