Business services are activities that support a business but don’t produce a tangible commodity. They include such things as information technology (IT), shipping and procurement, finance and accounting, and other professional services. Businesses in every industry rely on business services to function and deliver value to customers.
A service can be a single activity or an entire set of related activities. For example, a consulting firm may offer strategic advice to a client and also provide ongoing maintenance to ensure the implementation of that strategy. Other services that fall under this category are training, software development, and event planning. Some companies are even known for their brand of personal service, such as blowout bars and fitness studios.
While they might seem trivial, business services are critical to the success of a company. They help ensure that internal and external customers are provided with the products and services they need. In addition, they can help a business gain a competitive edge by reducing costs and improving efficiency.
Unlike physical goods, a business service is intangible and cannot be stored for future use. This means that it must be consumed as it is delivered, and it requires interaction between the provider and customer to clarify requirements, convey expectations, and establish service-level agreements. Because they are often performed by humans, inconsistency is inherent in business services.
As such, they are usually more prone to problems than physical products. However, this also makes them more flexible, as they can be quickly adjusted to meet changing demands. Because of this, business services are more likely to be outsourced than product-based businesses.
When a business service is affected, the impact on the business is visible to non-technical stakeholders via a status dashboard. This feature is used to notify teams and end-customers that a business service is not functioning as intended. By default, any incident on a supporting technical service that has a priority higher than the business service will affect the business service. However, you can configure a business service to require that incidents must meet certain priority thresholds before it is considered to be affected by an incident.
You can select one or more business services to display as favorites on the Business Services page by clicking the star icon next to each service name. Favorited services are displayed at the top of the list by default and are included in the multi-sort function. You can also create a separate dashboard for favorite services. For more information, see Creating Dashboards.